Racial typing drew scientific legitimacy from downwards-directed species categories.

Evidence

Such radical typing was naturally reinforced by sciences (or discourses, as I prefer to call them) that took a backward and downward direction towards the species category, which was supposed also to be an ontogenetic explanation for every member of the species. Thus within broad, semipopular designations such as “Oriental” there were some more scientifically valid distinctions being made; most of these were based principally on language types—e.g., Semitic, Dravidic, Hamitic—but they were quickly able to acquire anthropological, psychological, biological, and cultural evidence in their support. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 584

Categorization

• XREF: This is the genealogy mechanism Said shares with Foucault’s archaeology of discourse — the species-category direction of explanation. Links to how biopolitics later works, classifying populations downward toward the biological. — connects to: Eugenics supplied scientific legitimacy but no racial typology to nativism — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 911; Race-thinkers needed anthropology to classify Europeans into distinct hereditary types — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 914; Modern scientific racism emerged out of Enlightenment taxonomy of human subspecies (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 584