- Series:History, Transcript English
Exodus 22:21
“Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
On an earlier broadcast, I shared with you how Darwinism led to racism and horrendous acts that are comparable to what terrorists are doing today with unspeakable acts of violence. Though our broadcast today tells a far less gruesome story, it does show how Darwinism even played a part in America’s early immigration policies.
At the turn of the twentieth century, when immigrants were flooding into North America, there were certain groups very hostile to Roman Catholicism, and they were looking for justification to exclude Catholics from the country on scientific grounds. Obviously, to have excluded them on religious grounds would have undermined the boast of America being “the land of the free” and would in any case have violated the Constitution.
However, Franz Boas, a German anthropologist, was asked to set up a team on Ellis Island where immigrants could be scientifically screened. Screening was carried out by measurement of head size and distance from fingertip to knee cap, all on the presumption that Man had evolved from the ape and that those closer to the ape’s proportions were to be excluded. The “dark races” especially included those from Catholic countries. Many immigrants were turned back on the dubious grounds that their lower intelligence would dilute the general gene pool.
Even today there are people who believe that certain races of people are less evolved than others. But those people certainly did not get that notion from the Bible. The Bible affirms there is only one race – the human race!
Prayer: Heavenly Father, like the song says, Jesus loves the little children, red, brown, yellow, black and white! Thank You, Jesus, for coming to save the lost, no matter what their skin color might be. Amen.
Author: Steven J. Schwartz
Ref: Ian Taylor, “Scientific Racism,” on file at Creation Moments. Photo: The main building on Ellis Island. Courtesy of Ingfbruno. (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
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