Question

Although ideas of European superiority over non-Europeans had existed for centuries, views such as those
expressed in the passage provide evidence of an important change in the late nineteenth century that is best
explained by the fact that they

A.
romanticized non-European peoples by portraying them as “noble savages” closer to nature than
“overcivilized” Europeans

B.
combined old cultural prejudice with supposedly “scientific” new ideas of the biological and
evolutionary basis of human differences

C.
were based on the premise that the biological diversity of the human species should be reduced through
support of interracial marriages

D.
romanticized non-European peoples by portraying them as “noble savages” closer to nature than
“overcivilized” Europeans

Answer 1

B

Late-19th-century writers fused longstanding cultural prejudices with new claims from “scientific” theories (social Darwinism, racial science, eugenics, polygenist ideas) that supposedly grounded racial hierarchies in biology.