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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Race - 6. Racial Characteristics - 1. Physical Traits - 2. Biological Susceptibility to Disease
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140 An American Dilemma
of the Negro despite the fact that no connection has been proved between
cranial capacity and mental capacity.
Certain traits are found only in popular beliefs and have no foundation
at all in fact. Such are the beliefs that the time of suture closure in the
brain case of the Negro is earlier than that of the Caucasoid, that the
Negroes hands and feet are larger, and that his forehead slopes more. It
would be instructive to trace the psychological significance of these and
other false beliefs to those who hold them.® To the same category belongs
the belief that the Negro has different vocal cords. This is associated with
the rather unique pronunciation and speech habits of a large proportion
of the Negro population.**
Certain common beliefs have as yet not been checked by scientific re-
search. This is, for instance, true of the beliefs that male Negroes have
extraordinarily large genitalia and all Negroes a peculiar odor.® These
beliefs have a strategic function in the justification of the American caste
system.® Occasionally even social scientists express the stereotypes with no
evidence behind them. These beliefs are certainly not ^^the cause” of race
prejudice, but they enter into Its fixation.
Since measurements of the American Negro are intended to be those
of the average individual, and since the majority of American Negroes
are mulattoes, the traits measured are predominantly those of mulattoes.
Little is known of the actual mechanism of inheritance of the various traits
when races cross, except that it is far from being simple Mendelian inherit-
ance. Anthropologists who have studied the biological effects of miscegena-
tion have been forced to use the indirect technique of observing what
differences are found on the average between persons of varying degrees of
white blood. They find the changes in traits from those of the pure Negro
type to be roughly proportional,® on the whole, to the amount of admixture
of white blood.’®
Little is known about the functional correlates of the physical traits of
Negroes, although it might be expected that there are some. There has
been some speculation, for example, as to what anatomical traits of Negroes
cause their supposed superiority in athletics, but no one has yet succeeded
in proving any hypothesis, and, therefore, it is not known whether the
superiority, if it exists, has a genetic basis or not."
2. Biological Susceptibility to Disease
There is one type of physical trait which has not usually been discussed
by anthropologists but which has occupied medical students for generations
• See Chapter 4, Section 7.
^Such cultural differences will be discussed in Chapter 44.
* See Chapter 4, Section 7, and Chapter aS, Section 5.
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