Social Darwinism

It is quite a coincidence that this week, we in my AP US History class, talked about the concept of social Darwinism, and that Thursday was the bicentennial birthday of Charles Darwin.
Social Darwinism is a concept derived from natural selection and survival of the fittest. Both concepts say that only the strongest and most adapted species will have a great chance of surviving.
During the eighteen hundreds people began to apply these terms in relation to racism, specifically against African Americans. Social Darwinists believed that whites were altogether superior to blacks and thus acted on it that way. This created a drift that made many white come to believe that they were an altogether greater species than the African Americans and thus African Americans shouldn't be allowed to have the same rights as whites.
With various civil rights movements the Social Darwinists turned away from just believing that African Americans were below them. Many upper class white men thought that they were on the top of the food chain, that everyone below them was inferior to them in some way. They thought that they had greater genetics than the average person, so thus they were entitled to the finer things in life.
This was clearly a lacking of morality, since many Social Darwinists believed that things like welfare and other programs designed to help the poor and sick were only keeping the "inferior" species alive. They furthered this belief system to include the thought that, if things were not done to help cleanse the world of these inferior beings, that world and society would be flooded with the inferiors species.
The term Social Darwinism is also applied to the United States imperialistic thoughts throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. Some members of the US society thought that culture based from the European countries, especially England, was meant to be spread. People thought that by Americanizing other parts of the world, the world would be a better place and easier to survive in. This fueled the US's ever expanding imperialistic policies towards other nations, the US was now destined to spread white culture.
Social Darwinism was not a totally outrageously malicious thing. It did do much good towards America, some people such as Andrew Carnegie, took it upon themselves to better society. They believed that it was their job to help other people in society and not just look after there own interests. Many hospitals and research facilities were built during this time, in an effort to build up society rather than tear it down like other Social Darwinists believed should to be done.