Racism is not a belief, but a science. This science is called eugenics. All over the world this science of "racial purity", mixed with religious ideology about a mythical "caucasian race" as being "God's chosen" has been used to justify the some of the most horrific events in human history. This mingled scientific and religious discourse was apparent in many political and popular cultural texts of the colonial era. One of these was a diagram called "The Great Chain Of Being", which placed races in order, with God and white people at the top, and monkeys and Aboriginal people at the bottom. The science of eugenics, through texts such as these, informed public opinion and government policy regarding Aborigines.
The White Australia policy, the basis of Australian federation, was based on eugenics. Its founder, Edmund Barton, publicly proclaimed, "I don't think the equality of man was ever intended to include racial equality". Policy documents and correspondence of the early 1900's used a lot of language such as the sinister word "finality" to advocate the ultimate destruction of genetically "inferior" Aboriginal peoples. A policy of breeding out "inferior races" is a piece of Australia's silenced history around the "stolen generations" that has been recently reexamined in popular cultural texts such as "Rabbit Proof Fence".
These policies of genocide shaped the science of the day. When Charles Darwin stated that the human race was a "polymorphic species" taking many shapes with no actual biologically separate races, he was ignored. However, he gained much publicity when, in "The Ascent Of Man", he compared "low" races such as "the negro or Australian and the gorilla", and asserted that, "The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage man throughout the world."
Check this link for the legacy of gruesome racist human experiments.
