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Footkotbs I 2 II
schpoJs in the South in which I had the student teachers fill out blanks indicating their
racial identity or racial mixture of their parents, grandparents, and even more remote
ancestors. I was forced to give up the attempt to discover the amount of admixture of
white blood because the majority of these elementary school teachers regarded themselves,
their parents, and more remote ancestors as of pure Negro descent, despite the fact that
they were obviously of mixed blood. Some could almost pass for white.” (Communica-
tion to the author, June 27, 1942.)
Although Herskovits has made valiant efforts to test the representativeness of his
sample, there has been no attempt to show that the samples of the other groups—^measured
by other investigators—are representative. Measurements made by different anthropolo-
gists, at different times, on different samples of African Negro, American white, and
American Indian groups actually show very conflicting results. In many cases the samples
are very small, and the errors are correspondingly large—especially in relation to the
small differences that actually separate the means and standard deviations of the groups
which are compared. There are no comparisons for many important traits—such as skin
color and hair form—^and even where there are comparable data for the different races,
the American Negroes have more traits which show greater variability than lesser
variability.
We have analyzed Herskovits’ data and can find no striking evidence of lower
American Negro variability. This analysis is partly subjective because of the inadequate
nature of the original data, but is presented here for what it is worth.
Comparison of Variabilities* of the American Neoro Population with the American
White Population and with the West African Neoro Population in
Twenty-three Selected Traits
Number of traits in which the American Negro
population is more or less homogeneous than*.
The American White The African Neg:
Number of traits in which American Negroes are
Population Population
more homogeneous
Number of traits in which American Negroes are
6 4
less homogeneous
Number of traits in which the evidence is con-
7 zo
dieting 5 7
Number of traits in which there are no data 5 a
Total a3 aj
Source: Melville J. Herskovits. The Anthropometry of the American Negro (1930), Chapter 3 and pp.
249-350*
• Variability is measured by the standard deviation in all cases.
The reason that Herskovits offers for the supposed greater homogeneity in the Ameri-
can Negro population is that there is no longer much miscegenation with whites and
Indians, and that the Negroes themselves are intermarrying. These reasons are invalid
even if the data were not: In the first place, the decrease in Negro-white offspring,
c ’cn if it should be accepted as established, is a rather new phenomenon, wKVle the
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