PROBLEMS OF RACE
34. Questions of endowment and their validity.—35. Plan
of inquiry.—36. Anatomical evidence on evolutionary
rank.—37. Comparative physiological data.—38. Disease.—39.
Causes of cancer incidence.—40. Mental achievement and
social environment.—41. Psychological tests on the sense
faculties.—42. Intelligence tests.—43. Status of hybrids.—44.
Evidence from the cultural record of races.—45. Emotional
bias.—46. Summary.
34. QUESTIONS OF ENDOWMENT AND THEIR VALIDITY
Are the human races alike or dissimilar in mentality and character?
Are some lower than others, or are they all on a plane as regards
potentiality? The answers to these questions are of theoretical import,
and naturally also bear on the solution of the practical race problems
with which many nations are confronted.
As long as an inquiry remains sufficiently abstract or remote, the
desirability of such inquiry is likely to go unquestioned. As soon,
however, as investigation touches conduct—for instance, our actual
relations with other races—a sentiment has a way of rising, to the effect
that perhaps after all the problem does not so much call for knowledge as
for action. Thus, in regard to the negro problem in the United States,
it is likely to be said that the immediate issue is what may be the
best attitude toward “Jim Crow” cars and other forms of segregation.
Are these desirable or undesirable, fair or unfair? Here are specific
problems which an actual condition presses to have answered. Under
the circumstances, it will be said, is not an inquiry into the innate
capacity of the negro rather remote, especially when every one can see
by a thousand examples that the negro is obviously inferior to the
Caucasian? He is poorer, more shiftless, less successful. He has made
no inventions, produced no geniuses. He clearly feels himself inferior
and comports himself accordingly. Why then raise the issue of capacity
at all, unless from a desire to befog it, to subvert the conclusions
of common sense and every-day experience by special pleading which
substitutes adroitness for sincerity? When a prisoner has been found
guilty it is the judge’s business to determine the length of sentence, to
decide how far justice should be tempered with mercy. Were he to reopen
the case from the beginning, he would be showing partiality. Is not the
situation of the scientist proposing to inquire into the accepted verdict
that the negro is inferior to the Caucasian, analogous to that of a judge
who insists on setting aside the verdict of twelve unprejudiced jurymen
in order to retry the defendant himself? In some such form as this,
objections may rise in the minds of some.
The answer to such criticism is first of all that racial inferiority and
superiority are by no means self-evident truths. Secondly, the belief in
race inequalities is founded in emotion and action and then justified by
reasoning. That is, the belief is rationalized, not primarily inferred by
pure reason. It may be true, but it is not proved true.
As to what is self-evident, there is nothing so misleading as direct
observation. We see the sun move and the earth stand still. It is
“self-evident” that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet after
thousands of years the civilized portion of mankind finally came to
believe that it was the earth that spun. Science had no perverse
interest, no insidious motive, in advocating the Copernican instead of
the Ptolemaic system; in fact, was driven to its new belief gradually and
reluctantly. It was pre-scientific humanity, with its direct, homespun,
every-day observation, which had really prejudged the matter, and which,
because it had always assumed that the earth was flat and stationary, and
because every idiot could see that it was so, long combated the idea that
it could be otherwise.
As to opinions founded in emotion and subsequently rationalized, instead
of being evolved by pure reason from evidence, it may suffice to quote
from a famous book on herd instinct, as to the relation of mass opinion
and science:
“When, therefore, we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about the
basis of which there is a quality of feeling which tells us that to
inquire into it would be absurd, obviously unnecessary, unprofitable,
undesirable, bad form, or wicked, we may know that that opinion is
a non-rational one, and probably, therefore, founded upon inadequate
evidence.
“Opinions, on the other hand, which are acquired as the result of
experience alone do not possess this quality of primary certitude. They
are true in the sense of being verifiable, but they are unaccompanied by
that profound feeling of truth which belief possesses, and, therefore,
we have no sense of reluctance in admitting inquiry into them. That
heavy bodies tend to fall to the earth and that fire burns fingers are
truths verifiable and verified every day, but we do not hold them with
impassioned certitude, and we do not resent or resist inquiry into their
basis; whereas in such a question as that of the survival of death by
human personality we hold the favorable or the adverse view with a
quality of feeling entirely different, and of such a kind that inquiry
into the matter is looked upon as disreputable by orthodox science and
as wicked by orthodox religion. In relation to this subject, it may be
remarked, we often see it very interestingly shown that the holders of
two diametrically opposed opinions, one of which is certainly right, may
both show by their attitude that the belief is held instinctively and
non-rationally, as, for example, when an atheist and a Christian unite in
repudiating inquiry into the existence of the soul.”
Take the attitude of the average Californian or Australian about the
Mongolian; of the Texan about the Mexican; of the Southerner about
the Negro; of the Westerner about the local tribes of Indians; of the
Englishman about the Hindu—is not their feeling exactly described by the
statement that inquiry into the possibility of racial equality would be
“unnecessary,” “absurd,” or evilly motivated; and that their belief in
race superiority rests on an “a priori synthesis of the most perfect
sort,” and possesses “the quality of primary certitude”?
In short, the apparently theoretical beliefs held as to race capacity by
people who are actually confronted by a race conflict or problem are by
no means the outcome of impartial examination and verification, but are
the result of the decisions taken and emotions experienced in the course
of acts performed toward the other race. The beliefs rest ultimately on
impulse and feeling; their reasoned support is a subsequent bolstering
up. Of course, the fact that a belief springs from emotion does not
render that belief untrue, but does leave it scientifically unproved, and
calling for investigation.
These conclusions may vindicate inquiry into the relative capacity of
races from the charge of being finespun, insidious, impractical, or
immoral.
