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Sacramento Paper Misses Connection Between Darwin and Eugenics

Note: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the Sacramento Unified School District has not yet officially acted on the name change to its middle school.

Like most mainstream American newspapers, the Sacramento Bee is a strong and uncritical proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The Bee recently demonstrated its devotion to the Darwinist cause with two news articles spotlighting the celebration of Darwin Day in Sacramento.

Ironically, the day after Darwin Day, the Bee included an editorial that rightly condemns the American eugenics movement and that rightly supports a proposal to remove a famous Sacramentan’s name from a school based on his enthusiastic support of eugenics.

As the Bee acknowledges in its editorial, “At its zenith in the 1930 [sic.], eugenics was used to justify the imprisonment and slaughter of the Jews in Nazi Germany and the blatant discrimination against racial minorities and Southern Europeans in this country.”

Charles M. Goethe was a Sacramento leader of the early Twentieth Century whose civic achievements included being one of the “founding fathers” of the California State University at Sacramento (CSUS). As a result of his civic achievements, Goethe’s name appears on public parks, schools and buildings in Sacramento, including, until recently, on a public arboretum at CSUS.

Unfortunately, Goethe was also a very enthusiastic and public supporter of eugenics programs. Goethe’s ugly legacy as a eugenicist recently inspired the CSUS to remove his name from a public arboretum and community members to demand that a local school district remove Goethe’s name from a public middle school.

The connection between Darwin’s theory of evolution and eugenics is a well-documented dark side of the history of Darwinism. So how can the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board square its admirable condemnation of eugenics with the Bee’s unwavering support for Darwin and his theory of evolution? The Bee, like all too many in the mainstream media, simply appears to a turn a blind eye to some of the uglier ramifications of Darwin’s theory of evolution for society.

It is commendable that eugenicists like Goethe are finally being outed and dethroned from their privileged place in history in Sacramento and elsewhere. If only the mainstream media would similarly “out” Darwinism’s crucial contribution to the eugenics crusade.