CHAPTER IV.

Subject. Amalgamation.

Gist. “The crossing of the Negro race with the white has been detrimental to its true progress and has contributed more than anything else to the excessive and increasing rate of mortality from the most fatal disease, as well as to its consequent inferior social efficiency and diminishing power as a force in American national life.”[40]

The importance of this proposition is apparent when we consider that the Negroes in this country are a thoroughly mixed people. The pure African type has been well nigh obliterated. It is pointed out also that the mongrel progeny has been produced by illicit intercourse between the white male and the black female. The moral and conservative qualities of a race reside in its womanhood. The Negro people, then, have missed these transmitted qualities. The author is either ignorant of or ignores the large class of mixed Negroes who are the legitimate offspring of colored parents, but would place the whole class under the ban of bastardy.

After judicially balancing the testimony furnished by world-renowned authorities upon the effect of race crossing, the author espouses one side of the contention with all the ardor of a retained advocate.

Three points are sought to be established.

I. The Mulatto is Physically Inferior to both Parent Races.

The opinions of examining surgeons during the civil war are quoted which quite unanimously show that the Mulatto is strongly inclined to consumption, scrofula, and vicious taints of blood.

The following table, made out on the basis of Gould’s measurements, is full of interest:

White. Black. Mulatto.
Weight 141.4 pounds. 144.6 pounds. 144.8 pounds.
Circumference chest 35.8 inches. 35.1 inches. 34.96 inches.
Capacity of lungs 184.7 cubic inches. 163.5 cubic inches. 158.9 cubic inches.
Rate of respiration 16.4 per minute. 17.7 per minute. 19.0 per minute.

It appears from this table that in the most important vital organs and functions the Mulatto is inferior to both parent stocks. This opinion is almost or quite universal among competent authorities upon this subject. And yet the last word of science has not been uttered on this question. There is no subject in all the domain of social science which offers a more interesting or more fruitful field for investigation. The Freedmen’s Hospital at Washington, and similar institutions elsewhere, by prosecuting accurate and scientific methods of inquiry can throw much light upon this subject.

2. The Mulatto is Morally Inferior to the Blacks.

This alleged inferiority is attributable to the fact as well as to the manner of generation. Strangely enough Mr. Hoffman does not employ the statistics which would seem to bear out his suggestion. The eleventh census shows that there were 10,377 pure and 3,218 mixed Negroes in penitentiaries in 1890. Supposing that uniform methods of race-tests were used throughout the census inquiry, this would show that while the mixed Negroes constitute only 16 per cent of the total Negro population, they furnished 30 percent of the penitentiary convicts. But these figures cannot be relied upon since the census bureau acknowledges that it has no definite method of determining the different shades of color and grades of mixture among Negroes.

It is also alleged in proof of this proposition that illicit intercourse between the races is carried on mainly with the Mulatto women. Can this not be explained on grounds other than native depravity? The light-colored Negro woman is made the victim of the lustful onslaught of the male element of both races. She is placed between the upper and nether stress of the vicious propensities of white and black men. And if her sins are greater, is it not because her temptations are greater also? The following quotation from a distinguished Southerner is significant; “There was little improper intercourse between white men and Negresses of the original type in the period before emancipation (after the creation of the Mulatto class).”[41] Every time a Negro woman is indicted on this score some white man is inculpated. The reproach hurled against colored women from such sources reminds us very much of the lines in Butler’s Hudibras:

The selfsame thing they will abhor,
One way, and long another for.

3. The Mulatto is Intellectually Superior to the Blacks but Inferior to the Whites.

In substantiation of this proposition it is claimed that the greater number of Negroes who have attained distinction have been those of mixed blood. The truth of this statement must be conceded, and yet the cause should not be overlooked. Leaving aside the doctrine of inheritance as a debatable question, the initial advantage of the mixed over the pure Negroes was considerable. Feelings of blood ties prompted many a slave holder to deal kindly by his slave descendants, and often to liberate them and give them a start in the race of life. That an infusion of white blood quickens the energy and enlivens the disposition of the progeny is probably true; but that it adds to the intellectual capacity is far from a self-evident proposition. The Negroes who have shown any unusual intellectual activity, in America at least, have usually been of the purer type. Phyllis Wheatly, Benjamin Banneker, Ira Aldridge, Blind Tom, Edward W. Blyden, and Paul Dunbar are illustrations of this argument.

The investigation of Dr. Gould as to circumference of head and facial angle are exhibited in the following table:

White. Mulatto. Black.
Circumference of head 22.1 inches. 22.0 inches. 21.9 inches.
Facial angle 72.0° 69.2° 68.8°

A difference of one-tenth of an inch in head circumference and of four-tenths of a degree in facial angle affords a very slender physical basis on which to predicate intellectual superiority.

The author lays great stress upon the following table made out by Dr. Hunt.

