Yet more ...

The foregoing remarks speculate on why rural America tends is a seat of mistrust of Darwinism in spite of rural Americans being in a better position to directly witness the workings of selection. Then, too, of course, there is race. Those trying to preserve the racial order of the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century argued for it on religious grounds (Those in the North did the same thing, perhaps more successfully, on other grounds). Natural Selection opposed and replaced the theory that all the species that ever existed had existed in the time of Eden and had been preserved on Noah's Ark. Southern religious leaders argued that if God created the species then He must have created the races and must have meant for them to remain separate and distinct and for separate purposes. The theory of Natural Selection made even the idea of species and variety mere intellectual constructs. It must have been especially threatening that Darwin frequently observes that crossing varieties usually gives the offspring health and vigor.

I don't know whether or how much modern controversy over Natural Selection is a veiled discussion of race, but it was certainly so in prior times.

- J