35. PLAN OF INQUIRY
In approach to the problem, a consideration stands out. If the
human races are identical in capacity, or if, though not absolutely
alike, they average substantially the same in the sum total of their
capacities, then such differences as they have shown in their history
or show in their present condition must evidently be the result mainly
of circumstances external to heredity. In that case, knowledge of the
historical or environmental circumstances, and analysis of the latter,
become all-important to understanding. On the other hand, if hereditary
racial inequalities exist, one can expect that the historical or cultural
influences, however great they may be, will nevertheless tend to have
their origin in the hereditary factors and to reinforce them. In that
case, differences between two groups would be due partly to underlying
heredity and partly to overlying cultural forces tending on the whole
in the same direction. Yet even in that case, before one could begin
to estimate the strength of the true racial factors, the historical
ones would have to be subtracted. Thus, in either event, the first crux
of the problem lies in the recognition and stripping off of cultural,
social, or environmental factors, so far as possible, from the complex
mass of phenomena which living human groups present. In proportion
as these social or acquired traits can be determined and discounted,
the innate and truly racial ones will be isolated, and can then be
examined, weighed, and compared. Such, at any rate, is a reasonable plan
of procedure. We are looking for the inherent, ineradicable elements
in a social animal that has everywhere built up around himself an
environment—namely, his culture—in which he mentally lives and breathes.
It is precisely because in the present inquiry we wish to get below
the effects of culture that we must be ready to concern ourselves
considerably with these effects, actual or possible.
36. ANATOMICAL EVIDENCE ON EVOLUTIONARY RANK
But first of all it may be well to consider the relatively simple
evidence which has to do with the physical form and structure of race
types. If one human race should prove definitely nearer to the apes in
its anatomy than the other races, there would be reason to believe that
it had lagged in evolution. Also there would be some presumption that its
arrears were mental as well as physical.
But the facts do not run consistently. One thinks of the Negro as simian.
His jaws are prognathous; his forehead recedes; his nose is both broad
and low. Further, it is among Caucasians that the antithetical traits
occur. In straightness of jaws and forehead, prominence and narrowness
of nose, Caucasians in general exceed the Mongoloids. Thus the order as
regards these particular traits is: ape, Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasian.
With ourselves at one end and the monkey at the other, the scale somehow
seems right. It appeals, and seems significant. Facts of this sort are
therefore readily observed, come to be remembered, and rise spontaneously
to mind in an argument on race differences.
However, there are numerous items that conflict with this sequence. For
instance, one of the most conspicuous differences of man from the apes is
his relative hairlessness. Of the three main stocks, however, it is the
Caucasian that is the most hairy. Both Mongoloids and Negroids are more
smooth-skinned on face and on body.
In hair texture, the straight-haired Mongoloid is nearest the apes, the
wavy-haired Caucasian comes next, and the woolly Negroid is the most
characteristically human, or at least unsimian.
In the length of head hair, in which man differs notably from the
monkeys, the relatively short-haired Negro once more approximates
most closely to the ape, but the long-haired Mongoloid surpasses the
intermediate Caucasian in degree of departure.
Lip color reverses this order. The apes’ lips are thin and grayish;
Mongoloid lips come next; then those of Caucasians; the full, vivid, red
lips of the Negro are the most unapelike of all.
It is unnecessary to multiply examples. If one human racial stock falls
below others in certain traits, it rises above them in other features,
insofar as “below” and “above” may be measurable in terms of degree
of resemblance to the apes. The only way in which a decision could
be arrived at along this line of consideration would be to count all
features to see whether the Negro or the Caucasian or the Mongoloid was
the most unapelike in the plurality of cases. It is possible that in such
a reckoning the Caucasian would emerge with a lead. But it is even more
clear that whichever way the majority fell, it would be a well divided
count. If the Negro were more apelike than the Caucasian in all of his
features, or in eight out of ten, the fact would be heavily significant.
With his simian resemblances aggregating to those of the Caucasian in
a ratio of say four to three, the margin would be so close as to lose
nearly all its meaning. It is apparently some such ratio as this, or an
even more balanced one, that would emerge, so far as we can judge, if it
were feasible to take a census of all features.
It should be added that such a method of comparison as this suffers
from two drawbacks. First, the most closely related forms now and then
diverge sharply in certain particulars; and second, a form which on the
whole is highly specialized may yet have remained more primitive, or have
reverted to greater primitiveness in a few of its traits, than relatively
unevolved races or species.
Thus, the anthropoid apes are brachycephalic, but all known types of
Palæolithic man are dolichocephalic. Matched against the apes, the
long-headed Negro would therefore seem to be the most humanly specialized
stock. Compared however with the fossil human forms, the Negro is the
most primitive in this feature, and the Mongoloid and Alpine Caucasian
could be said to have evolved the farthest because their heads are the
roundest. Yet their degree of brachycephaly is approximately that of
the anthropoid apes. To which criterion shall be given precedence? It
is impossible to say. Quite likely the round-headedness of the apes
represents a special trait which they acquired since their divergence
from the common hominid ancestral stem. If so, their round-headedness and
that of the Mongoloids is simply a case of convergent evolution, of a
character repeating independently, and therefore no evidence of Mongoloid
primitiveness. Yet, if so, the long-headedness common to the early human
races and the modern Negroids would probably also mean nothing.
It is even clearer that other traits have been acquired independently,
have been secondarily evolved over again. Thus the supraorbital ridges.
When one observes the consistency with which these are heavy in
practically all Neandertal specimens; how they are still more conspicuous
in Pithecanthropus and Rhodesian man; how the male gorilla shows them
enormously developed; and that among living races they are perhaps
strongest in the lowly Australian, it is tempting to look upon this
bony development as a definite sign of primitiveness. Yet there is an
array of contradicting facts. The youthful gorilla and adult orang are
without supraorbital development. The male gorilla has his powerful brows
for the same reason that he has the crest along the top of his skull:
they are needed as attachments for his powerful musculature. They are
evidently a secondary sex character developed within the species. So
among fossil men there seem to have been two strains: one represented by
Pithecanthropus and Neandertal man and the Rhodesian race, which tended
toward supraorbital massiveness; and another, of which Piltdown man is
representative, which was smooth of forehead. Among living races the
Asiatic Mongoloids lack marked supraorbital development; the closely
related American Indians possess it rather strongly; Caucasians and
Negroes show little of the feature; Australians most of all. Evidently
it would be unsafe to build much conclusion on either the presence or
absence of supraorbital ridges.
