Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/455

 RACE AND MARRIAGE 44I

unpopular ones. To secure a lighter skin soon becomes the ambition of dark races when brought into contact with the whites. Features which before were unpopular now become de- sirable because standards have changed. It is a matter of com- mon observation that among the colored people of the United States there is a decided premium on light color as a factor in social prestige and by consequence as an element of attraction in marriage.^*

Were marriage choice merely the expression of personal esthetic taste and romantic sentiment the social significance of mixed unions would be. relatively small. Marriages are usually contracted when the parties are young, and youth is little affected by conventions and taboos based on the collective social wisdom. Sentiment perpetually cuts across the lines of established usage unless restrained by a power stronger than the individual. More- over, contrast and novelty furnish an additional element of sexual attraction which particularly appeals to the youthful imagination. If, then, present individual satisfaction were the determining factor mixed marriages would not necessarily be unsuccessful. But marriage as an institution also pertains to the welfare of the group. For this reason, in societies where individual interests are definitely subordinated to group interests, choice of mates is always in some degree regulated by parents or by social conven- tion. In clan societies marriage rules are often the most elabo- rate of all legal regulations, while in the patriarchal family there is little show of freedom of personal selection. The idea of physical or psychic union is subordinated to the conception of merging the economic or social types which the parties represent. If these types are antagonistic there must be either a surrender of one to the other, or a blending of the two on an imequal basis. In no case will both survive in toto. If there be in the physique or mode of life of either party a persistent trait that is abhorrent to the other or to his group, or to which some specific discredit

""We must consider the pride with which the South African half-breeds insist upon the very smallest drop of white blood in their veins." — Ratzel, History of Mankind, II, 295. Mr. Kipling has embodied this idea in his Indian story, "His Chance in Life."