Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a widely discredited scientific theory, based on a misunderstanding of Darwin's theory of Evolution, that different races of people compete for limited resources and that some races can or should attempt to dominate over other races. It was widely adopted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and contributed to the outbreak of both World War I and World War II, as well as Jim Crow laws and Apartheid. With the Holocaust and war crimes in Europe and the far East, most societies rejected the idea in the aftermath of the world wars, though vestiges of it persist to this day.