Root race

“ At least five distinct races are, as we know, universally recognized by ethnographers, — namely, the yellow or Asiatic race, the brown or Malays, the copper-colored or American-Indian, the negro or African, and,the Caucasian or white race. ”

“ Do any human races really exist? I see white men, red men, and black men. But, they do not constitute races; they are merely varieties of the same race, of the same species, which form together fruitful unions and intermingle without ceasing. A fortiori, the man of learning knows not several yellow races or several white races. Human beings invent, however, races in pursuance of their vanity, their hatred, or their greed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Racial Heredity of the Negro.—It is generally agreed by anthropologists and biologists that mankind constitutes but a single species, developed from a single pre-human anthropoid stock. The various races of mankind have had, therefore, a common origin, but having developed in different geographical areas they each present certain peculiar racial traits adapting each to the environment in which it was developed. Now, the negro race is that part of mankind which was developed in the tropics. ”

“ Not only an antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher, my father brought to bear on all these grave points the various speculations involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race in perfection is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture; how all mixed races have been the most intelligent; how, in proportion as local circumstance and religious faith permitted the early fusion of different tribes, races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilization. ”

“ So far as we can make out, the savant has deceived himself by conjuring with the words "people" and "race." The question was, whether the Caucasian, "the white race," the great civilization-building race, in any or in all of its "peoples," is superior to the "races" African, Australian, and the like, that have produced no civilizations? If not, "why, then, did the white race alone develop a civilization which is sweeping the whole world, etc.?" ”

“ Yet in civilised countries an occasional group of pure racial stock may be discovered in isolated localities, as though they had found refuge, so to speak, from the vortex of civilisation which is engulfing the races. Throughout the history of humanity we may watch this absorption of racial and morphological characteristics, and the formation of more and more intimate intermixtures, leading to the final disappearance of the original types of race. ”

“ Anyone at all familiar with the hopes and aspirations of the colored race, as expressed, for instance, in their prolific newspaper literature, must have perceived the wonderful inspiration which they have drawn from the career of a few distinguished Europeans of partial Negro ancestry, who have felt no call, by way of social prejudice, to deny or conceal their origin, or to refuse their sympathy to those who need it so much. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Few among the learned in this present age, and less of the unlearned, know anything about the origin of the colored race in the United States. They are completely in the dark as to their ancestry, as a powerful and highly civilized race of people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We should also find representatives of different races on more advanced levels, like the negroes of Central Africa, the Indians of the Southwestern pueblos, and the Polynesians; and in our present period we may find representatives of the most diverse races taking part in the highest types of civilization. Thus it will be seen that there is no close relation between race and culture. ”

“ If the number of original contributions which it has made to the world's civilization is any fair criterion of the relative value of a race, then the Negro race must be placed very near zero on the scale. ”

“ The Negro race manifests this peculiar trait of character: it is a race, I think I may say, remarkably docile, affectionate, easily attached, and when attached, ardently devoted—a race with the strongest religious feelings, sentiments, and emotions—a race plastic in nature, with a native mobility and adaptedness which at once saves them from those deadly shocks and antagonisms which destroy races when placed in juxtaposition with elements diverse from and stronger than their own—a race patient and enduring ”

“ It is history as influenced by the hereditary impulses, predispositions and tendencies which, as highly distinctive racial traits, date back many thousands of years and were originally formed when man was still in the tribal state, long before the advent of civilization. ”

“ There, too, the Black man and the Red, whose destinies seemed to separate them wide as the world’s hemispheres, have been brought together to try whether the African is more enduring than the indigenous American on his own soil; to try for us, also, as could no otherwise be tried, questions of amalgamation and hybridity, of development and perpetuity of varieties, of a dominant, a savage, and a servile race. ”

“ Where two distinct species are located side by side history and biology teach that but one of two things can happen; either one race drives the other out, as the Americans exterminated the Indians and as the Negroes are now replacing the whites in various parts of the South; or else they amalgamate and form a population of race bastards in which the lower type ultimately preponderates. ”

“ Do the characteristics which we have given of the white race, belong equally, to all three of the sons of Noah—Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their descendants? If they do, then the black race, belong to, and have since the flood at least, belonged to another and totally different race of men. ”

