The African Race

“The African Character” by G.W. F. Hegel
• Africans do not have a concept of Law or a Higher Being. Because Africans regard themselves as the “highest beings,” they do not have respect for themselves. With the reverence to a Higher Being (God), comes respect for oneself.
• Africans represent humans in their most wild and untamed state. They do not exhibit morality and have no knowledge of the “immortality of the soul.” They see tyranny, cannibalism, and slavery as customary practices. These traits show that, Africans do not have self-control.

“On the Races of Man” by Charles Darwin
• Existing Races of man differ in skin color, hair, shape of skull & proportion of body; however, they resemble each other in many respects
• They share similar minds, tastes, dispositions, and habits (All enjoy dancing, rude music, acting, painting, and tattooing; use similar gestures; use same cries when excited by certain emotions). They also have similar inventive powers (arrowheads found all over the globe)
• Races of man descended from a single primitive stock; therefore they should be considered one species instead of many
• The intellectual capabilities of this primitive stock is equal to that of the lowest savages in Africa
• The races of man could be different sub-species
• Different conditions of life did not necessarily create the differences in the races (the Fuegians and the Botocudos in South America live in different climates and have completely different diets and yet resemble each other; the Botocudos live in the same climate as coastal tribes in Africa and yet do not resemble them)
• Inherited effects of the increase or decrease of certain parts of the body do not account for the differences between races of man either
• The slight differences between races did not come about because of natural selection. Therefore none of the differences in man are beneficial or important.