Richard Dawkins Tweets About Eugenics, Receives Major Backlash

BYCole Blake2.2K Views
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Richard Dawkins, Eugenics, Backlash
Richard Dawkins is receiving backlash on Twitter for his recent posts regarding the science of eugenics and selective breeding.

English ethologist Richard Dawkins, famed for his outspoken opinions about religion, is catching backlash on Twitter after saying eugenics would “work for humans."

"It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology," Dawkins wrote.

Eugenics is the practice of selective breeding supported by the Nazis. 

Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, responded to Dawkins tweeting, "So unacceptable for Richard Dawkins to tweet about eugenics without clearly condemning it. Dawkins is *supposedly* one of our exemplars of humanism & science outreach. Yet today he's given every manner of passive and active bigot an opening to "consider" persecution on steroids."

Charles M. Blow, a columnist for the New York Times also reacted writing, "This eugenics crap is so dangerous. In the US it lead to forced sterilizations of women in the South — sometimes against their wills, often without their knowledge — that became so common that they came to be referred to as “Mississippi appendectomies.”

Dawkins recently appeared on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, which you can watch here.


About The Author
Cole Blake is a current staff writer at HotNewHipHop based out of New York City. He began writing for the site as an intern back in 2018 while finishing his B.A. in Journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s covered a number of breaking stories for HNHH. These include the ongoing YSL RICO trial, the allegations surrounding Diddy, and much more. His work also extends outside of hip-hop, having written extensively about a myriad of topics including politics, sports, and pop culture. He’s attended several music festivals to provide coverage for the site as well, such as Rolling Loud and Governors Ball.
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