Anthropology

by A. L. Kroeber

40. Mental Achievement and Social Environment

One point will have become clear in the course of the foregoing discussion: namely, how far the difficulty of coming to positive conclusions is due to the two sets of interacting causal factors, the hereditary ones and the environmental ones that play upon heredity. The environmental factors are themselves a composite of geographical influences and of the economic, cultural, and other social influences that human beings exert upon each other.

If this intermingling of distinct kinds of causes is true of races when considered from the side of physiology and medicine, it is evident that the intermingling will be even more intricate in the mental sphere. After all, bodily functioning varies only within fairly definite limits. When external influences press too strongly upon the innate nature of the organism, the latter ceases to function and dies. The mind, on the other hand, however much its structure may be given by heredity, depends for its content wholly on experience, and this experience can be thoroughly varied. Individuals of the same organic endowment may conceivably be born either in the uppermost stratum of a highly refined civilization, or among the most backward and remote savages. Whether this actually happens, and to what degree, is of course precisely the problem which we are trying to solve. But that it is theoretically and logically possible cannot be denied; and here a vicious circle of reasoning begins. One argument says: there have been no recognized geniuses among peoples like the Hottentots, and the sum total of their group achievement is ridiculously small; therefore it is clear that the Hottentot mind must be inferior. The opposite argument runs: Hottentot cultural environment is so poor and limited that the finest mind in the world reared under its influence would grow up relatively sterile and atrophied; therefore it is probable that the mind of the Hottentot is intrinsically identical with our own, or at least of equivalent capacity, and that Hottentot geniuses have actually been born but have been unable to flourish as geniuses.

Evidently the same facts are before those who advocate these opposite views, but these facts are viewed from diametrically opposite sides. If one starts to travel around the logical circle in one direction, one can keep revolving indefinitely and find ever fresh supporting evidence. If, however, one begins to revolve around the same circle of opinion in the opposite direction, it is just as easy and just as compelling to continue to think in this fashion and to find all testimony corroborative.

In such a situation it is possible to realize that from the point of view of proof, or objective truth, one view is worth as much as the other: which is nothing. It is an emotional bias that inclines one man toward the conviction of race superiority and another to that of race equality. The proofs in either case are for the most part a mere assembling of ex parte testimony. It is easy enough to advocate impartiality. The difficulty is in being impartial; because both the hereditary and the environmental factors are in reality unknown quantities. What we have objectively before us is such and such a race or group of people, with such and such present traits and historical record. These phenomena being the product of the interaction of the two sets of causes, we could of course, if we knew the strength of one, compute the strength of the other. But as we have isolated neither, we are dealing with two indeterminate variables. Evidently the only way out of the dilemma, at any rate the only scientific way, is to find situations in which one of the factors is, for the time being, fixed. In that case the strength of the other factor will of course be proportionate to the attainments of the groups.

Actually, such instances are excessively difficult to find. There are occasional individuals with identical heredity, namely, twins produced from the division of a single ovum. In such twins, the strength of environmental influences can be gauged by the difference in their careers and achievements. Yet such twins are only individuals, and it is illegitimate to make far-reaching inferences from them to larger groups, such as the races. It is conceivable that heredity might on the whole be a more powerful cause than environment, and racial groups still average substantially alike in their heredity. Because a natively gifted and a natively stunted individual within the group vary conspicuously in achievement, even under similar environment, it does not follow that races differ in germ-plasm because they differ in achievements.

If, on the other hand, one sets out to discover cases of identical environment for distinct racial strains, the task quickly becomes even more difficult. Very little analysis usually suffices to show that the environment is identical only up to a certain point, and that beyond this point important social divergences begin. Thus, so far as geographical environment goes, the Negro and the white in the southern United States are under the same conditions. There is also uniformity of some of the gross externals of cultural environment. Both Negroes and whites speak English; are Christians; plant corn; go to the circus; and so on. But, just as obviously, there are aspects in which their social environment differs profoundly. Educational opportunities are widely different. The opportunity of attaining leadership or otherwise satisfying ambition is wide open to the white, and practically closed to the Negro. The “color-line” inevitably cuts across the social environment and makes of it two different environments.

It might be said that the southern United States furnish an extreme case of a sharply drawn color-line. This is true. But on the other hand there is no place on earth where something corresponding to a color-line is not drawn between two races occupying the same territory. It sometimes happens that distinctions are diminished and faintly or subtly enforced, as in modern Hawaii, where to outward appearances many races dwell together without discrimination. Yet examination reveals that the absence of discrimination is only legal and perhaps economic. As regards the relations and associations of human beings, the welcome which they extend or the aloofness which they show to one another, there is always a color-line. This means not only difference in opportunity, but difference in experience, habit formation, practices, and interests.