Evolution: Education and Outreach

A familiar image is often used to represent human evolution. At the far left of the image, there is a small monkey-like creature, usually depicted walking on hands and knees. To the right of this creature, there is another, standing more upright, shorter than the next creature, to its right. At the far right of the picture, there is a human being, standing upright, with a familiar profile. Images of this kind have been copied into this posting. Note that the second comes from the Scientificblogging.com web site, where it is a permanent banner display marking out the section of the Life Sciences page about evolution.

It’s clear what this image is supposed to represent: the progressive evolution of the human species, starting with the monkey-like creature at the left, and ending on the right with the figure recognizable as a modern human being.

The problem with this image is that it doesn’t reflect current—and correct—thinking about how evolution works. The “ascending monkey” image suggests that the monkey is at the base of a linear progression from less advanced to more advanced. This seems to be the sense that the Smith-Cotton Marching Band wants to convey, as does the creator of the Burning Man festival poster. Evolution does not have a general direction and cannot properly be said to progress. Species or local populations adapt to the conditions of their environment. They become optimal with respect to their environment only insofar as they do the best that they can given chance events, the nature of their particular genetic endowment, and the constraints of their development. Long-term progress does not occur, even if one species evolved from another because of the former’s better adaptation to a shared environment. Should the environment change, the new species might find itself faced with extinction.

Besides being incorrect as a representation of biological evolution, this image is pernicious because it has racist undertones. Some Internet research reveals that slurs and jokes aimed at humiliating people with black skin frequently make reference to the notion that they are monkeys, for the reason that a monkey is “more primitive.” Many of these jokes and slurs clearly explicitly draw on the themes of having black skin, being primitive, and being a monkey.

Consider the following racist jokes from http://www.racist-jokes.com/ (pages 5, 6, 1 and 1, respectively):

What’s the difference between a naked white woman and a naked black woman? One’s on the cover of Playboy and the other’s on the cover of National Geographic.

What do you call a white man in a group of twenty black men? Tarzan of the apes.

What does NAACP stand for? Now Apes Are Called People.

What do you call the million man march in the rain? “Gorillas in the mist.”

While these jokes are repugnant in the extreme, it is important to point out that they exist, and that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys has real social currency and is rooted deeply in the cultural context of the US.

A recent controversy over an 18 February 2009 cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as a monkey illustrates that this racist subtext need only be barely concealed. Of central importance is the outrage expressed by many upon seeing the cartoon. The cartoon, which first appeared in the New York Post, shows two police officers just having shot a chimpanzee, which is on its back, dead, on the sidewalk. One of the police officers says “They’ll have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.” On the one hand, the cartoon is meant to reflect a news item current at the time it appeared—police shot a chimpanzee which was threatening a woman in Connecticut. On the other hand, it’s hard to see what the connection between a chimpanzee and the stimulus bill might be. Someone might point out that the stimulus bill was in fact introduced in in the US Congress, and so President Obama should not be identified with the chimpanzee in the cartoon. Though this is correct, most people probably associate the stimulus bill most closely with Obama himself. The identification of a black man and a monkey is what is intended to stimulate whatever humor there is supposed to be in this cartoon, and there is a clearly racist interpretation of the cartoon. Again, the point is that the connection between race, primitiveness, and monkeys is a meaningful one.

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Hi all

Many people have had a difficult time commenting on posts at this blog. In order to make it easier, I will append a footer (see below) to all postings I create. This footer offers instructions on how to comment.

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If you have a Wordpress login, use it to sign in
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If you do not have a Wordpress login and do not want one
or cannot obtain one, visit the “About” page for this blog
at http://blogs.springer.com/evoo/?page_id=2 and contact me by email at the address provided there.

Note that comments are moderated to help keep spam out.

Hi all

For a few days, this blog was not working. Now it does.

I will have to put up some new posts soon, I mean, some substantial ones, not just about the blog working or not working.

Look for a posting about a misleading pictorial representation of evolution, and one about the importance of studying human evolution, generated from some reflections on recent articles in EE&O.