USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Social Darwinists believe in “survival of the fittest”-the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.

Detailed explanation-2: -survival of the fittest, term made famous in the fifth edition (published in 1869) of On the Origin of Species by British naturalist Charles Darwin, which suggested that organisms best adjusted to their environment are the most successful in surviving and reproducing.

Detailed explanation-3: -Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s.

Detailed explanation-4: -Social Darwinism was the product of late nineteenth-century economic and political expansion. As the European and American upper class sought to extend its economic and political power, it employed scientific explanations to justify the increasingly obvious gap between rich and poor.

Detailed explanation-5: -At the societal level, social Darwinism was used as a philosophical rationalization for imperialist, colonialist, and racist policies, sustaining belief in Anglo-Saxon or Aryan cultural and biological superiority.