Weight of the Brain of White and Colored Soldiers.[42]

No. of cases. Degree of color. Weight of brain.
24 White 1424grammes.
25 Three parts white 1390“
47 Half white 1334“
51 One-fourth white 1319“
95 One-eighth white 1308“
22 One-sixteenth white 1280“
141 Pure Negro 1341“

Twenty-four cases are taken to represent fifty million people, and the law of averages thus obtained is confidently relied upon. Nor are we informed as to what methods were employed to ascertain the exact composition of blood of the 22 cases that are rated as one-sixteenth white. But, supposing we accept this table, overlooking for the time being the fact that the brain weight of one white person is taken as typical of two million others, and also conceding the undisclosed method of Dr. Hunt in detecting homeopathic dashes of white blood, does it “clearly prove that there is an increase in the brain weight with an increase in the proportion of white blood?” If this table shows anything it is that the pure Negro and the Mulatto have about the same brain weight and that they are both superior in this respect to all degrees of mixture between them, but inferior to those of more than one-half white blood.

But it is rather unusual at this late day to base intellectual capacity upon the shape and size of skull. Investigations have shown that facial angle and capacity of cranium and cephalic index afford no certain criterion of thought power or susceptibility to culture. The latest word on this subject is given by Prof. Ripley, in a series of articles on “Racial Geography of Europe,” in Appleton’s Popular Science Monthly for 1897.

“An important point to be noted in this connection is that this shape of the head seems to bear no direct relation to intellectual power or intelligence. Posterior development of the cranium does not imply a corresponding backwardness in culture.... Europe offers the best refutation of the statement that the proportions of the head mean anything intellectual.... In our study of the proportions of the head, therefore, we are measuring merely race, and not intelligence in any sense.... Equally unimportant to the anthropologist is the absolute size of the head. It is grievous to contemplate the waste of energy when, during our civil war, over one million of soldiers had their heads measured in respect to this absolute size, in view of the fact that today anthropologists deny any considerable significance attaching to this characteristic. Popularly a large head with beetling eyebrows suffices to establish a man’s intellectual credit, but like all other credit it is entirely dependent upon what lies on deposit elsewhere.”[43]

A still more renowned authority tells us: “The development of the intellectual faculties of man is to a great extent independent of the capacity of the cranium and the volume of the brain.”[44]

The question of the relative intellectual capacity of the different races is one of much speculative interest. I am giving the matter more attention than it would seem to warrant, because the author makes the supposed mental inferiority of the race the basis of the only practical suggestion which he has to offer, viz: that all of our educational and philanthropic endeavor so far has been based upon wrong principles, and a radical change in this regard is demanded so as to bring the treatment in harmony with the capabilities of the lower race. Several authorities will be cited which, I think, will be more than sufficient to offset Mr. Hoffman’s insistent opinion.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of black men in this country who in capacity are to be ranked with the superior persons of the dominant race; and it is hard to say that in any evident feature of mind they characteristically differ from their white fellow citizens.”[45]

Prof. Shaler is himself a Southerner, a professor in Harvard University, and a noted student of current problems.

“Granting the present inferiority of the Negro, we affirm that it has never been proved; nor is there any good reason to suppose that he is doomed forever to maintain his present relative position, or that he is inferior to the white man in any other sense than as some white races are inferior to others.”[46]

“Yet the Negro children exhibit no intellectual inferiority; they make just the same progress in the subjects taught as do the children of white parents, and the deficiency they exhibit later in life is of quite a different kind.”[47]

Mr. Hoffman compels us once more to combat the arguments of the slave holding class: that is, that the Negro is intellectually and morally an inferior creature (they did not, however, affirm physical inferiority) and that it is only by servile contact with the white race that his nature can be improved. The progress along these lines which the race has made even under the severest disadvantages is sufficient answer to this argument.

If I’m designed yon lordling’s slave,
By nature’s law designed,
Why was an independent wish
E’er planted in my mind?

The Negro’s intellectual and social environments hang as a millstone about his neck; and when he is cast upon the sea of opportunity he is reproached with everlasting inferiority because he does not swim an equal race with those who are not thus fettered. We are reminded of the barbarous Teutons in Titus Andronicus who, after pulling out the tongue and cutting off the hands of the lovely Lavinia, upbraid her for not calling for sweet water with which to wash her delicate hands.

No, no, Mr. Hoffman, the philanthropists have made no mistake. They have proceeded on the supposition that the Negro has faculty for faculty and power for power with the rest of his fellow men, and that his special needs grow out of his peculiar condition. Any alteration in this policy would violate the dictates both of science and humanity.

Mixed Marriages.

The remainder of this rather long chapter is devoted to the number and character of mixed marriages, with the conclusion that the number is on the decrease and the character of one or both of the contracting parties is usually unsavory, and that such unions can form no determining factor in the ultimate solution of the problem.

A study of the fertility of such marriages and the physical, moral, and intellectual stamina of the progeny would furnish valuable sociological data.