 A recent proposal is that it derives from the Arabic "ra's", which means "head, beginning, origin" or the Hebrew "rosh", which has a similar meaning.Early race theorists generally held the view that some races were inferior to others and they consequently believed that the differential treatment of races was fully justified.These early theories guided pseudo-scientific research assumptions; the collective endeavors to adequately define and form hypotheses about racial differences are generally termed scientific racism, though this term is a misnomer, due to the lack of any actual science backing the claims.