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SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND EUGENICS SCIENTIFIC RACISM AND EUGENICSGRADE 11 | Topic 3: Ideas of race between the 19 and 20 century th th
Define key concepts, including race, racial hierarchy, pseudoscience, scientific racism and eugenics. Explain how racial hierarchies were presented as scientific truths during the 19th and 20th centuries. Explain how pseudoscientific ideas about racial difference contributed to the construction and justification of racial hierarchies. Differentiate between ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ eugenics. Analyse practises of race and eugenics in cases like Australia and the indigenous Australians and the Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Learning outcomes BY T H E E N D O F T H E L E S S O N , YO U S H O U L D B E A B L E T O :
Eugenics: The belief in improving human populations through controlled breeding to enhance the ruling class, and opposition to racial mixing to preserve “pure” bloodlines. (Hashmi et.al, 2025) Pseudo-science: a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific (Merriam-Webster, n.d) Race: A way of grouping people by physical features such as skin colour Racial hierarchy: A system that groups people according to skin colour and gives a specific group superiority over other groups. Scientific racism: A pseudoscientific idea that humans are divided biologically by race to justify racism and racial hierarchy. DEFINITIONSTo understand the topic itself, one needs to first understand the meaning of the key concepts;
The Definition ChallengeReady to test yourself? Play a quick quiz game on the key definitions before you proceed!. click on the link below: https://view.genially.com/6a8b7c28ca23eff2 8d1ef217
How Were Racial Hierarchies Presented as Scientific Truths? The greatest mystery of the 19 and 20 century was how and why are humans different in appearance. A theorist named Charles Darwin “the father of genetics” tried to explain the distinctive appearance in people through what we call Darwinism, which explained that all life originates from a common ancestor however distinction is caused by the need for survival where during natural selection the species with ‘favourable traits’ survives and passes them on and those that are not favourable eventually go extinct. He makes sense of distinction in appearance by stating that some traits survive to fir the enviroment and some do not. th th Portrait of Charles Darwin However, obsessed with issues of race and distinction meaning worth, theorist Herbert Spencer came up with the theory of social darwinism. Social darwinism claimed that “rich nations, classes and 'races' were dominant because they were naturally superior” (South African History Online, 2017). To justify this social darwinist claim, tools like “craniometry (measuring skull size) and phrenology (reading bumps on the head) [were used to] to claim that some groups were more intelligent than others” (South African History Online, 2017) to support the white supremacy narrative. This explanation is regarded as pseudo-scientific racism because it used the appearance of science while ignoring proper method. This theory of social darwinism therefore made it easy to present and ‘forgive’ racism as truthful because it was ‘scientifically proven’.
How Did Pseudoscience Help Construct Racial Hierarchies? Theories such as Social Darwinism were supported by pseudoscientific claims that presented some racial groups as more intelligent, capable or naturally superior to others. Social Darwinist thinkers applied the idea of “survival of the fittest” to human societies and used it to suggest that those considered “fit” or superior were more deserving of social and economic success, while those regarded as “unfit” or inferior were seen as naturally occupying a lower position in society. These ideas contributed by presenting inequality between racial groups as natural and justified. An example of a similar racial ideology in the South African context is Apartheid where whites were regarded as ‘superior’ and had the nice luxuries and ‘amenities’ which the blacks, Indians and coloured who were ‘inferior’ were not allowed to use. This white supremacy supported by pseudoscientific ideas ensured that it established that differences between races meant that inferiority and superiority was naturally therefore pseudoscientific ideas made racial hierarchy and racism appear scientific and natural.
POSITIVE EUGENICS NEGATIVE EUGENICS This is the practice where ‘superior’ couples were encouraged to have more children to improve and increase the pure breed population. The belief and practice that discouraging or preventing reproduction of individuals deemed genetically unfit could eradicate many social problems Positive VS Negative Eugenics What is eugenics and why are they important? “Eugenics is the improvement of the human race by breeding the ‘best of the best’ through the control of inherited human traits” (Grove et al., 2013, p. 80). In other words, eugenics was based on the belief that society could be improved by encouraging some people to reproduce while discouraging or preventing others from doing so.
Case study 1: Australians and indigenous Australians Practices of race and eugenics A picture of indegineous aboriginal australians In Australia, eugenicists such as Richard Berry promoted ideas of racial superiority and believed that white Australians needed to maintain racial "purity." These ideas contributed to policies of racial classification, segregation and assimilation. Officials such as Cecil Cook and A. O. Neville supported attempts to “breed out” Aboriginality, including controlling relationships and the removal of Indigenous children to farms where they eneded up working as labourers, According to Grove et.al (2013) part of assimilation policies, many Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their parents and communities, often by government officials or police. They were placed in institutions, foster homes or with white families and were often prevented from maintaining their language, culture and connection to their families and communities as means to ‘breed’ out the Aboriginality and save Australia from a race spoil. These policies resulted in family separation, cultural and identity loss, discrimination, loss of autonomy, trauma and long-term generational effects for Indigenous Australians.
Practices of race and eugenics Case study 2: The Nazi and The Holocaust Watch the below short film about the practises of race and eugenics in Nazi Germany:FOOD FOR THOUGHT: 1.How were ideas of ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ people used? 2.How was this belief put into practice through laws, policies and programmes? 3.What happened to the people targeted by these laws, policies and programmes? Unpacked (2022)
FINAL HISTORICAL ANALYSIS THE HISTORIAN’S VERDICT: Using what you have learned from the case studies, explain how ideas about race and eugenics were translated into practices and policies that affected people's lives. THE END
Reference ListDick, T. (1923). [Photograph of Aboriginal people in coastal New South Wales] [Photograph]. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-24/uncovering- australias-indigenous-past-with-new-photographs/6969778 Eugenics tree graphic: Eugenics, like a tree Eugenics draws its materials from many sources and organizes them into a harmonious entity. (n.d.). Truman State University, Pickler Memorial Library, Special Collections Manuscripts. https://manuscripts.truman.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/28911 Grafissimo. (2018). Charles Darwin portrait illustration [Illustration]. Getty Images. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/charles-darwin-portrait- illustration-royalty-free-illustration/1065861824 Grové, S., Weldon, C. G., Britton, B. R. J., Manenzhe, J., & Proctor, B. A. (2013). Via Afrika History Grade 11 study guide. Via Afrika. Hashmi, N., Lodge, S., Sugimoto, C. R., & Monroe-White, T. (2025). Echoes of eugenics: Tracing the ideological persistence of scientific racism in scholarly discourse. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM Conference on Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization (pp. 82–92). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757887.3768171 Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Pseudoscience. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 23, 2026, from https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/pseudoscience South African History Online. (2017, November 13). Grade 11 – What were the consequences when pseudo-scientific ideas of race became integral to government policies and legislation in the 19th and 20th centuries? https://sahistory.org.za/ref/A-0124419 Studioclever. (n.d.). Vintage DNA strand illustration with scientific notes— Generative AI [AI-generated illustration]. Dreamstime. https://www.dreamstime.com/vintage-dna-strand-illustration-scientific-notes- generative-ai-image326087721 Strickland Constable, H. (1899). [Illustration comparing Irish, Anglo-Teutonic, and Negro physical features] [Drawing]. Depictions of Irish immigrants in 19th century popular media. https://irishinpopularmedia.weebly.com/source-5/scientific- racism Unpacked. (2022). WW2: The rise of Nazism and the Holocaust | The Jewish story [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/0FDfhPMA95I