Perhaps these instances will suffice to show that even the mere physical
rating of human races is far from a simple or easy task. It is doubtful
whether as yet it is valid to speak of one race as physically higher or
more advanced, or more human and less brutish, than another. This is
not an outright denial of the possibility of such differential ratings:
it is a denial only of the belief that such differentials have been
established as demonstrable.
37. COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGICAL DATA
There is another angle of approach. This consists in abandoning the
direct attempt to rate the races in anatomical terms, and inquiring
instead whether they show any physiological differences. If such
differences can be found, they may then perhaps be interpretable
as differences in activity, responsiveness, endurance, or similar
constitutional qualities. If the bodies of two races behave differently,
we should have considerable reason to believe that their minds also
behaved differently.
Unfortunately, we possess fewer data on comparative physiology than on
comparative anatomy. The evidence is more fluctuating and intricate, and
requires more patience to assemble. Unfortunately, too, for the purposes
of our inquiry, the races come out almost exactly alike in the simpler
physiological reactions. The normal body temperature for Caucasian adults
is 37° (98.5 F.), the pulse about 70, the respiration rate around 17 or
18 per minute. If the Negro’s temperature averaged even a degree higher,
one might expect him to behave, normally, a little more feverishly, to
respond to stimulus with more vehemence, to move more quickly or more
restlessly. Or, if the pulse rate of Mongolians were definitely lower,
they might be expected to react more sluggishly, more sedately, like
aging Caucasians. But such observations as are available, though they
are far from as numerous as is desirable, reveal no such differences:
temperature, pulse, respiration, record the same as among Caucasians,
or differ so slightly, or so conflictingly, as to leave no room for
positive conclusions. Certainly if there existed any important racial
peculiarities, they would have been noted by the physicians who at one
time or another have examined millions of Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, and
thousands of Indians and Polynesians.
Apparently there is only one record that even hints at anything
significant. Hrdlička, among some 700 Indians of the Southwestern United
States and Northwestern Mexico, found the pulse to average about 60 per
minute, or ten beats less than among whites. This would seem to accord
with the general impression of Indian mentality as stolid, reserved,
slow, and steady. But the number of observations is after all rather
small; the part of the race represented by them is limited; and the
habitat of the group of tribes is mostly a high plateau, and altitude
notoriously affects heart action. Considerable corroboration will
therefore be needed before any serious conclusions can be built upon this
suggestive set of data.
There are other physiological functions that are likely to mean more than
the rather gross ones just considered: for instance, the activity of
the endocrines or glands of internal secretion. An excess or deficiency
of activity of the thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, and sex glands affects
not only health, but the type of personality and its emotional and
intellectual reactions. For example, cretinism with its accompaniment
of near-idiocy is the result of thyroidal under-development or
under-functioning, and is often cured by supplying the lack of thyroidal
substance and secretion. But this subject is as difficult as it is
interesting; to date, absolutely nothing is known about endocrine race
differences. It would be a relatively simple matter to secure first-hand
information on the anatomy of the endocrine glands in Negroes as compared
with whites; to ascertain whether these differed normally in size,
weight, shape, or structure, and how. But this knowledge has scarcely
been attempted systematically, and still less is any knowledge available
in the more delicate and complex field of the workings of the organs. To
be sure, theories have been advanced that race differentiation itself may
be mainly the result of endocrine differentiations. There is something
fascinating about such conjectures, but it is well to remember that they
are unmitigated guesses.
38. DISEASE
Pathology might seem to promise more than normal physiology. So far as
mortality goes, there are enormous differences between races. And the
mortality is often largely the result of particular diseases. Measles,
for instance, has often been a deadly epidemic to uncivilized peoples,
and smallpox has in some regions at times taken toll of a quarter of
the population in a year or two. Yet it is short-sighted to infer
from such cases any racial predisposition or lack of resistance. The
peoples in question have been free for generations, perhaps for their
entire history, from these diseases, and have therefore not maintained
or acquired immunity. Their difference from us is thus essentially in
experience, not hereditary or racial. This is confirmed by the fact that
after a generation or two the same epidemics that at first were so deadly
to Polynesians or American Indians sink to almost the same level of mild
virulence as they show among ourselves.
Then, too, immediate environment plays a part. The savage often has no
idea of contagion, and still less of guarding against it; he thinks
in terms of magic instead of physiology—and succumbs. How far heavy
mortality is the result of lack of resistance or of fundamentally
vicious treatment, is often hard to say. If we tried to cure smallpox by
subjecting patients to a steam-bath and then having them plunge into a
wintry river, we should perhaps look upon the disease as a very nearly
fatal one to the Caucasian race.
39. CAUSES OF CANCER INCIDENCE
It may be worth while to consider briefly the facts as to mortality from
cancer. This dread disease appears to be not contagious, so that the
factor of acquired immunity is eliminated. It is regarded as incurable,
except by operation, so that differences in treatment become relatively
unimportant. If therefore significant differences in racial liability to
cancer exist, they should emerge with unusual clearness and certainty.
At first sight they seem to. It has been alleged that the white race is
the most susceptible to this affliction. The supporting figures are as
follows: cancer deaths per year per 100,000 population.
1906-10 Denmark 137
England 94
United States 73
1909-11 Johannesburg, whites 52
Negroes 14
1906-10 Natal, Europeans 56
East Indians 11
1906-10 Hongkong, Europeans 53
Chinese 5
1912 Dutch East Indies, Europeans 81
1906-10 Singapore, natives 13
Straits Settlements, natives 10
Ceylon, natives 5
Calcutta, natives 11
1908-13 Manila, whites 51
Filipinos 27
Chinese 19
1910-12 United States, whites 77
Negroes 56
1914 United States, Indians 4
It would seem from these figures that Caucasians die more frequently of
cancer than members of the darker races. In fact, this has been asserted.
Let us however continue with figures.
1908-12 Large cities, latitudes 60°-50° North 106
50°-40° ” 92
40°-30° ” 78
30° North-30° South 38-42
30°-40° South 90
This table would make cancer mortality largely a function of geographical
latitude, instead of race.
Another factor enters: occupation. The following data give the death rate
per 100,000 population among males of 45-54 in England and Wales.
