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Chapter 5. Race and Ancestry 135
upper class is relatively growing, it can come to include a relatively greater
number of black Negroes without losing many of its mulattoes.
Reproduction differences have, in the main, the same effect on the Negro
group as passing, except that the effect is not so exclusively concentrated on
the extremely light-colored Negroes.® This factor, therefore, enters into
the balance between miscegenation and passing and makes it more probable
that the effects of miscegenation can be fully, or more than fully, counter-
weighted.
Internal miscegenation within the Negro group between individuals
with a varying degree of white ancestry is, and will in the future be, going
on. The result is a tendency toward a slow but continuous equalization of
Negro and white genes in the Negro people, decreasing the relative num-
bers at both the black and white extremes and concentrating the individuals
ever closer to the average. The changes in position of the average itself
will depend upon the balance, referred to above, between white-Negro
miscegenation, on the one hand, and passing and reproductivity differ-
entials, on the other hand.
Immigration of Negroes (and mixed bloods) from the West Indies and
from South America—the latter of which might become more important
in the future—will, in so far as the immigrants enter the country as
Negroes, somewhat change the genetic composition of the Negro people
in a direction dependent upon the genetic constitution of the newcomers.
As the stocks are not very different,** this factor, even if the immigration
should increase, will not effect great changes in the American Negro people.
The three main problems to be stressed in a theoretical analysis starting
out from such considerations as those stated above—assuming immigration
inconsequential, and disregarding the effects on the white population—are:
(1) The interdependence between the various factors. Passing is, for
example, a function of Negro-white and Negro-mulatto miscegenation
and of differential reproductivity.
(2) The position of the average in the various traits which differentiate
whites from Negroes. This position is a function of miscegenation,
passing and differential reproductivity.
(3) The homogeneity of the Negro population. The degree of dispersion
around the average is generally a function of internal miscegenation
and, particularly in regard to the form of the frequency curve at the
white end, a function of external miscegenation, passing and differ-
ential reproductivity.
* It has, of course, in contradistinction to passing, no effects at all on the white population.
**
They contain, however, relatively more genes of other original African stocks than the
“true Negro,” which predominated in the import to the United States, and of different
groups of Indians than those that were to be found in the United States. They also bring
their own mutations and other physical changes of the last four hundred years.
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