Applied Eugenics Part 26

CHAPTER XIV

THE COLOR LINE

"A young white woman, a graduate of a great university of the far North, where Negroes are seldom seen, resented it most indignantly when she was threatened with social ostracism in a city farther South with a large Negro population because she insisted upon receiving upon terms of social equality a Negro man who had been her cla.s.smate.[128]"

The incident seems trivial. But the phenomenon back of it, the "color line," is so far-reaching that it deserves careful examination.

As the incident suggests, the color line is not a universal phenomenon.

The Germans appear to have little aversion to receiving Negroes--_in Germany_--on terms of equality. These same Germans, when brought face to face with the question in their colonies, or in the southern United States, quickly change their att.i.tude. Similarly a Negro in Great Britain labors under much less disadvantage than he does among the British inhabitants of Australia or South Africa.

The color line therefore exists only as the result of race experience.

This fact alone is sufficient to suggest that one should not dismiss it lightly as the outgrowth of bigotry. Is is not perhaps a social adaptation with survival value?

The purpose of this chapter is to a.n.a.lyze society's "unconscious reasoning" which has led to the establishment of a color line--to the denial of social equality--wherever the white[129] and black races have long been in contact during recent history; and to see whether this discrimination appears to be justified by eugenics.

J. M. Mecklin[130] summarizes society's logic as follows:

"When society permits the free social intercourse of two young persons of similar training and interests, it tacitly gives its consent to the possible legitimate results of such relations, namely, marriage. But marriage is not a matter that concerns the contracting parties alone; it is social in its origin and from society come its sanctions. It is society's legitimatised method for the perpetuation of the race in the larger and inclusive sense of a continuous racial type which shall be the bearer of a continuous and progressive civilization. There are, however, within the community, two racial groups of such widely divergent physical and psychic characteristics that the blending of the two destroys the purity of the type of both and introduces confusion--the result of the blend is a mongrel. The preservation of the unbroken, self-conscious existence of the white or dominant ethnic group is synonymous with the preservation of all that has meaning and inspiration in its past and hope for its future. It forbids by law, therefore, or by the equally effective social taboo, anything that would tend to contaminate the purity of its stock or jeopardize the integrity of its social heritage."

It is needless to say that the "social mind" does not consciously go through any such process of reasoning, before it draws a color line. The social mind rarely even attempts to justify its conclusions. It merely holds a general att.i.tude of superiority, which in many cases appears to be nothing more than a feeling that another race is _different_.

In what way different?

The difference between the white race and the black (or any other race) might consist of two elements: (1) differences in heredity--biological differences; (2) differences in traditions, environment, customs--social differences, in short. A critical inquirer would want to know which kind of difference was greater, for he would at once see that the second kind might be removed by education and other social forces, while the first kind would be substantially permanent.

It is not difficult to find persons of prominence who will a.s.sert that all the differences between white and Negro are differences of a social nature, that the differences of a physical nature are negligible, and that if the Negro is "given a chance" the significant differences will disappear. This att.i.tude permeates the public school system of northern states. A recent report on the condition of Negro pupils in the New York City public schools professes to give "few, perhaps no, recommendations that would not apply to the children of other races. Where the application is more true in regard to colored children, it seems largely to be because of this lack of equal justice in the cases of their parents. Race weakness appears but this could easily be balanced by the same or similar weakness in other races. Given an education carefully adapted to his needs and a fair chance for employment, the normal child of any race will succeed, unless the burden of wrong home conditions lies too heavily upon him."[131]

As the writer does not define what she means by "succeed," one is obliged to guess at what she means: Her anthropology is apparently similar to that of Franz Boas of Columbia University, who has said that, "No proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro race;--without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental apt.i.tude to the bulk of our own people."

If such a statement is wholly true, the color line can hardly be justified, but must be regarded, as it is now the case sometimes, as merely the expression of prejudice and ignorance. If the only differences between white and black, which can not be removed by education, are of no real significance,--a chocolate hue of skin, a certain kinkiness of hair, and so on,--then logically the white race should remove the handicaps which lack of education and bad environment have placed on the Negro, and receive him on terms of perfect equality, in business, in politics, and in marriage.

