Racial type

“ Let us take a broad, generous survey of the Negro race as it came into the country, represented by twenty savages, in 1619, and trace its progress through slavery, through the Civil War period, and through freedom to the present moment. Who will be brave enough to say that the colored race, as a whole, has not increased in numbers and grown stronger mentally, morally, religiously, industrially, and in the accumulation of property? In a word, has not the Negro, at every stage, shown a tendency to grow into harmony with the best type of American civilization? ”

“ For the similarity of suffering has produced in all lands where whites rule colored races a certain similarity of sentiment, viz.: a racial revulsion of racial feeling. The peoples of those lands begin to feel and realize that they are so subjected because they are members of races condemned as “inferior” by their Caucasian overlords. The fact presented to their minds is one of race, and in terms of race do they react to it. Put the case to any Negro by way of test and the answer will make this clear. ”

“ But who are the agents to bring about this grand change in the Negro race? Remember, just here, that all effectual revolutions in a people must be racial in their characteristics. You can't take the essential qualities of one people and transfuse them into the blood of another people, and make them indigenous to them. The primal qualities of a family, a race, a nation are heritable qualities. They abide in their constitution. They remain, notwithstanding the conditions and the changes of rudeness, slavery, civilizations, and enlightenment. ”

“ But despite these differences the Blacks may still be regarded as ethnically similar and grouped together under one racial category; for, if we confine ourselves to general characteristics, the typical Negro can readily be distinguished from his human fellows by his black skin; his short curly hair, which is flat in cross section ”

“ Just as there are peoples belonging to the White, Caucasian or Eurafrican race who are almost black, so there are men of a light brown or yellow color who belong to the Black, Ethiopian or Austafrican race. Racial divisions are based not on any one character but on many taken together. But men differ not merely physically. ”

“ Probably one-third of the Negroes of the United States have distinct traces of white blood. This blending of the races has led to interesting human types, but racial prejudice has hitherto prevented any scientific study of the matter. ”

“ For this is all that our intellects can do in the case of a racial problem—to help us to understand. The actual work of adjustment must be fought out or worked out; becomes, that is to say, a struggle to be settled by the contending races with forces more complex than the purely intellectual ones of argument and proof. Let us first consider, then, the conditions under which the relations between the black and white races were established in America. ”

“ In fact it is not so, for every division of mankind presents in every character wide deviations from a standard. Thus the Negro race, well marked as it may seem at the first glance, proves on closer examination to include several shades of complexion and features, in some districts varying far from the accepted Negro type ; while the examination of a series of native American tribes shows that, notwithstanding their asserted uniformity of type, they differ in stature, colour, features, and proportions of skull. ”

“ The colour of the human skin cannot, then, be regarded as an entirely trustworthy racial test, even blackness not being an exclusively negro characteristic. It serves, however, to divide Man into three fundamental types corresponding to the three great ethnic groups, viz. ”

“ The negro, however, is racially the most distinctly foreign element in America. He belongs to a period of biological and racial evolution far removed from that of the white man. His habitat is the continent of the elephant and the lion, the mango and the palm, while that of the race into whose state he has been thrust is the continent of the horse and the cow, of wheat and the oak. ”

“ Within the area controlled by the United States are now to be found representatives of each of the grand divisions, or primary racial groups, and it would be a fascinating study to turn from the more practical topics before us and follow the races of man in their dispersion over the globe and their final gathering together again under the republic of America. First is the Aryan, or Indo-Germanic race, which, wherever it originated, sent its Sanskrit conquerors to the South to plant themselves upon a black race related to the Africans and the Australians. ”

“ A race element, it is safe and fair to conclude, incapable, like that of the North American Indian, of such a process of elimination and assimilation, will always be a thorn in the flesh of the Republic, in which there is, admittedly, no place for the integrality and growth of a distinct race type. ”

“ However much the Native may excel in certain qualities of the heart, still, until purged of the poison of racial contempt, that will be the expression of the practical conclusion of the white man regarding him ”

“ Northern and Southern opinion are identical with regard to keeping the races pure—that is, without admixture of the one with the other ... inasmuch as the negroes hold the same view, this supposed danger of mutual racial impairment ought not to have much influence on practical measures. ”

“ By State laws and the decision of the Supreme Court they belong to the negro or the American-African race. By the law of nature they belong, either to the Anglo-American race, or are a race within themselves. It is no longer a doubtful question; their constant increase in numbers shows that they are engenesic, and capable of maintaining within themselves a race of their own. Can such a people as this mixed race, imbued with the instincts, capabilities, and ambitions common to their white blood, be forever thrust back upon the negro race? ”

“ If, as stated, the ten millions of black people in the United States have excelled all the other groups of their race-type in moral and Christian growth, let us trace the cause, and in doing so we may get some light and information that will be of value in dealing with the Negro race in America and elsewhere, and in elevating and Christianizing other races. ”

“ So we might go through the whole list of the conspicuous traits and tendencies of the American negro, and in practically every case we would find good reason for believing that these racial traits and tendencies are at least in part instinctive, that is, due to the influence of racial heredity.
The question is frequently raised whether the negro is inferior by nature to the white man or not. ”

