Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/588

 57 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

upon statistical facts, but, as he himself admits, upon two assump- tions : first, the natural inferiority of the negro as a race ; and, secondly, the necessary degeneracy of the types produced by the intermixture of white blood with negro blood (pp. 29, 72). As to the first assumption, it may be granted that Professor Smith has the weight of scientific authority on his side, especially in so far as the inferiority claimed is in respect to intellectual and moral qualities. But even here it is to be noted that a large and growing school of anthropologists and race-psychologists finds the explanation of the mental and moral differences between races, not in innate qualities or capacities, but in differences in their social equipment or machin- ery.

If, however, Professor Smith has the weight of authority on his side in his first assumption, it is equally certain that the weight of authority is against him in his second assumption. This he seems to be ignorant of, or else he ignores it. As if half-conscious of the weakness of this second premise, he avoids stating it in plain and consistent terms. Sometimes he speaks of " the half-way nature of the half-breed " ; sometimes of " the degeneracy induced by inter- mixture." But these are evidently entirely different propositions. No one questions the former. By the law of reversion to the mid- parent type, we should expect the half-breeds to fluctuate about the mid-line between the races ; and this is what we actually find. From the point of view of the superior race those of mixed blood are, of course, inferior ; but from the point of view of the inferior race they are superior. But this is not Professor Smith's assumption. His assumption is that the half-breed is inferior to both races, at least in all cases of crossing between races so diverse as the negro and the white. The former assumption, though sufficient for the purpose of maintaining the wisdom of social separation between the races, was not sufficient for our author's larger purpose, of proving the unim- provability of the negroid stock and the hopeless destiny of the negro race in America; hence he assumes "the racial [i. e., physiological] deterioration of the mulatto."

Now, if there are any of the larger questions of ethnology which may be said to have approached settlement during the last dozen years, it is this question of the physiological effects of the inter- mixture of races ; and the all but universal consensus among eth- nologists at present is that no bad physiological effects follow the intermixture of races even of the most diverse type, provided that