Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/589

 REVIEWS 573

the crossing takes place under entirely normal circumstances ; in other words, all races of mankind are perfectly fertile among them- selves. Where bad physiological effects do follow the intermixture of races, this is in all cases due to vice or other socially abnormal con- ditions which accompany so frequently the crossing of superior with inferior peoples. The evidence in support of this conclusion cannot be presented here. Suffice to say that it has been ably presented by Boas and is summarized by Keane. 1 Professor Smith cites Bryce in support of his assumption that the crossing of such dissimilar races as the negro and the white necessarily results in physiological deterioration ; but Bryce, though unprejudiced, can hardly be con- sidered an authority on this matter. His somewhat ambiguous state- ments are derived from Broca, whose monograph on Hybridity in the Genus Homo has long since ceased to be authoritative.

Nor will it do to say that, since socially abnormal conditions so frequently accompany the crossing of the races in the United States, the result is practically the same as if degeneracy was the necessary physiological result. For in the past, at least, particularly under the regime of slavery, the conditions under which crossing took place were often relatively normal. Not all of the white blood infused into the negro race has been vicious and depraved ; and if heredity counts for anything, this good white blood must greatly improve the negroid stock. This is exactly what we find ; for the leaders of the negro race, its van and its hope today, are almost without exception of mixed blood. It is idle to call all these " degenerates." On the other hand, we should expect, from the way in which the mixed class is formed, that it would contain a large number of degenerate indi- viduals, who make up the bulk of the criminal and the depraved among the negroes, and who lower the average of their class. But this is manifestly one of those many cases in statistics in which the average cannot be said to represent the general condition of the class.

Finally, even if we grant the natural inferiority of the negro in respect to intellectual and moral capacities, it may be noted that this does not make the future of the negro race in the United States any- where near as hopeless as Professor Smith makes out. For the biological factor is not a fixed quantity, or utterly beyond human control, as he assumes. Even if the negro is inferior, there are at least three influences at work among the negroes of the United States slowly modifying the inferiority. The first of these is the

'See Keane, Ethnology, pp. iS'-SS-