1890-92 1900-02
Lawyers 199 159
Physicians 102 121
Clergymen 81 91
Chimneysweeps 532 287
Brewers 190 239
Metal workers 120 137
Gardeners 88 93
All occupations 118 145
That the relative incidence is more than a temporary accident is shown by
the approximate recurrence of the frequencies after ten years.
In proportion as latitude and occupation influence the occurrence of
cancer, race is diminished as a cause. It is reduced still further
by other considerations. The rate for Austria in 1906-10 was 78, for
Hungary 44. Here the race is the same: the difference must be social.
Austria averaged higher in wealth, education, medical development. This
fact would tend to have a double effect. First, among the more backward
population, a certain proportion would die of internal cancers difficult
to diagnose, without the cause being recognized, owing to insufficient
medical treatment. Second, the general death rate would be higher. More
children and young people would die of infectious or preventable disease,
leaving fewer survivors to die of cancer in middle and old age. Wherever,
on the other hand, a public is medically educated, and typhoid, smallpox,
diphtheria, tuberculosis claim fewer victims, the proportion of those
dying of cancer, nephritis, heart diseases, increases. Such an increase
is noted everywhere, and goes hand in hand with a longer average life.
The alarm sometimes felt at the modern “increase” of cancer is therefore
unfounded, because it is perhaps mainly apparent. If a larger percentage
of the population each year died of old age, it would be a sign that
sanitation and medicine were increasingly effective: evidence that more
people lived to become old, not that age debility was spreading.
Consequently, a high degree of modern civilization must tend to raise
the cancer rate; and any group of people will seem relatively immune
from cancer in proportion as they remain removed from attaining to this
civilization. In Hungary, from 1901-04, the cancer deaths were 239 among
the owners of large farms, 41 among the owners of small farms; 108 among
employing blacksmiths, 25 among their employees; 114 among employing
tailors, 32 among employed tailors. Obviously these pairs of groups
differ chiefly in their economic and cultural status.
Here too lies the explanation of why the South African negro shows a rate
of only 14, the United States negro of 56; also why the Chinese rate is
as low as 5 in Hongkong, rises to 19 in Manila, and 26 in Hawaii, while
the closely allied Japanese average 62 for the whole of Japan—as compared
with 50 for Spain, which is pure Caucasian, but one of the most backward
countries in Europe. In Tokyo and Kyoto the rate soars to 73 and 90
respectively, just as in the United States it is about 10 higher for the
urban than for the rural population.
Within the United States, also, the rate rises and falls almost parallel
for whites and Negroes according to locality; as,
1906-10 _White_ _Negro_
Memphis 59 34
Charleston 73 37
Nashville 74 55
New Orleans 86 73
If allowance is made for the facts that the negro population of the
United States is poorer and less educated than the white; that it lives
mainly in lower latitudes; and that it tends to be rural rather than
urban, the comparative cancer death rates for the country of negro 56 and
white 77 would appear to be accounted for, without bringing race into
consideration.
In short, what at first glance, or to a partisan pleader, would seem
to be a notable race difference in cancer liability, turns out so
overwhelmingly due to environmental and social causes as to leave it
doubtful whether racial heredity enters as a factor at all. This is not
an assertion that race has nothing whatever to do with the disease; it
is an assertion that in the present state of knowledge an inherent or
permanent connection between race and cancer incidence has not been
demonstrated. If there is such a connection, it is evidently a slight
one, heavily overlaid by non-racial influences; and it may be wholly
lacking.
The case would be still less certain for most other diseases, in which
environmental factors are more directly and obviously influential. Racial
medical science is not impossible; in fact it should have an important
future as a study; but its foundations are not yet laid.
40. MENTAL ACHIEVEMENT AND SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT
One point will have become clear in the course of the foregoing
discussion: namely, how far the difficulty of coming to positive
conclusions is due to the two sets of interacting causal factors, the
hereditary ones and the environmental ones that play upon heredity.
The environmental factors are themselves a composite of geographical
influences and of the economic, cultural, and other social influences
that human beings exert upon each other.
If this intermingling of distinct kinds of causes is true of races when
considered from the side of physiology and medicine, it is evident that
the intermingling will be even more intricate in the mental sphere. After
all, bodily functioning varies only within fairly definite limits. When
external influences press too strongly upon the innate nature of the
organism, the latter ceases to function and dies. The mind, on the other
hand, however much its structure may be given by heredity, depends for
its content wholly on experience, and this experience can be thoroughly
varied. Individuals of the same organic endowment may conceivably be
born either in the uppermost stratum of a highly refined civilization,
or among the most backward and remote savages. Whether this actually
happens, and to what degree, is of course precisely the problem which we
are trying to solve. But that it is theoretically and logically possible
cannot be denied; and here a vicious circle of reasoning begins. One
argument says: there have been no recognized geniuses among peoples
like the Hottentots, and the sum total of their group achievement is
ridiculously small; therefore it is clear that the Hottentot mind must be
inferior. The opposite argument runs: Hottentot cultural environment is
so poor and limited that the finest mind in the world reared under its
influence would grow up relatively sterile and atrophied; therefore it is
probable that the mind of the Hottentot is intrinsically identical with
our own, or at least of equivalent capacity, and that Hottentot geniuses
have actually been born but have been unable to flourish as geniuses.
Evidently the same facts are before those who advocate these opposite
views, but these facts are viewed from diametrically opposite sides. If
one starts to travel around the logical circle in one direction, one can
keep revolving indefinitely and find ever fresh supporting evidence. If,
however, one begins to revolve around the same circle of opinion in the
opposite direction, it is just as easy and just as compelling to continue
to think in this fashion and to find all testimony corroborative.
In such a situation it is possible to realize that from the point of view
of proof, or objective truth, one view is worth as much as the other:
which is nothing. It is an emotional bias that inclines one man toward
the conviction of race superiority and another to that of race equality.
The proofs in either case are for the most part a mere assembling of
ex parte testimony. It is easy enough to advocate impartiality. The
difficulty is in being impartial; because both the hereditary and the
environmental factors are in reality unknown quantities. What we have
objectively before us is such and such a race or group of people, with
such and such present traits and historical record. These phenomena
being the product of the interaction of the two sets of causes, we
could of course, if we knew the strength of one, compute the strength
of the other. But as we have isolated neither, we are dealing with two
indeterminate variables. Evidently the only way out of the dilemma, at
any rate the only scientific way, is to find situations in which one of
the factors is, for the time being, fixed. In that case the strength of
the other factor will of course be proportionate to the attainments of
the groups.