The proposition needs only to be stated in this frank form, to arouse an instinctive protest on the part of most Americans. Yet it has been urged in an almost equally frank form by many writers, from the days of the abolitionists to the present, and it seems to be the logical consequence of the position adopted by such anthropologists as Professor Boas, and by the educators and others who proclaim that there are no significant differences between the Negro and the white, except such as are due to social conditions and which, therefore, can be removed.

But what are these social differences, which it is the custom to dismiss in such a light-hearted way? Are they not based on fundamental incompatibilities of racial temperament, which in turn are based on differences in heredity? Modern sociologists for the main part have no illusions as to the ease with which these differences in racial tradition and custom can be removed.

The social heritage of the Negro has been described at great length and often with little regard for fact, by hundreds of writers. Only a glance can be given the subject here, but it may profitably be asked what the Negro did when he was left to himself in Africa.

"The most striking feature of the African Negro is the low forms of social organization, the lack of industrial and political cooperation, and consequently the almost entire absence of social and national self-consciousness. This rather than intellectual inferiority explains the lack of social sympathy, the presence of such barbarous inst.i.tutions as cannibalism and slavery, the low position of woman, inefficiency in the industrial and mechanical arts, the low type of group morals, rudimentary art-sense, lack of race-pride and self-a.s.sertiveness, and in intellectual and religious life largely synonymous with fetishism and sorcery."[132]

An elementary knowledge of the history of Africa, or the more recent and much-quoted example of Haiti, is sufficient to prove that the Negro's own social heritage is at a level far below that of the whites among whom he is living in the United States. No matter how much one may admire some of the Negro's individual traits, one must admit that his development of group traits is primitive, and suggests a mental development which is also primitive.

If the number of original contributions which it has made to the world's civilization is any fair criterion of the relative value of a race, then the Negro race must be placed very near zero on the scale.[133]

The following historical considerations suggest that in comparison with some other races the Negro race is germinally lacking in the higher developments of intelligence:

1. That the Negro race in Africa has never, by its own initiative, risen much above barbarism, although it has been exposed to a considerable range of environments and has had abundant time in which to bring to expression any inherited traits it may possess.

2. That when transplanted to a new environment--say, Haiti--and left to its own resources, the Negro race has shown the same inability to rise; it has there, indeed, lost most of what it had acquired from the superior civilization of the French.

3. That when placed side by side with the white race, the Negro race again fails to come up to their standard, or indeed to come anywhere near it. It is often alleged that this third test is an unfair one; that the social heritage of slavery must be eliminated before the Negro can be expected to show his true worth. But contrast his career in and after slavery with that of the Mamelukes of Egypt, who were slaves, but slaves of good stock. They quickly rose to be the real rulers of the country.

Again, compare the record of the Greek slaves in the Roman republic and empire or that of the Jews under Islam. Without pushing these a.n.a.logies too far, is not one forced to conclude that the Negro lacks in his germ-plasm excellence of some qualities which the white races possess, and which are essential for success in compet.i.tion with the civilizations of the white races at the present day?

If so, it must be admitted not only that the Negro is _different_ from the white, but that he is in the large eugenically _inferior_ to the white.

This conclusion is based on the relative achievements of the race; it must be tested by the more precise methods of the anthropological laboratory. Satisfactory studies of the Negro should be much more numerous, but there are a few informative ones. Physical characters are first to be considered.

As a result of the careful measurement of many skulls, Karl Pearson[134]

has come to the following conclusions:

"There is for the best ascertainable characters a continuous relationship from the European skull, through prehistoric European, prehistoric Egyptian, Congo-Gaboon Negroes to Zulus and Kafirs.

"The indication is that of a long differentiated evolution, in which the Negro lies nearer to the common stem than the European; he is nearer to the childhood of man."

This does not prove any mental inferiority: there is little or no relation between conformation of skull and mental qualities, and it is a great mistake to make hasty inferences from physical to mental traits.

Bean and Mall have made studies directly on the brain, but it is not possible to draw any sure conclusions from their work. A. Hrdlicka found physical differences between the two races, but did not study traits of any particular eugenic significance.

