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1212 An American Dilemma
African tribes, and possibly even the Old Americans, have had less out-breeding than
the American Negroes for a much longer period of time. Secondly, while Negroes with
different physical appearance do marry each other, the predominant tendency is for like
to marry like. Mulattoes—having a greater concentration in the cities and in the upper
income brackets, and having a higher prestige because of their relative physical similarity
to whites—tend to marry each other unless they happen to make a particularly good
match in the darker, more Negroid group. Finally, Herskovits has not even considered
the possibility that, if Negroes were more homogeneous in certain traits, this homogeneity
might be due to greater homogeneity of environment rather than of gene composition.
Thus, in view of the fact that his data for this purpose are inadequate; that it would
seem—a friori—that a recently mixed group would show more variability than a more
genetically isolated group; and that common observation of the most visible traits (color,
hair form, nose breadth, lip thickness) of American Negroes indicate unequivocally that
their range—at least—is greater than the range within the American white population
—in view of all these things, the burden of proof of greater physical homogeneity of
the American Negroes still lies with Herskovits. As far as we know now, the American
Negro population may be becoming a homogeneous brown “race”—and it is to Hers-
kovits’ credit that he has opened up discussion as to this possibility—^but this is a matter
of the speculative future and not of the empirical present.
Although there are no adequate data, apparently, to determine trends in class
differentials in fertility among Negroes, it is probable that they have been increasing
as a Negro upper class has been rising, and as effective contraceptive devices have come
into greater use in this upper class.
Chapter 6. Racial Characteristics
^ C. B. Davenport and A. G. Love, Arm’^ Anthrofology (1921).
^ f’or an evaluation of this and other studies of the physical anthropology of the
Negro, see W. Montague Cobb, “The Physical Constitution of the American Negro,”
Journal of Negro Education (July, 1934)> pp. 340-388.
^ Notable among studies comparing Negro and white traits using small samples has
been that of T. Wingate Todd and Anna Lindala, “Dimensions of the Body: Whites
and American Negroes of Both Sexes,” American Journal of Physical Anthrofology
(July-September, 1928), pp. 35-119. These students had at most 100 cases for each
sex-race group. Even less reliable was the study of Ales HrdliJka, “The Full-Blood
American Negro,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology (July-September, 1928),
pp. 15-33. Hrdlitka had only 20 males and 6 females. In fairness to these authors, it
should be mentioned that they recognize the great limitations of their data, but other
authors have used them without making the same reservations.
*Ales HrdliCka, The Old Americans (1925).
^ lbid,y pp. 5-6. Hrdlicka did include a series of Southern “Engineers” and Appa-
lachian mountaineers in his sample, but he does not say how many.
® This summary is based upon M. F. Ashley-Montagu, “The Origin, Composition
and Physical Characteristics of the American Negro Population,” unpublished manu-
script prepared for this study (1940), and Cobb, of. cit^ pp. 340-388. These authors
have relied mainly on the following primary sources: Davenport and Love, of. cit.\
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