<<Personally, I still understand how some people WITHOUT racist
predispositions can plausibly correlate a naturalistic and non-theistic
"survival of the fittest" mentality with racism. Philosophically, the
problem is how one can ever justify ANY transcending value that would
condemn a racist attitude.>>
You've hit it dead on, IMO. First, the logic is not only compelling, but
somehow unavoidable. If one accepts "survival of the fittest" one HAS TO
conclude that there is a class "less fit." Once that is accepted, it is
LOGICAL to presume the fitness of one class over another. And once THAT is
accepted, you have people like Hitler who merely follow the logic through. All
of this is explained in my thoroughly engaging novel, The Darwin Conspiracy.
Second, the philsophical problem is exactly as you propose. How can there by
ANY transcendent values in such a world? I've often asked materialists to
prove Hitler was "wrong" or "evil." They just can't do it. Of course they
can't do it. They haven't got the moral syntax available to them.
Having said all that, an evolutionist is not ipso facto a racist. Of course
not. But they ought to be aware that their philosophy lends itself to such a
conclusion, and that their moral rejection of racism is based upon capital
borrowed from a transcendent system.
Which leads to a final point. Where racism has been attributable to religious
systems, those systems themselves have the capital for moral revision. For
example, the great abolitionists were Christian reformers. And we see today a
great wave in evangelical Christianity toward repentance for past racism and
toward reconciliation. This is all glorious.
Materialist-evolutionists, however, don't have that available in their system.
They have to borrow morality from a transcendent system.
Jim