Scientific racism

Scientific racism is the use of pseudo-scientific techniques and hypotheses to support or justify the belief in racism, racial inferiority, racialism, racial superiority, or alternatively the practice of classifying individuals of different phenotypes into discrete races.

As a category of theory, scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines, in proposing anthropologic typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, that might be asserted to be superior or inferior. Scientific racism was common during the New Imperialism period (c. 1880s – 1914) where it was used in justifying White European imperialism, and it culminated in the period from 1920 to the end of World War II. Since the later 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and has historically been used to support or validate racist world-views, based upon belief in the existence and significance of racial categories and a hierarchy of superior and inferior races.