"The white pupils have a higher average standing in all subjects ... the colored pupils are about ¾ 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 retardation in the colored schools ranged from 72.8 to 58.2, while the percentage of retardation in the districts which contained the schools ranged from 45.1 to 33.3. The average percentage of retardation for the city as a whole was 40.3. Each of the colored schools had a greater percentage of retardation 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 retardation 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 retardation 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 substitution, controlled association, and Ebbinghaus tests, the Negroes are less than half as good as the whites. In free association 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 pass 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" functions, and as far as possible (mainly on the basis of skin-color) the amount of white blood in the colored pupils was determined. Four classes were made: full-blood Negro, ¾ Negro, ½ Negro (mulatto) and ¼ Negro (quadroon). It was found that "the pure Negroes scored 69.2% as high as the whites; that the ¾ pure Negroes scored 73.2% as high as the whites; that the mulattoes scored 81.2% as high as the whites; and that the quadroons obtained 91.8% of the white score." This confirms the belief of many observers that the ability of a colored man is proportionate to the amount of white blood he has.
Summarizing a large body of evidence, Dr. Ferguson concludes that "the intellectual performance of the general colored population is approximately 75% as efficient as that of the whites," but that pure Negroes have only 60% of white intellectual efficiency, and that even this figure is probably too high. "It seems as though the white type has attained a higher level of development, based upon the common elementary capacities, which the Negro has not reached to the same degree." "All of the experimental work which has been done has pointed to the same general conclusion."
This is a conclusion of much definiteness and value, but it does not go as far as one might wish, for the deeper racial differences of impulse and inhibition, which are at present incapable of precise measurement, are likewise of great importance. And it is the common opinion that the Negro differs in such traits even more than in intellect proper. He is said to be lacking in that aggressive competitiveness which has been responsible for so much of the achievement of the Nordic race; it is alleged that his sexual impulses are strongly developed and inhibitions lacking; that he has "an instability of character, involving a lack of foresight, an improvidence, a lack of persistence, small power of serious initiative, a tendency to be content with immediate satisfactions." He appears to be more gregarious but less apt at organization than most races.