Social Darwinism: A Comparative Analysis

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What is one thing that a nation and a race have in common? Both required people to be members of a nation or a race and the ideology of a race and a nation came from the people. Therefore, these two histories are often deeply intertwined through the idea that nations and races often have similar theorists creating their own ideology. This leads to the ideas of nation and race spreading across academia and entering the general public which allows for strong connections to develop between the two ideas. Through this entrance into the general public and also general academia, the general people and the theorists created a concept called the “other.” The “other” is a concept which allows nations and races to define themselves on the idea that …show more content…
Social Darwinism is the concept that a person/race is best suited for its own environment and only allows strongest and fittest of the people/race to survive and the weak perish due to being malformed. Social Darwinism was not originally applied to people, for Darwin only meant this for animals but the general public and other academics expanded his theories to apply to people. For some theorists, a nation could be defined as the group of people who are the best suited for an area and no one who is different from that best suited group are allowed to live in that nation. This leads to theories that nations are composed of only one race, the “superior” race who best suit the environment which according to social Darwinism must compete to survive against the “other” or those of different …show more content…
Many theorists such as Gobineau, Pearson, and Meiners believed that a nation could only be founded on the purity within its bloodline and that the mixing of the races could lead to the destruction of the nation. With racial tensions high between the different racial groups and the developing nations to create the dominant nation and race, breaking boundaries of race or nation would be the highest of taboos. However, national identity and racial identity for people has long been intertwined, even today in the United States identification comes from someone identifying themselves as African-American, Asian-American, Native American, etc. In this case, the first component identifies race while the second component identifies nation. This concept demonstrates that somewhere within history the theory of racial origins and national origins was combined to form one
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