"P.S.-I'm White Too": The Legacy of Evolution, Creationism, and Racism in the United States.

Despite decades of science education reform, creationism remains very popular in the United States. Although neither creationism nor evolution is inherently racist, creationists and evolutionists have used science to justify white supremacy. Powerful racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and popular racist advocates such as Frank Norris worked together to vilify evolution, promote racism, and begin the evolution-creationism controversy in the United States in the 1920s. The links between racism and creationism became explicit during Epperson v. Arkansas, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools are unconstitutional. Today, the relics of racism, evolution, and creationism persist in many forms, ranging from books such as The Bell Curve to educational institutions such as Bob Jones University. The death, in late 1999, of civil-rights activist Daisy Bates reminded people of one of the pivotal events in blacks’ struggle for social equality: the integration of public schools. In 1957, Bates helped a group of 9 black students enter Little Rock’s all-white Central High School. In response, then-Governor (and outspoken Southern Baptist anti-evolutionist) Orval Faubus became a white supremacist folk-hero by ordering 1,200 armed National Guardsmen to block the students from entering the school, despite a federal court order approving desegregation of the school. 1 Despite