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AP U.S. History Exam 1.29 178 Views
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Description:
AP U.S. History Exam 1.29. How might someone who believed in Social Darwinism respond to the image?
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Gilded Age,
- 00:07
a period when everyone fished for more.
- 00:11
How might someone who believed in Social Darwinism
- 00:14
respond to the image?
Full Transcript
- 00:16
And here are the potential answers.
- 00:17
[ birds chirping ]
- 00:22
Well, during the Gilded Age, extreme wealth
- 00:25
managed to become even more extreme,
- 00:27
particularly for big business owners.
- 00:29
Let's see how followers of Social Darwinism would have
- 00:31
felt about this survival of the richest.
- 00:35
Would a Social Darwinist have responded
- 00:38
to this image by saying A -
- 00:40
Rockefeller benefited from the stable grounding of his parents?
- 00:43
Hmm. Well, Social Darwinists thought the wealthy
- 00:45
earned their money through superior minds and bodies,
- 00:49
not from whatever tangible benefits
- 00:51
their parents or the government might have given them.
- 00:53
That's a no-go on A and on C.
- 00:55
Could Social Darwinists have felt that B -
- 00:57
Rockefeller was responsible for sharing his wealth with the poor?
- 01:01
Well, many of these tycoons were in fact quite generous with
- 01:04
their money, donating funds to build
- 01:06
hospitals, libraries, and other public institutions.
- 01:08
Social Darwinists, however, felt that Rockefeller
- 01:10
had no obligation to help the unfit survive.
- 01:14
Which means that Social Darwinists would have responded
- 01:17
to the image by saying that D -
- 01:19
Rockefeller's intelligence and strength led to his wealth.
- 01:22
The main tenet of Social Darwinism
- 01:24
was that the inherently strong
- 01:26
would see their wealth and power increase
- 01:28
while the inherently weak would see the opposite.
- 01:31
So D is the correct answer.
- 01:32
Under criticism that this natural selection
- 01:35
of rich over poor was actually quite unnatural,
- 01:38
Social Darwinism eventually fell out of favor
- 01:41
and society shifted to a more evolved point of view.
- 01:46
[ plop ]
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