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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 5. Race and Ancestry - 1. The American Definition of “Negro”
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ii6 An American Dilemma
other differences in regard to less observable facts, scientists now stress the
unity of mankind and are skeptical of differences until they are demon-
strated. The old custom of describing population groups in terms of ^^types”
—the so-called "Nordic’’ type, for instance—which were not true types in
the statistical sense but idealized, or caricatured, types, is being discredited.
Even the use of average or modal figures for measuring traits is beginning
to be considered scientifically unsatisfactory. It is recognized that the
representation of the traits of a group should be made in the form of curves
of frequency distribution or scatter diagrams. An absolutistic metaphysical
system of opportunistic beliefs is, in this way, gradually being demolished,
and humble, relativistic scientific knowledge raised on its ruins. Qualitative
conceptions are translated into quantitative ones. This is a common trend of
modern scientific development.
The common belief that the races could be ordered as higher or lower in
an evolutionary series, so that Negroids could be deemed more ape-like than
Caucasoids, is entirely discredited. It is now commonly assumed by expert
opinion that man—the species Homo safiens—evolved only once, and
that such average differences as now exist between men are due to living
under different geographic conditions after having separated from the com-
mon place of origin. Independent of this hypothesis, which, of course, can
hardly be checked, it is a fact that the Negro is no more akin to the apes
than the white man is. Of the four most noticeable characteristics generally
ascribed to the average or typical Negro—dark skin, broad nose, woolly
hair, thick lips—only the first two make him slightly more similar to the
apes. The white man’s thin lips and straight hair are, on the other hand,
much nearer to the traits of the apes.
When all this is said, when anticipating some later conclusions, it is
recognized that the great majority of American Negroes have Caucasoid
ancestry as well as Negroid, and when it is also recognized that modern
psychological research has discounted the previously held opinions that
there are great innate mental differentials between racially defined popula-
tion groups, it still does not follow that the race concept is unimportant In
the Negro problem, and that continued and intensified ethnological, bio-
logical, and psychological research on the American Negro people is
unnecessary. In spite of all heterogeneity, the average white man’s unmis-
takable observation is that most Negroes in America have dark skin and
woolly hairy and he Is, of course, right.
He is also right in ascribing the occurrence of these characteristics to
African ancestry. His delineation of the Negro race might be ever so
arbitrary and scientifically inaccurate j
his ideas about concomitant mental
and moral traits might be fantastic and untenable j
but the fact is that "race”
in his definition is the basis of the social caste system as it exists in America.
Bcc^u$e of social visibility and of community knowledge of the parentage
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