Actually, such instances are excessively difficult to find. There are
occasional individuals with identical heredity, namely, twins produced
from the division of a single ovum. In such twins, the strength of
environmental influences can be gauged by the difference in their
careers and achievements. Yet such twins are only individuals, and it
is illegitimate to make far-reaching inferences from them to larger
groups, such as the races. It is conceivable that heredity might on the
whole be a more powerful cause than environment, and racial groups still
average substantially alike in their heredity. Because a natively gifted
and a natively stunted individual within the group vary conspicuously
in achievement, even under similar environment, it does not follow that
races differ in germ-plasm because they differ in achievements.
If, on the other hand, one sets out to discover cases of identical
environment for distinct racial strains, the task quickly becomes even
more difficult. Very little analysis usually suffices to show that the
environment is identical only up to a certain point, and that beyond this
point important social divergences begin. Thus, so far as geographical
environment goes, the Negro and the white in the southern United States
are under the same conditions. There is also uniformity of some of the
gross externals of cultural environment. Both Negroes and whites speak
English; are Christians; plant corn; go to the circus; and so on. But,
just as obviously, there are aspects in which their social environment
differs profoundly. Educational opportunities are widely different. The
opportunity of attaining leadership or otherwise satisfying ambition
is wide open to the white, and practically closed to the Negro. The
“color-line” inevitably cuts across the social environment and makes of
it two different environments.
It might be said that the southern United States furnish an extreme case
of a sharply drawn color-line. This is true. But on the other hand there
is no place on earth where something corresponding to a color-line is
not drawn between two races occupying the same territory. It sometimes
happens that distinctions are diminished and faintly or subtly enforced,
as in modern Hawaii, where to outward appearances many races dwell
together without discrimination. Yet examination reveals that the absence
of discrimination is only legal and perhaps economic. As regards the
relations and associations of human beings, the welcome which they extend
or the aloofness which they show to one another, there is always a
color-line. This means not only difference in opportunity, but difference
in experience, habit formation, practices, and interests.
41. PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS ON THE SENSE FACULTIES
This factor of experience enters even into what appear to be the simplest
mental operations, the sensory ones. The scant data available from
experimental tests indicate that a variety of dark skinned or uncivilized
peoples, including Oceanic and African Negroids, Negritos, Ainus, and
American Indians, on the whole slightly surpass civilized whites in
keenness of vision and fineness of touch discrimination, whereas the
whites are somewhat superior in acuity of hearing and sensitiveness to
pain. Yet what do these results of measurements mean?
Vision is tested for its distance ability. The farther off one can
distinguish objects or marks, the higher one’s rating. Civilized man
reads—normally—at 14 inches. He works with sharp knives, with machines
that are exact; he is surrounded by things made with such exact machines;
he handles thin paper and filmy fabrics. His women sew and embroider with
the sharpest of needles, the finest of thread. Everything about us tends
toward close accuracy and away from the haziness of distant observation.
The savage, on the other hand, the half-civilized person even, inspects
the horizon, watches for game or its dim tracks, tries to peer to the
bottom of streams for fish. He does not read, his needles are blunt, his
thread is cord, his carving without precision even though decorative, the
lines he makes are free-hand and far-apart. He is trained, as it were,
for the usual vision tests. If the psychologist reversed his experiment
and sought the degree of power to see fine differences at close range, it
is possible that the savage might prove inferior because untrained by his
experience. Such tests seem not to have been made. Until they are, and
again show uncivilized man superior, there is no real proof that innate
racial differences of serious moment exist.
The whole act of vision in fact involves more than we ordinarily think.
After all, seeing is done with the mind as well as with the eye. There is
the retinal image, but there is also the interpretation of this image.
A sailor descries the distant shore, whereas the landsman sees only a
haze on the horizon. To the city dweller a horse and a cow a mile off
are indistinguishable. Not so to the rancher. There is something almost
imperceptible about the profile of the feeding end of the animal, about
its movement, that promptly and surely classes it. At still longer
ranges, where the individual animals have wholly faded from sight, a
herd of cattle may perhaps be told from one of horses, by the plainsman,
through the different clouds of dust which they kick up, or the rate of
motion of the cloud. An hour later when the herd is reached and proves
to be as said, the astonished traveler from the metropolis is likely to
credit his guide’s eyes with an intrinsic power greater than his field
glasses—forgetting the influence of experience and training.
In keenness of hearing, on the contrary, one should expect the
civilized white to come out ahead, as in fact he does; not because he
is Caucasian but because he is civilized and because the instruments
of experimentation, be they tuning forks or ticking watches or balls
dropped on metal plates, are implements of civilization. Make the test
the howl of a distant wolf, or the snapping of a twig as the boughs bend
in the wind, and the college student’s hearing might prove duller than
that of the Indian or Ainu. There is a story of a woodsman on a busy
thoroughfare, amid the roar of traffic and multifarious noise of a great
city, hearing a cricket chirp, which was actually discovered in a near-by
open cellar. Extolled for his miraculous keenness of audition, the man
in the fur cap dropped a small coin on the pavement: at the clink,
passers-by across the street stopped and looked around.
As to the pain sense, an introspective, interpretative element
necessarily enters into experiments. What constitutes pain? When the
trial becomes disagreeable? When it hurts? When it is excruciating? The
savage may physiologically feel with his nerve ends precisely as we do.
But being reared to a life of chronic slight discomforts, he is likely
to think nothing of the sensation until it hurts sharply; whereas we
signal as soon as we are sure that the experience is becoming perceptibly
unpleasant.
In short, until there shall have been more numerous, balanced, and
searching tests made, it must be considered that nothing positive has
been established as to the respective sensory faculties of the several
human races. The experiments performed are tests not so much of race as
of the average experience and habits of groups of different culture.