“ If Negroes were 100 per cent literate they would certainly be more sensitive to insults and more resentful. I should expect a great increase in racial differences, unless those Negroes imbibed a tendency to non-resistance. ”

“ In the future, however, with an increased knowledge of the correct definition of true human races and types and with a recognition of the immutability of fundamental racial characters and of the results of mixed breeding, far more value will be attached to racial in contrast to national or linguistic affinities. ”

“ Numerous racial studies have been made on a large scale, comparing these capacities, for example, in different degrees of race mixture—as in the transition from pure blacks through mulattoes to whites in a large Negro community, or the comparison of racial groups in Hawaii, the school children in different European countries, Indians with whites, and distinctive races and primitive peoples in different parts of the world. ”

“ If we consider the problem from an ethnological standpoint, we shall have four races in the United States—the white, negro, Indian, and Chinese. But these races do not mingle together. The Indian is dying out, and, although the negroes mingled in the days of slavery, the offspring carried the stigma of the race. ”

“ Phillis Wheatley has been mentioned already. So, in the midst of darkness and oppression, the Negro race in America, without the use of the Christian church, schoolhouse, or printing-press, produced a poetess, an astronomer, a mathematician, and a physician, who, had they been white, would have received monuments and grateful memorials at the hands of their countrymen. But even their color cannot rob them of the immortality their genius earned. ”

“ I never knew of any distinction on account of the color of the flesh of a human being. Indeed, when I think of what the colored people have been made to suffer at the hands of their supposedly superior race, every time I look a colored brother in the face I blush for the crimes that my race has committed against his race. ”

“ Although thereafter the offspring of blacks and whites did not diminish, instead of being gradually assimilated to the type of the Caucasian they tended to constitute a peculiar class commonly called people of color having a higher social status than that of the blacks but finally classified with all other persons of African blood as Negroes. ”

“ What to do with this class is a problem that perplexes the better element of Negroes, more, possibly, than it does the whites; since their shortcomings are generally credited to the whole Negro race, which is wrong as a fact and unjust in theory.
“This vicious element in the race is a constant subject of discussion in Negro churches and in private conversation. It is a mistake to say that crime is not condemned by the better class of Negroes. ”

“ In all other Northern and Western States marriage between the races is lawful.”—Ray Stannard Baker: “Following the Colour-Line.”
2. There is no doubt, I think, that the white man—and here I mean not the Southerner, nor the American, but the white man as such—resents in extremes of the negro type just that air of caricaturing humanity which renders the monkey tribe so painful and humiliating to contemplate. This seems an inhuman saying, but instinctive emotions are fundamental facts which it is useless to blink. ”

“ What kind of a Negro would you make now, especially in the South? If you had remained there, or perhaps even in your club in New York, you might have succeeded very well; but now you would be miserable. I can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured, and refined colored man in the United States. I have given more study to the race question in the United States than you may suppose, and I sympathize with the Negroes there ”

“ There are those among the white race and those among the black race who assert, with a good deal of earnestness, that there is no difference between the white man and the black man in this country. This sounds very pleasant and tickles the fancy; but, when the test of hard, cold logic is applied to it, it must be acknowledged that there is a difference,—not an inherent one, not a racial one, but a difference [Pg 32] growing out of unequal opportunities in the past. ”

“ Pouring over the venerable mountain terraces, an abundant stream from an abundant and unknown source, into the malarial districts, the genuine African has gradually degenerated into the typical Negro. ”

“ To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and or red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. ”

“ As a matter of fact we cannot take such extreme and largely fanciful stock as typifying that which we may fairly call the Negro race. In the case of no other race is so narrow a definition attempted. A "white" man may be of any color, size, or facial conformation and have endless variety of cranial measurement and physical characteristics. A "yellow" man is perhaps an even vaguer conception. ”

“ Thus he has shown that the characteristic physiognomy of the Negro is found to occur and disappear by nice gradations in strict accordance with the differences of climate throughout the African Continent.
The tendency to variety is very manifest, even from facts under our daily observation. Individuals are common among European nations, who exhibit some one or more of the traits of the Negro, as, for example, his woolly hair, thick lips, &c. Among the Negro races have been born individuals of a perfectly white colour. ”

“ Taking the country over, the Whites who have married Indians have not been of a high class. But the total number of Indians in the United States is so small that their future is probably that of being absorbed in the White race through miscegenation, unless it be for a few tribes cultivating a racial purity of their own and, with favorable economic conditions, perpetuating themselves for a long time to come. ”

“ Negroes are visibly mulattoes. This one third of the total Negro population represents every degree of blood, of color, and of physical demarcation from the fair complexion, light hair, blue eyes, thin lips, and sharp nose of the octoroon, who betrays scarcely a trace of his Negro blood, to the coal-black skin, kinky hair, brown eyes, thick lips, and flat nose of the man who has scarcely a trace of Caucasian blood. It is this gradual sloping off from one race into another which has made it necessary for the law to set artificial lines. ”

“ Between these two extremes is an almost innumerable variety of mixed races, each having its own peculiar designation, indicating the precise proportion of European, Indian, and negro blood in their veins, each marked with its own peculiar physical, intellectual, and moral characteristics; and each finding its chief boast in the nearness of its relation to the white race, and looking down with contempt upon those a shade darker than its own. ”