"Science" is supposed to lend its sanction to race mania, but it is
only "science" as it is understood by very illiterate people that
does anything of the sort--"scientists'" science, in fact. What
science has to tell about "The Races of Man" will be found compactly
set forth by Doctor J. Deinker, in the book published under that
title. [Footnote: See also an excellent paper in the American
Journal of Sociology for March, 1904, The Psychology of Race
Prejudice, by W. I. Thomas.] From that book one may learn the
beginnings of race charity. Save for a few isolated pools of savage
humanity, there is probably no pure race in the whole world. The
great continental populations are all complex mixtures of numerous
and fluctuating types. Even the Jews present every kind of skull
that is supposed to be racially distinctive, a vast range of
complexion--from blackness in Goa, to extreme fairness in
Holland--and a vast mental and physical diversity. Were the Jews
to discontinue all intermarriage with "other races" henceforth
for ever, it would depend upon quite unknown laws of fecundity,
prepotency, and variability, what their final type would be, or,
indeed, whether any particular type would ever prevail over
diversity. And, without going beyond the natives of the British
Isles, one can discover an enormous range of types, tall and short,
straight-haired and curly, fair and dark, supremely intelligent and
unteachably stupid, straightforward, disingenuous, and what not. The
natural tendency is to forget all this range directly "race" comes
under discussion, to take either an average or some quite arbitrary
ideal as the type, and think only of that. The more difficult thing
to do, but the thing that must be done if we are to get just results
in this discussion, is to do one's best to bear the range in
mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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