Scientific Racism and its Impact on Western Societies

WHAT DOES 'SCIENTIFIC RACISM' REFER TO, AND WHY DID IT COME TO HAVE SUCH SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON WESTERN SOCIETIES FROM THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY UNTIL THE EARLY DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY?
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What does ‘scientific racism’ refer to and why did it come to have such a significant impact on Western societies from the late nineteenth century until the early decades of the twentieth century?
Race and racism have a deep history that has created this idea that one group of people is better than the other based on distinctions such as the color of their skin. The need to scientifically classify human beings into groups of races grew as more Europeans became exposed to human beings that looked different from them (Barkan 1992, p.15). As they engaged in trade with people from the African continent who were black, they felt the need to develop biological rationalizations that explained the differences. However, this contributed to a feeling of superiority that changed how Western societies interacted with people of color and later on contributed to further classifications of Europeans into racial sub-categories. According to MacMaster (2001, p.1), the roots of modern racism can be traced back to this period. This essay defines and explores scientific racism. It also explores why scientific racism had such a significant impact on Western societies. Specifically, scientific racism came to have such a significant impact on Western societies from the nineteenth century until the early decades of the twentieth century because it influenced Western societies' approaches to colonization, nationalism, and racial purification.
Scientific Racism: What it is
Racism has a complex history and has been used for many years in many forms to accord certain groups of people privilege and deny others the same privilege based on perceived differences. One form of racism that emerged during the nineteenth century was scientific racism. According to MacMaster (2001, p.12), scientific racism was an attempt to biologically classify human beings into sub-categories that could then be used to assign a level of superiority or inferiority based on the biological importance/ of each sub-category. It is a concept that has been used to explain the differences between races and to justify white superiority and black inferiority based on natural or innate characteristics specific to each race. As Rattansi (2007 ch 3. p.9) reveals, scientific racism was used during the 19th century to explain why White people were accorded more value/superiority through their dominance and class over the non-White people. Also, scientific racism led people to make wrong conclusions about race in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and in the modern-day (Crist 2018, p.6). Using science and building on the existing natural characteristics of human beings, such as the color of their skin, made it easier for people to be treated unequally instead of just acknowledging that human beings are diverse in nature.
One of the factors that contributed to the widespread growth and usage of scientific racism was the concept of eugenics developed by social Darwinism in the nineteenth and twent...