Ideas of Racial Superiority

What was racial superiority?

An ideology which holds that a certain class of people is superior to others, and therefore is entitled to dominate, rule and/or eliminate others.

What influenced Britain's ideas of racial superiority?

There were a number of ideas that influenced Britain's ideas of racial superiority.

• ❖ The idea of racial superiority was influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
• ❖ The idea of 'Social Darwinism' is that human groups and races are subject to the same laws of natural selection as Charles Darwin perceived in plants and animals in nature.
• ❖ People believed that white races were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races, thus establishing a racial hierarchy.
• ❖ Social Darwinism was used to justify imperialism, with white people naturally superior to the other races they ruled.
• ❖ Social Darwinists believe in 'survival of the fittest' - the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better.
• ❖ Ideas of racial superiority were accompanied by the idea of Manifest Destiny - the idea that white people were ordained by God to rule over non-white races.