“ The anthropologist recognises various elements marking diversity of race in stature, colour, proportion of limbs, conformation of skull, colour and other characteristics of eye and hair. He also notes no less distinctively the diverse intellectual and moral aptitudes. Noticeable as are the diversities of national type in Europe, the range of variation is trifling when compared with the conditions under which the White, Red, and Black races have met and intermingled in the West Indies and in North and South America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This transmission of racial traits we call race heredity.
Then each race has its own traits, physical or mental, which we recognize as national, and so speak of them. We always mention thrift as an attribute of the Teutonic nations; the Irishman we characterize as witty and pugnacious; the Frenchman as polite; the American as progressive.
Each individual has not only his human inheritance, his race inheritance and his national characteristics, but he has also an endowment of family traits. ”

“ In the first place, it is impossible to escape the profound impression that we have made a mistake in our estimate of his evolution as a race, in attempting to apply to him the same treatment for the development of character that we would apply to a race more highly organized. Has he developed the race consciousness, the race soul, as I said before, a collective soul, which so strongly marks other races more or less civilized according to our standards? ”

“ The origin of the African race has provoked more criticism than any other of the various races of man on the globe. Speculation has exhausted itself in trying to account for the Negro’s color, features, and hair, that distinguish him in such a marked manner from the rest of the human family. ”

“ And not only this, but they take on strongly marked characteristics of the numerous races on earth temporarily too; the materialized entities of the white races differing quite as markedly from those of the yellow or brown races, as do these from the black races; and in speaking to us each one will communicate in the particular language only which is characteristic of his race on earth. ”

“ There was, therefore, a process of natural selection by which the best, the most representative verses, those which most adequately expressed the profounder and more permanent moods and sentiments of the Negro were preserved and became part of the permanent tradition of the race. ”

“ We find upon the world's stage today eight distinctly differentiated races, in the sense in which History tells us the word must be used. They are, the Slavs of eastern Europe, the Teutons of middle Europe, the English of Great Britain and America, the Romance nations of Southern and Western Europe, the Negroes of Africa and America, the Semitic people of Western Asia and Northern Africa, the Hindoos of Central Asia and the Mongolians of Eastern Asia. There are, of course, other minor race groups, as the American Indians, the Esquimaux and the South Sea Islanders ”

“ Taking the shape of the skull, the texture of the hair, the pigment of the skin and general structural characters into account, ethnographers have concluded that there are four elementary divisions of mankind, known particularly as the Negro or Black race, the Mongolic or Yellow race, the Caucasic or White race and the American or Red race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it not a familiar fact that racial characteristics are persistent?—that one race is stupid and indocile, another quick and intelligent? Does not each generation of a race inherit the intellectual qualities of the preceding generation? ”

“ Is the race-conflict so irrepressible in this country that they can not ever be merged in the white race? Or is it wiser for science and the law to recognize, in the process of the formation of races, that they are strictly a distinct and intermediate race? Already, in proportion to numbers, as many of them stand as high in intellectual development as white persons of the same class. ”

“ The Races of Mankind in the Historic Period.— Distinctions in bodily characteristics, such as form, color, and features, divide the human species into three chief types or races, known as the Black or Ethiopian Race, the Yellow or Mongolian Race, and the White or Caucasian Race. ”

“ This by no means implies that there are no such things as race-differences of capacity and disposition, even as there are wide individual differences between members of the same race: the white man makes, perhaps, a somewhat peculiar kind of Indian, the African a peculiar kind of American; yet each acquires the civilization, language included, of the race with which he grows up, and shows his race-characteristics, as they their individual characteristics, inside of that. ”

“ The permanent survival of a disparate type in America perpetuating the evidences of the interblending of the Red and White races may be doubted. That some ineffaceable results will remain I cannot doubt; but the enormous disparity in numbers between the millions of European nationalities, and the little remnant of the native race brought in contact with them, precludes the possibility of results such as have perpetuated in the modern races of Europe elements derived from some of its earliest savage tribes. ”

“ Modern anthropology has demonstrated that racial lines are not only absolutely independent of both national and linguistic groupings, but that in many cases these racial lines cut through them at sharp angles and correspond closely with the divisions of social cleavage. The great lesson of the science of race is the immutability of somatological or bodily characters, with which is closely associated the immutability of psychical predispositions and impulses. ”

“ In short, we are spectators of this tendency: a fusion or intermixture of characteristics that is tending to establish one single human type, which is no longer an original racial type, but the type of civilisation. It is the unique race, the resultant human race, the product of the fusion of races and the triumph of all the elements of beauty over the disappearance of those ugly forms which were characteristic of primitive races.
Are the dominant forces in the human germinative cells those which bring a contribution of beauty? ”