Scientific Racism
Scientific racism dressed prejudice in the language of measurement, heredity, and classification.
Explore GermanyPublished by WTJPublication updated
The idea
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some writers claimed that human groups had fixed biological traits and ranked civilizations accordingly.
The recurring move
Jews were described as a racial type with inherited moral, mental, or physical traits. The claim looked modern because it borrowed the style of science.
Germany · A new story of exclusion
In the late nineteenth century, racist politicians portrayed Jews as a separate, supposedly unchangeable race. That claim was false. It recast an older religious prejudice as a story about ancestry and national belonging, allowing exclusion to persist even when a person changed religion.
About this Tree
The taxonomy is adapted from JewHateMap. Each topic includes a sourced country story. Connections help explain related ideas; they do not establish an inevitable chain of events.