I get how much you want to believe it. But evidence still shows what it does.
The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man. The American aborigines, Negroes and Europeans differ as much from each other in mind as any three races that can be named; yet I was incessantly struck, whilst living with the Fuegians on board the Beagle, with the many little traits of character, shewing how similar their minds were to ours; and so it was with a full-blooded negro with whom I happened once to be intimate
Charles Darwin The Descent of Man
Mostly I'm entertained by how anyone can cling to the misinterpretation of one quote, while ignoring several passages telling a different story:
"The
variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the
greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said." --Descent of Man
"Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties." -Descent of Man
"natural selection could only have endowed the
savage with a brain a little superior to that of an ape." -Descent of Man
"The chief causes of the low morality of savages, as judged by our standard, are, firstly, the confinement of sympathy to the same tribe. Secondly,
powers of reasoning insufficient to recognise the bearing of many virtues, especially of the self-regarding virtues, on the general welfare of the tribe." -Descent of Man
"Nevertheless, at this early period, the intellectual and social faculties of man could hardly have been
inferior in any extreme degree to those possessed at
present by the lowest savages; otherwise primeval man could not have been so eminently successful in the struggle for life, as proved by his early and wide diffusion."-Descent of Man
"On the other hand, as Buchner has remarked, how little can the hard- worked wife of a
degraded Australian savage, who uses very
few abstract words, and
cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence."-Descent of Man
There's one quote that almost sounds like he's aware of some equality, at least until we read the entire quote:
"
Many of these are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races."
"The
same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect
to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man." -Descent of Man
So any similarity is unimportant in Darwin's view. The important thing is the majority of the quotes are Darwin's thoughts about how white people were superior to everyone else as far as physical and mental faculties. The idea Darwin thought otherwise is so preposterous it's.....well I'll just say I find it entertaining.