The City of Darwin: honouring a blatant racist

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. [Emphasis added]

So Darwin asserts that both human-like (anthropomorphus) apes and “savage races” like Negros and Australian Aborigines, whose evolutionary status is not far above a gorilla, will be “exterminated” by Caucasians. Get that? Eminent Australians of Aboriginal heritage like Cathy Freeman, Adam Goodes, Jacinta Price, Warren Mundine, Ken Wyatt, Nova Perris, Ernie Dingo, and many others, are only marginally more evolved than a gorilla and will inevitably die out given their inferior status!

It should be clear from his own statements that Darwin was a racist. Moreover, his ideas inspired eugenicists and other racist movements, including Hitler and the Nazis. So why should we have an Australian city named in honour of this blatantly racist man? Yes, Darwin was an important historical figure in the field of science, and students need to know and understand his ideas. However, I do not believe he deserves the honour of having a major city named after him.

Renaming well known places in Australia is not without precedent. Ayers Rock is now known as Uluru, and the Olgas as Kata Tjuta. My proposal is to change the name of Darwin to its original name ‘Palmerston,’ after former British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, or alternatively, ‘Larrakia,’ after the Aboriginal tribe that traditionally occupied the Darwin area.

Whatever the chosen name, we need to stop honouring a racist man, whose ideas have spawned so much racial hate.