42. INTELLIGENCE TESTS
If this is true as regards the sense faculties, it might be expected
to hold to a greater degree of those higher mental faculties which we
call intelligence; and such is the case. Intelligence tests have been
gradually evolved and improved, the best known being the Binet-Simon
series. These are arranged to determine the mental age of the subject.
Their most important function accordingly has been the detection
of defective adults or backward children. During the World War,
psychological examinations were introduced on a scale unheard of before.
The purpose of these examinations was to assign men to the tasks best
commensurate with their true abilities; especially to prevent the unfit
from being entrusted with responsibility under which they would break
down and bring failure on larger undertakings. Men subject to dizziness
were to be kept from flying; those unable to understand orders, out of
active line service. The tests throughout were practical. They tried to
decide whether a given man was fit or unfit. They did not pretend to go
into the causes of his fitness or unfitness. This is an important point.
Whatever illumination the army intelligence tests shed on the problem of
race intelligence is therefore indirect. Different racial or national
groups represented in the examinations attain different capacity ratings,
but there is nothing in the results themselves to show whether they are
due to racial or environmental factors. Evidence on this point, if it can
be derived at all from the tests, has to be “analyzed out.”
In general, examinees in the United States were rated by being assigned,
on the basis of their scores, to grades which were lettered from A to E,
with plus and minus subgrades. The most comprehensive presentation of
results is to express the percentage of individuals in each group that
made the middle grade C, better than C, and worse than C. On this basis
we find:
_Group and Number of Individuals_ _Below C_ _C_ _Above C_
Englishmen, 411 9 71 20
White draft generally, 93,973 24 64 12
Italians, 4,007 63 36 1
Poles, 382 70 30 (.5)
Negroes generally, 18,891 79 20 1
These figures at face value seem to show deep group differences in
intelligence; and these face values have been widely accepted. The
reason is that they flatter national and race egotism. To be sure, the
Englishmen in the American draft make a better showing than the drafted
men at large; but this has been complacently explained by saying that
the English represent in comparative purity the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic
stock which is also the dominant strain among Americans, but which has
been somewhat contaminated in their case by the immigration of Latins
and Slavs, who rate much lower, as shown by the Italians and Poles
tested. Lowest of all, as might be expected, is the Negro. So runs the
superficial but satisfying interpretation of the figures—satisfying if
one happens to be of North European ancestry.
But there is one feature that raises suspicion. The Italians and the
Poles are too close to the Negroes. They stand much nearer to them in
intelligence, according to these figures, than they do to the white
Americans. Can this be so—at least, can it have racial significance? Are
these Mediterraneans, descendants of the Romans, and these Alpines, so
large a strain of whose blood flows in the veins of many white Americans,
only a shade superior to the Negro? Scarcely. “Something must be wrong”
with the figures: that is, they contain another factor besides race.
A little dissection of the lump results reveals this factor. The northern
Negro far surpasses the southern in his showing. He gets ten times as
high a proportion of individuals into the above-average grades, only
half as many into the below-average. Evidently the difference is due to
increased schooling, improved earning capacity, larger opportunity and
incentive: social environment, in short. So strong is the influence of
the environment that the northern Negro easily surpasses the Italian in
America.
Negroes, 5 northern states, 4,705 46 51 3
Italians, 4,007 63 36 1
Negroes, 4 southern states, 6,846 86 14 (.3)
Evidently the psychological tests are more a gauge of educational and
social opportunity than of race, since the Italian, although brunet, is
of course a pure Caucasian.
This conclusion is reinforced by another consideration. The type of test
first used in the army had been built up for reasonably literate people,
speaking English. Among such people it discriminated successfully between
the more and the less fit. But the illiterate and the foreigner knowing
no English failed completely—not because their intelligence was zero,
but because the test involved the use of non-congenital abilities which
they had not acquired. A second set of tests, known as Beta, was evolved
for those who were obviously ineligible, or proved themselves so, for
the old style of test, which was designated as Alpha. The illiteracy of
the subjects given the Beta test was in most cases not an absolute one.
Men who could not write an intelligible letter or read the newspaper or
who had had only half or less of the ordinary grammar school education,
together with aliens whose comprehension of English remained imperfect,
were put in the group of “illiterates” or badly educated. Separating now
the literates from the illiterates among a number of racial, national, or
sectional groups, we find:
ALPHA TEST: LITERATES
Englishmen, 374 5 74 21
White draft generally, 72,618 16 69 15
Alabama whites, 697 19 72 9
New York negroes, 1,021 21 72 7
Italians, 575 33 64 3
Negroes generally, 5,681 54 44 2
Alabama negroes, 262 56 44 (.4)
BETA TEST: ILLITERATES
White draft generally, 26,012 58 41 1
Italians, 2,888 64 35 1
New York negroes, 440 72 28 0
Poles, 263 76 24 (.4)
Alabama whites, 384 80 20 0
Negroes generally, 11,633 91 9 (.2)
Alabama Negroes, 1,043 97 3 (.1)
It must be borne in mind that the two groups were not set apart as the
result of tests, but that the two tests were devised to meet the problem
of treating the two groups with reasonable uniformity. The point was
to find the excellent man, and the unfit man, with the same degree of
accuracy whether he was literate or illiterate. When found, he was
assigned to the same grade, such as A, or D—, whether his examination had
been Alpha or Beta.
Now let us observe some of the figures. The New York negro is nearly on a
par with the Alabama white, among literates, and a bit ahead of him among
illiterates. Approximately the two groups come out the same; which means
that bringing up in a certain part of the country has as much to do with
intelligence, even in the rough, as has Caucasian or colored parentage.
The literate negroes of the draft, irrespective of section, slightly
surpass the illiterate whites.
In every case the literate members of a race or nationality make a far
better showing than the illiterate.
It is now clear also that the important factor of education enters
so heavily into the first figures cited that they can mean little if
anything as to inherent capacity. Of the Englishmen tested, nine-tenths
fell in the literate group; of the Poles, a fifth; of the Italians, a
seventh. In the draft generally, nearly three-fourths of the whites were
literate; of the negroes, less than a third.
In short, in spite of the fact that the Beta test was intended to
equalize conditions for the illiterate and semi-illiterate, the
outstanding conclusion of the army examinations seems to be that
education—cultural advantage—enormously develops faculty.
