One of the often overlooked historical oddities in the development of the environmental movement in the United States was its close relationship to what we would today term white supremacy. Though many praise Teddy Roosevelt for his embrace of conservationism and evolutionary theory, he also adhered to racial beliefs of the day, which presumed the superiority of Anglo-Saxon people and couched it in Darwinian terms. Even less well known is the activism of race theorist Madison Grant, who was as much a conservationist as the intellectual for white supremacy that he is remembered for today. In some ways the connection is reasonable, in that both are fundamentally conservative instincts. To preserve the environment and the racial order of the day. The association was clear well into the 20th century, Charles Lindbergh was a prominent eugenicist, but later became an environmentalist, while Garrett Hardin, who originated the term “tragedy of the commons” opposed both high immigration levels and was skeptical of racial diversity.
Because of environmentalism’s place within the cultural Left in the United States these connections no longer apply so straightforwardly. In fact, the Sierra Club and other such organizations tend to be careful to not oppose immigration on environmental terms any longer because of its racial implications. But, I’ve noticed that many people with an environmental orientation still use what strikes me as quite racialist language in the context of animals. I don’t think it is a problem. Different moral and ethical standards apply to animals than humans. But I also think it is funny, as well as somewhat wrong-headed. This came to my attention because of an article in Nautilus, A Strange New Gene Pool of Animals Is Brewing in the Arctic. There’s a lot of talk about issues like hybrid zones, and pre- and postzygotic isolation (at least implicitly).
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Read full, original article: Fear of Race Mixing in Biodiversity
