Photo: Display of Grants Caribou at the AMNH, by Ehblake / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0).

John West has been documenting the failures of a wonderful institution in New York, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), to properly confront its own past association with evolutionary racism. (Most recently, seehereandhere.) This is even as the museum plots to cancel President Teddy Roosevelt whose great equestrian statue stands outside on Central Park West.

Dr. West sought comment, in vain, from the AMNH about a bust of racist and eugenicist past museum president Henry Fairfield Obsorn and about a collection of skulls that included pieces gathered from German concentration camps in southwest Africa, plunder from a horrific experiment in applied Darwinism. (SeeDarwin, Africa, and Genocide: The Horror of Scientific Racism.) When West was producing the documentaryHuman Zoos, the museum similarly evaded questions about its historical involvement in advancing the pseudoscience of eugenics.

Now my friend John Zmirak points out in a tweet that the museum has yetanotherquestionable gem on display at least indirectly honoring another hair-raising racist,Madison Grant(1865-1937). Grant was a naturalist, author of the 1916 workThe Passing of the Great Race, a proponent of racial hygiene and Nordic theory. Today hes a hero of the Alt-Right. For more on him, seeHuman Zoos:

Well, Grant is the namesake of a caribou species, Grants Caribou,Rangifer tarandus granti. You can see them, prominently labeled in a display at the museum, pictured above. Should these caribou be canceled, too?

No, I dont think so. Where does it all end?Zmirak comments, Cancel NOTHING, tear down NOTHING. This generation is drunk. Take away its car keys. John Westearlier noted one statue of a Darwinian racistthat probably does deserve to come down, that of Democratic Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, albeit in a lawful manner. No statue has an automatic right to eternally adorn a public space.

More generally, its time for a rational discussion of the ideas behind some lamentable streams in U.S. history. Discussing the Confederacy and its legacy is important. But just asallblack lives matter, not justsome, so tooallof our history matters, not justsome.

White nationalists today arent shy about acknowledging the roots of their own ideas in evolutionary thinking. In 2013, Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer wrote a new Foreword for a republished edition of Madison GrantsThe Conquest ofContinent,noting that Darwinism offers a compelling and rational justification for Whites to act on behalf of their ancestors and progeny and feel a shared sense of destiny with their extended kin group. Guess who wrote the original Foreword?Henry Fairfield Obsorn.

Kanye West wasnot wrong this week in acknowledgingthe ugliness behind the founding of Planned Parenthood, whose founder,Margaret Sanger, extolled planned human breeding and did not hesitate to address a KKK rally. Some in the black community have objected to public statuary honoring her. I can understand why, as much as I think now is the time to err on the side of preserving the past.

Crucially, though, there needs to be some frankness on the part of Darwinian scientists and, yes, abortion advocates about the shadow of their own past. The role of science, including evolutionary science, in justifying racism and eugenics is a subject that needs to be opened up wide, not decorously ignored any longer.

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Cancel Caribou? Another Questionable Tribute at the American Museum of Natural History - Discovery Institute