Final answer:
Social Darwinism is the belief that racial differences are due to evolutionary differences among races, misapplying Darwin's theory to justify social and racial inequality.
Step-by-step explanation:
The belief that racial differences were the result of evolutionary differences among the races is referred to as Social Darwinism. This concept misapplied Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to justify social inequality, suggesting that certain racial or societal groups were naturally more superior due to their evolutionary status. Social Darwinism was used historically to endorse the idea that European races had evolved to a higher status than other races, aligning with racist and colonialist ideologies. It is important to recognize that this was a misuse of evolutionary theory and has been discredited as pseudoscience; modern science asserts that all humans are fundamentally equal and that perceived racial differences are not rooted in biological evolutionary status.