Is there anything left that can positively be assigned to race causation?
It may be alleged that within the same section the white recruits
regularly surpass the colored. Alabama whites may rate disappointingly,
but they do better than Alabama negroes; New York negroes show
surprisingly well, but they are inferior to New York whites; illiterate
whites from the whole country definitely surpass illiterate negroes; and
still more so among literates. But is this residuum of difference surely
racial? As long as the color-line remains drawn, a differential factor
of cultural advantage is included; and how strong this is there is no
present means of knowing. It is possible that some of the difference
between sectionally and educationally equalized groups of whites and
negroes is really innate and racial. But it is also possible that most or
all of it is environmental. Neither possibility can be demonstrated from
the unrefined data at present available.
43. STATUS OF HYBRIDS
In nearly all tests of the American Negro, full bloods and mixed bloods
are not discriminated. Evidently if races have distinctive endowments,
the nature of these endowments is not cleared up so long as individuals
who biologically are seven-eighths Caucasian are included with pure
Negroes merely because in this country we have the social habitude of
reckoning them all as “colored.”
On the other hand, an excellent opportunity to probe deeper is being
lost through the failure to classify tested colored people according
to the approximate proportion of Negro blood. Suppose for instance that
on a given examination whites scored an average of 100 and Negroes of
60. Then, if this difference were really due to race, if it were wholly
a matter of superior or inferior blood, mulattos should average 80 and
quadroons 90; unless intelligence were due to simple Mendelian factors,
in which case its inheritance would tend to segregate, and of this there
is no evidence. Suppose, however, that instead of the theoretically
expectable 80 and 90, the mulattos and quadroons scored 65 and 68.
In that event it would be clear that the major part of the Negro’s
inferiority of record was due to environment; that the white man’s
points from about 70 up to 100 were clearly the result of his superior
social opportunities, whereas the range between 60 and 70 approximately
represented the innate difference between Negro and Caucasian. This is a
hypothetical example, but it may serve to illustrate a possible method of
attacking the problem.
There are however almost no data of this kind; and when they are
obtained, they will be subject to certain cautions upon interpretation.
For instance, in the army examinations one attempt was made to separate a
small group of colored recruits into a darker-skinned group, comprising
full blooded Negroes and those appearing to be preponderantly of Negro
blood; and a lighter complexioned group, estimated to contain the
mulattos and individuals in whom white ancestry was in excess. The light
group made the better scores. In the Alpha test for literates it attained
a median score of 50, the dark Negroes only 30; in the Beta tests for
illiterates, the respective figures were 36 and 29.
The caution is this. Is the mulatto subject to any more advantageous
environment than the full blooded Negro? So far as voting and
office-holding, riding in Pullman cars and occupying orchestra seats
in theatre are concerned, there is no difference: both are colored,
and therefore beyond the barrier. But the mulattos of slavery days
were likely to be house servants, brought up with the master’s family,
absorbing manners, information, perhaps education; their black
half-brothers and half-sisters stayed out in the plantation shacks.
Several generations have elapsed since those days, but it is possible,
even probable, that the descendants of mulattos have kept a step or two
ahead of the descendants of the blacks in literacy, range of experience,
and the like.
It is impossible to predict what the social effect of miscegenation will
be. The effect undoubtedly varies and must be examined in each case.
Thus, Indian half-breeds in one tribe may usually be the result of wholly
transient or mercenary unions between inferior whites and debauched
native women and may therefore grow up in an atmosphere of demoralization
to which the full blooded Indian is less exposed. This demoralization
would, to be sure, affect character and not intelligence as such; but
it might stand in the way of schooling, and otherwise indirectly react
on measurable traits of mind. In another tribe or section of a tribe,
to the contrary, the half-breed might normally grow up in the house
of a permanently settled white father, a squaw man, and in that event
would learn English better, go to school earlier, and in case of a test
therefore achieve a higher rating than the full blood.
44. EVIDENCE FROM THE CULTURAL RECORD OF RACES
An entirely different method of approach to the problem of race
capacity is that of examining the cultural record, the achievements in
civilization, of groups. While this approach is theoretically possible,
and while it is often attempted, it is subject to little control and
therefore unlikely to yield dependable conclusions.
First of all, the culture history record of a people must be known for
considerable periods before one may validly think of inferring therefrom
anything as to the faculties of that people. The reason is that active
civilization, as a productive process, is slow to grow up, slow to be
acquired. Mere momentum would normally keep the more advanced of two
peoples ahead of the other for a long time. In proportion as not nations
but groups of nations were involved, the momentum would continue for
still longer periods. Civilization flourished for some thousands of years
in the Near East, and then about the Mediterranean, before it became
established with equal vigor and success in northern Europe. Had Julius
Cæsar or one of his contemporaries been asked whether by any sane stretch
of phantasy he could imagine the Britons and Germans as inherently
the equals of Romans and Greeks, he would probably have replied that
if these northerners possessed the ability of the Mediterraneans they
would long since have given vent to it, instead of continuing to live in
disorganization, poverty, ignorance, rudeness, and without great men or
products of the spirit. And, within limits, Cæsar would have been right,
since it was more than a thousand years before northern Europe began to
draw abreast of Italy in degree and productivity of civilization. Two
thousand years before Christ, a well informed Egyptian might reasonably
have disposed in the same sweeping way of the possibility of Greeks and
Italians being the equals of his own people in capacity. What had these
barbarians ever done to lead one to think that they might yet do great
things? To-day we brush Negroes and Indians out of the reckoning with the
same offhandedness.
In general, arguing from performance to potentiality, from accomplishment
to achievement, is valid under conditions of set experiment—such as
are impossible for races—or in proportion as the number and variety of
observations is large. A single matched competition may decide pretty
reliably as between the respective speed capacities of two runners. But
it would be hazardous to form an opinion from a casual glimpse of them
in action, when one might happen to be hastening and the other dallying.
Least of all would it be sound to infer that essential superiority
rested with the one that was in advance at the moment of observation,
without knowledge of their starting points, the difficulty of their
routes, the motive or goal of their courses. It is only as the number of
circumstances grows, from which observations are available, that judgment
begins to have any weight. The runner who has led for a long time and
is increasing his lead, or who has repeatedly passed others, or who
carries a load and yet gains ground, may lay some claim to superiority.
