Late-nineteenth-century racial theory was almost undisputed in Western culture.

Evidence

Were these theses about linguistic, civilizational, and finally racial characteristics merely one side of an academic debate amongst European scientists and scholars, we might dismiss them as furnishing material for an unimportant closet drama. The point is, however, that both the terms of the debate and the debate itself had very wide circulation; in late-nineteenth-century culture, as Lionel Trilling has said, “racial theory, stimulated by a rising nationalism and a spreading imperialism, supported by an incomplete and mal-assimilated science, was almost undisputed.” Race theory, ideas about primitive origins and primitive classifications, modern decadence, the progress of civilization, the destiny of the white (or Aryan) races, the need for colonial territories—all these were elements in the peculiar amalgam of science, politics, and culture whose drift, almost without exception, was always to raise Europe or a European race to dominion over non-European portions of mankind. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 586

Categorization

• XREF: This is the genealogy of race as a category of domination that the Islamophobia field inherits; connects to later readings on racialized selfhood. — connects to: Late-nineteenth-century racial theory was nearly undisputed in European culture; Race-thinking emerged across the West before it hardened into racist ideology — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 431; Ridiculous aristocratic racial theories gained serious respectability by the turn of the century — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 459 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 586
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Late-nineteenth-century racial theory was nearly undisputed in European culture; Race-thinking emerged across the West before it hardened into racist ideology — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 431; Ridiculous aristocratic racial theories gained serious respectability by the turn of the century — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 459 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Late-nineteenth-century racial theory was nearly undisputed in European culture #corroborates (0.99)
• Nineteenth-century race was a loose cultural term, not a fixed category. #complicates (0.74) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 69