I remember that light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution. "All is well since all grows better," became my motto, my true source of comfort. Man was not created with an instinct for his own degradation, but from the lower he had risen to the higher forms. Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection. His face is turned to the light; he stands in the sun and looks upward. (Hofstadter, 45)

The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest... The American Beauty rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God. (Hofstadter, 45)

Many of these ideas were specifically used against black people. In this way, slavery, and the perpetual ringing of racism could be justified with an unproven philosophy, Social Darwinism. "If the stronger and cleverer race... is free to impose its will upon 'new-caught, sullen peoples' on the other side of the globe, why not in South Carolina and Mississippi?", as stated by the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly (Toppin, 142). Segregation was defended by such people, stating that since blacks are an inferior race, it is ok to have them suffer, as the white people live happily. Such harmful ideas would set the abolitionist, and black liberationist movement back years because they had just been freed from slavery, and these ideas are still fresh in the minds of the oppressors. Meanwhile, the government was joining in on such actions of intolerance, and hatred, by allowing the courts, and police allow groups like the Ku Klux Klan to roam the streets as a terrorist group, not to mention the countless officers who were enlisted in them. Racism was an overwhelming theory which saturated the United States as a facet of Social Darwinism.

class economically, all the while being defended through little or no interaction by government.

The government showed its full support for Social Darwinism by making clear that it did not like immigrants. "In the mid nineteenth century a new theory of social evolution supported the belief that African Americans, Native Americans, and Asians-as well as poor people of all races-were unworthy of full citizenship and unequipped to participate in the democratic process." (Gale Research) Many saw that immigrants were flooding into the country, and began to use them as an easy scapegoat for many of the problems that were sprouting at that time. Jobs were being filled

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Approximate Word count = 1805
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)