Hamitic

Hamitic theory is a theory that claims that so called "hamitic" race is superior to the negroid races on the African continent. John Hanning Speke started the theory. Karl Richard Lepsius and Carl Meinhof extended the theory: they used languages to classify people into hamitic or non-hamitic; this is no longer done today. 
Another way they classified people into hamitic or non-hamitic is by ethnic roots. Negroid people are perceived as Shemetic as opposed to the Hamitic Ethiopian, Sudanese, and some other West African ethnic groups as attested by the genealogy of ancient ethnic lineages. For example, a person who has ancestry from Rome would be considered closer to a Hamite than a person whose ancestry is in Africa. Ironically, the Hamites include some of the darkest sub-Saharan African groups like the Nilotes that were considered closest to Europeans as opposed to the Chadic sub saharan Africans who share a common RB1 lineage. 
This theory also included giving classes to those members of the negroid races of Africa upon colonization. This, in part, contributed to the Rwandan Genocide, which pinned the members of the Tutsi ethnicity or tribe against the members of the Hutu people, although the tension between them was over small differences.