On the whole, the studies of physical anthropologists offer little of interest for the present purpose. Studies of mental traits are more to the point, but are unfortunately vitiated in many cases by the fact that no distinction was made between full-blood Negroes and mulattoes, although the presence of white blood must necessarily have a marked influence on the traits under consideration. If the investigations are discounted when necessary for this reason, it appears that in the more elementary mental processes the two races are approximately equal. White and "colored" children in the Washington, D. C., schools ranked equally well in memory; the colored children were found to be somewhat the more sensitive to heat.[135] Summing up the available evidence, G. O. Ferguson concludes that "in the so-called lower traits there is no great difference between the Negro and the white. In motor capacity there is probably no appreciable racial difference. In sense capacity, in perceptive and discriminative ability, there is likewise a practical equality."

This is what one would, _a priori_, probably expect. But it is on the "higher" mental functions that race progress largely depends, and the Negro must be judged eugenically mainly by his showing in these higher functions. One of the first studies in this line is that of M. J.

Mayo,[136] who summarizes it as follows:

"The median age of white pupils at the time of entering high school in the city of New York is 14 years 6 months: of colored pupils 15 years 1 month--a difference of 7 months. The average deviation for whites is 9 months; for colored 15 months. Twenty-seven per cent of the whites are as old as the median age of the colored or older.

"Colored pupils remain in school a greater length of time than do the whites. For the case studied [150 white and 150 colored], the average time spent in high school for white pupils was 3.8 terms; for colored 4.5 terms. About 28% of the whites attain the average time of attendance for colored.

"Considering the entire scholastic record, the median mark of the 150 white pupils is 66; of the 150 colored pupils 62; a difference of 4%.

The average deviation of white pupils is 7; of colored 6.5. Twenty-nine per cent. of the colored pupils reach or surpa.s.s the median mark of the whites.

"The white pupils have a higher average standing in all subjects ...

the colored pupils are about 3/4 as efficient as the whites in the pursuit of high school studies."

This whole investigation is probably much too favorable to the Negro race, first because Negro high school pupils represent a more careful selection than do the white pupils; but most of all because no distinction was made between Negroes and mulattoes.

B. A. Phillips, studying the public elementary schools of Philadelphia, found[137] that the percentage of r.e.t.a.r.dation in the colored schools ranged from 72.8 to 58.2, while the percentage of r.e.t.a.r.dation in the districts which contained the schools ranged from 45.1 to 33.3. The average percentage of r.e.t.a.r.dation for the city as a whole was 40.3. Each of the colored schools had a greater percentage of r.e.t.a.r.dation than any of the white schools, even those composed almost entirely of foreigners, and in those schools attended by both white and colored pupils the percentage of r.e.t.a.r.dation on the whole varied directly with the percentage of colored pupils in attendance.

These facts might be interpreted in several ways. It might be that the curriculum was not well adapted to the colored children, or that they came from bad home environments, or that they differed in age, etc. Dr.

Phillips accordingly undertook to get further light on the cause of r.e.t.a.r.dation of the colored pupils by applying Binet tests to white and colored children of the same chronological age and home conditions, and found "a difference in the acceleration between the two races of 31% in favor of the white boys, 25% in favor of the white girls, 28% in favor of the white pupils with boys and girls combined."

A. C. Strong, using the Binet-Simon tests, found[138] colored school children of Columbia, S. C., considerably less intelligent than white children.

W. H. Pyle made an extensive test[139] of 408 colored pupils in Missouri public schools and compared them with white pupils. He concludes: "In general the marks indicating mental ability of the Negro are about two-thirds those of the whites.... In the subst.i.tution, controlled a.s.sociation, and Ebbinghaus tests, the Negroes are less than half as good as the whites. In free a.s.sociation and the ink-blot tests they are nearly as good. In quickness of perception and discrimination and in reaction, the Negroes equal or excel the whites."

"Perhaps the most important question that arises in connection with the results of these mental tests is: How far is ability to pa.s.s them dependent on environmental conditions? Our tests show certain specific differences between Negroes and whites. What these differences would have been had the Negroes been subject to the same environmental influences as the whites, it is difficult to say. The results obtained by separating the Negroes into two social groups would lead one to think that the conditions of life under which the negroes live might account for the lower mentality of the Negroes. On the other hand, it may be that the Negroes living under better social conditions are of better stock. They may have more white blood in them."

The most careful study yet made of the relative intelligence of Negroes and whites is that of G. O. Ferguson, Jr.,[140] on 486 white and 421 colored pupils in the schools of Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Newport News, Va. Tests were employed which required the use of the "higher"