In the same way, as between races, a long and intimate historical
record, objectively analyzed, gives some legitimate basis for tentative
conclusions as to their natural endowment. But how long the record must
be is suggested by the example already cited of Mediterranean versus
Nordic cultural preëminence.
The fallacy that is most commonly committed is to argue from what in
the history of great groups is only an instant: this instant being that
at which one’s own race or nationality is dominant. The Anglo-Saxon’s
moment is the present; the Greek’s, the age of Pericles. Usually, too,
the dominance holds only for certain aspects: military or economic or
æsthetic superiority, as the case may be; inferiorities on other sides
are merely overlooked. The Greek knew his venality, but looked down
on the barbarian nevertheless. Anglo-Saxon failure in the plastic and
musical arts is notorious, but does not deter most Anglo-Saxons from
believing that they are the elect in quality, and from buttressing this
conviction with the evidences of present industrial, economic, and
political achievements—and perhaps past literary ones.
45. EMOTIONAL BIAS
Inference from record to potentiality where the record of one’s own group
is favorable, and failure to draw such inference where the achievement
of other groups is superior, is a combination of mental operations that
is widely spread because it arises spontaneously in minds not critically
trained. Here is an instance:
One of the great achievements of science in the nineteenth century was
Galton’s demonstration, in a series of works beginning with “Hereditary
Genius,” that the laws of heredity apply to the mind in the same manner
and to the same degree as to the body. On the whole this proof has failed
to be recognized at its true importance, probably because it inclines
adversely to current presuppositions of the independence of the soul from
the body, and freedom of the will, propositions to which most men adhere
emotionally.
From this perfectly valid demonstration, which has been confirmed by
other methods, Galton went on to rate the hereditary worth of various
races, according to the number of their men of genius. Here a fallacy
enters: the assumption that all geniuses born are recognized as such.
A great work naturally requires a great man, but it presupposes also a
great culture. It may be that, historically speaking, a great genius
cannot arise in a primitive degree of civilization. That is, the kind
of concentrated accomplishment which alone we recognize as a work of
genius is culturally impossible below a certain level. Biologically the
individual of genius may be there; civilizationally he is not called
forth, and so does not get into the record. Consequently it is unsound
to argue from the historical record to biological worth. However, this
Galton did; and his method led him to the conclusion that the negro
rates two grades lower than the Englishman, on a total scale of fourteen
grades, and the Englishman two lower than the fifth century Athenian.
This conclusion has never been popular. Most people on becoming familiar
with Galton’s argument, resist it. Its fallacy is not easy to perceive—if
it were, Galton would not have committed it—and the average person is
habitually so vague-minded upon what is organic and what is social, that
the determination of the fallacy would be well beyond him. His opposition
to Galton’s conclusion is therefore emotionally and not rationally
founded, and his arguments against the conclusion are presumably also
called forth by emotional stimulus.
On the other hand, most individuals of this day and land do habitually
infer, like Galton, from cultural status to biological worth, so far
as the Negro is concerned. The same persons who eagerly accept the
demonstration of a flaw in the argument in favor of Athenian superiority,
generally become skeptical and resistive to the exposition of the same
flaw in the current belief as to Negro inferiority. It is remarkable how
frequently and how soon, in making this exposition, one becomes aware
of the hearer’s feeling that one’s attitude is sophistical, unreal,
insincere, or motivated by something concealed.
The drift of this discussion may seem to be an unavowed argument in favor
of race equality. It is not that (§ 271). As a matter of fact, the bodily
differences between races would appear to render it in the highest degree
likely that corresponding congenital mental differences do exist. These
differences might not be profound, compared with the sum total of common
human faculties, much as the physical variations of mankind fall within
the limits of a single species. Yet they would preclude identity. As for
the vexed question of superiority, lack of identity would involve at
least some degree of greater power in certain respects in some races.
These preëminences might be rather evenly distributed, so that no one
race would notably excel the others in the sum total or average of its
capacities; or they might show a tendency to cluster on one rather than
on another race. In either event, however, the fact of race difference,
qualitative if not quantitative, would remain.
But it is one thing to admit this theoretical probability and then stop
through ignorance of what the differences are, and another to construe
the admission as justification of mental attitudes which may be well
founded emotionally but are in considerable measure unfounded objectively.
In short, it is a difficult task to establish any race as either superior
or inferior to another, but relatively easy to prove that we entertain a
strong prejudice in favor of our own racial superiority.
46. SUMMARY
It would seem that the subject of race problems, that is, the natural
endowment of human races, can be summarized as follows:
The essential difficulty of these problems lies in the fact that the
performance of groups is the product of two sets of factors, biological
and cultural, both of which are variable and not always readily separable.
Progress in solution of the problems will be made gradually, and will be
hastened by recognition of how few positive determinations have been made.
Most of the alleged existing evidence on race endowment is likely to be
worthless.
The remainder probably has some value, but to what degree, and what it
demonstrates, cannot yet be asserted.
The most definite determinations promise to eventuate from experiment.
If fully controlled experiments in breeding and rearing human beings
could be carried out, the problems would soon begin to solve. Experiments
on animals would prove practically nothing because animals are
cultureless—uninfluenced by social environment of their own making.
Progress will be aided by increasing shift of attention from the crude
consideration of comparative lump rating of the races, that is, their
gross superiority or inferiority, to a consideration of such specific
qualitative differences as they may prove to show. The question of
finding the race in which the greatest number of qualitative excellences
are concentrated is subsequent and of much less scientific importance.
Scientific inquiries into race are for the present best kept apart
from so-called actual race problems. These problems inevitably involve
feeling, usually of considerable strength, which tends to vitiate
objective approach. On the other hand, the practical problems will no
doubt continue to be met practically, that is, morally and emotionally.
Whether the Japanese should be forbidden to hold land and the Negro be
legally disfranchised are problems of economics and of group ethics,
which probably will for a long time be disposed of emotionally as at
present, irrespective of the possible findings of science upon the innate
endowment of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid strains.