Guest Column

Natural Selection in a Nutshell and an application: the classroom fight for our children’s future

By Elsa Salazar Cade

September 19, 2005

      In case you forgot or never was taught it, here is natural selection simplified. No, Mr. President, the jury is not still out on this!

 1. We are not all born equal.  We have lots of different genes so.... some of us are tall, short, light skinned, dark skinned.- Any argument here?   Get your glasses checked or maybe do some traveling.

2. This is only so much stuff in the world: space, shelter, water, food, love etc.- Any argument here?  The planet is a finite place. The universe is very big, but there is only one planet we live on right now and not all the space can be lived in.

3. We, like other animals, are capable of having more children than we can support.  So some die, the ones who live are the ones who have the right traits, parental care, food, shelter, etc.  Any argument here?  Without some type of birth control, (abstinence/chemical) we would have tons of babies and women would die young at childbirth after having so many. Try using NO birth control!

4.  Because there are so many of us and that we are different and that there is a limited amount of stuff, space, etc.  There is COMPETITION for all of this stuff, space, etc. 
Any argument here?  Limited stuff means some of us get and some of us not.  

5. Those who get space, food, stuff, etc live and have children and those that don't, die.  Any ARGUMENT there?  If you 're dead you can't have babies that produce the next generation? Right?

So why is it in interest of some people to push intelligent design idea into the schools? Lets look at these applications to Darwin’s theory.

     A.  Religious right is freaked out because so many dark skinned people are coming across the border into the U. S. taking American jobs.

Sections 1 and 3 and 4
 different, too many of them, competition for resources.   check out Lou Dobbs!

     B. Religious right is for vouchers and charter schools. This means they want the limited resource of federal school funding spent on their children, not on poor African Americans and Hispanic Americans and poor White Americans.  
Sections  1, 2, 3, 4 and 5

     C. Religious right is against abortion and birth control. 
 Section 3,4 uncontrolled birth rate for the poor keeps them poor and unable to adequately feed and educate their young. Washington, D.C. has a bigger mortality rate than Guatemala. Because if they out reproduce everybody else, they will take more resources.  Less competition     What about that Katrina response?

     D.  Religious right is for the war in Iraq especially if they recruit pushed out and dropped out teenagers who are poor whites, Hispanic Americans and African Americans. - Sections 1, 2, 3 - Send them, they have less value cause they are not like "us".  (Note how the children of the people advocating the war are in college not in Iraq)  They want the oil that belongs to the other folks (limited stuff) because of being God's chosen people but not sending their own for children to die for it.

The Blacks, Hispanics and especially poor whites have too many babies especially out of wedlock and go on welfare so that populations need reduction because they are polluting the American gene pool with "different" and "inbred" genes.  This is competition, this is war so let's kill or maim the competition.  Katrina?   Why did they really wait so long when they KNEW poor folks were dying? Poor, Black, old?

     E.  The Religious right support GWB on Social security because… - Hey, he is like us, we want our stuff in private accounts so we can wheel and deal in the stock market. And get more stuff, anyway the old people have too much already and the handicapped should go to the churches for faith-based charity.

      F. In the meanwhile can “WE” get some of those federal dollars for faith based charity, because otherwise we can't spare any of our stuff/money/time helping out the poor? That way what is mine is mine and what is yours is mine.  Katrina…The ownership society: those who have get more, those who rent get moved to another shelter in an other state.  Competition/limited stuff.

     And finally, intelligent design is another attempt to bar in the door keeping Hispanic Americans from getting into good sciences careers.  Hispanic Americans need and should demand the best education.  Spending time studying a religious concept in science class is racist.  We don’t need to taught in public school about God during science class.  Hispanics, who are religious, keep God in their day-to-day existence.  Scientific facts do not cause a loss of faith because faith is about how God instructs us on how treat ourselves and others in spite of and in full awareness of our animal nature. “El Diablo nunca duerme.” We do not limit faith to Sunday morning but even express our belief in our farewells.  Vaya con Dios, si Dios quere.  Viya bendito de Dios. ‘

     What we don’t need an Agnostic, Baptist, Catholic or Evangelical science teacher spending time teaching religion in science class.  There are places for this like Sunday school or catechism class.  The attempt to force-feed American children the Adam and Eve story is an assault to the right of parents to nurture their children’s religious beliefs. 

    Many Mexican Americans pray to the Virgin Mary and have altars in their homes with pictures of family members and favorite saints.  To allow the religious conservatives to insert intelligent design is the beginning of a cultural assault on Mexican American values.  The religious right regards such practices as pagan, “worshiping images and statues”, “hold no other gods before you”…not even the Virgin or St. Joseph.  You are to read only the Bible not the teachings of the Pope.

     When George W. Bush went to school in he went to prestigious boarding schools like Tony Blair did.  I have no doubt that he was carefully instructed in Darwin’s evolutionary theory and about the geological timeline.  I don’t know if he did well, or believed it but he RECEIVED the instruction.  Not to mention the fact that as an undergraduate at Yale he would have been required to take some science courses as part of his program.  He would have had either some brilliant professors or up and coming graduate students delivering instruction.  I dare say that his wife and both his daughters received quite adequate instruction given the good schools they attended.

     We should ask for no less for our children: the best possible schools the best possible teachers, and the best possible instruction. It serves them (and us/U.S.) well to be properly academically prepared. Plus the bonus that they would understand that if certain traits are predominant in our human population it is because they serve us well!  Being short and brown did not prevent us from building the Mexican pyramids. We are only short in comparison to other who came to our continent. Our brilliant Aztec mind divined the path of the stars.  Being brown beats skin cancer!  Talk about raising self-esteem! Talk about survival of the fittest! Our children would come to understand that the many traits that we as humans possess are adaptive.  They would come to know that racism is a failed idea.   Black, Brown, Red, Yellow or White all are equal in God’s eyes and in Mother Nature eyes too. 

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 Elsa Salazar Cade ecade@telusplanet.net

 (A note from Ms. Salazar Cade: “I am back from Africa and have this piece. Here is the website describing our trip, including a picture of us. I clean up pretty good, considering weeks in the African bush. http://clade.acnatsci.org/mussel/m/news/supp/2005/zambia/tourism.html

Hope your summer went well.  The Zambian people were very poor but very sweet.)

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