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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 7. Population - 4. Ends and Means of Population Policy
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Chapter 7. Population 169
Rather it is sometimes contended that the Negro’s power would increase
with his numbers, and that the most virile people is the one that survives
in the universal struggle. With the increase in “race pride” and “race con-
sciousness,” which is a consequence of the rising tide of the Negro protest,*
almost every Negro^
who is brought to think ab^ut the froblemy wants the
Negro fo’pulation to be as large as possible. This is sometimes even
expressed in writing. W. Montague Cobb, for instance’, opens his summary
“prescription” for the Negro with the following precepts:
1. He should maintain his high birth rate, observing the conditions of life necessary
to this end. This alone has made him able to increase, in spite of decimating
mortality and hardships. If the tide should turn against him later, strength will be
better than weakness in numbers.
2. He should make a fetish of health. Progressive eradication of tuberculosis,
venereal disease, pneumonia, and maternal and infant mortality, will give him
sounder and more abundant parental stock and offspring.
3. He should cultivate excellence in sports. This spreads healthful habits.^®
While whites and Negroes have widely divergent valuations in regard to
the desirable quantity of the American Negro population, they agree on
the qualitative goal. It is implicit in the American Creed, with its stress on
the value and dignity of the individual human being, that both white and
Negro Americans in frindfie find it desirable to raise the quality of the
Negro feofle Du Bois, for example, criticized those Negroes who
. . . are quite led away by the fallacy of numbers. They want the black race to
survive. They arc cheered by a census return of increasing numbers and a high rate
of increase. They must learn that among human races and groups, as among vegetables,
quality and not mere quantity really counts.^®
Since the biological principles of eugenics cannot be applied until environ-
mental conditions are more equalized,®^ and since the American Creed places
inhibitions in the way of applying eugenics, to improve the quality of the
Negro people means primarily to improve their environmental conditions.
It is true that the average white American does not want to sacrifice much
himself in order to improve the living conditions of Negroes. This is the
explanation of discrimination in public service generally. But on this point
the American Creed is quite clear and explicit, and we can proceed safely on
the value premise that the medical and health facilities andy indeedy all
fublic measures in the field of education, sanitationy housing, nutrition,
hospitalization and so forth, to improve the quality of the population and to
advance individuals and groups physically, mentally, or morally, should
be made just as available for Negroes as for whites in similar circumstances
and with similar needs. This value premise has, in fact, sanction in the
Constitution of the United States.
• See Chapter 35.
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