Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and ResultsTalbot, Eugene S. (Eugene Solomon)
History
Degeneracy: Its Causes, Signs and Results
Talbot, Eugene S. (Eugene Solomon)
Abnormalities, Human; Degeneration; Heredity, Human
The admixture with the white has reduced negro prognathism and
dolichocephaly. It must, however, be admitted that these reductions had
already been begun in Africa. Sir H. H. Johnston, however, fully agrees
with the negro writer[148] who holds that the "pure and unadulterated
Negro cannot, as a rule, advance with any certainty of stability above his
present level of culture; that he requires the admixture of a superior
type of man." But the white and black races are "too widely separated in
type to produce a satisfactory hybrid"; hence Johnston thinks that, "the
admixture of yellow that the Negro requires should come from India, and
that Western Africa and British Central Africa should become the America
of the Hindu. The mixture of the two races would give the Indian the
physical development which he lacks, and he, in his turn, would transmit
to his half Negro offspring the industry, ambition, and aspiration toward
a civilised life which the Negro so markedly lacks."
On the whole, race intermixture will not tend to elevate the race where
there is a decided difference in the state of evolution of the two races,
and moreover especially where, as is usually the case, the mother is of
the inferior race. It must be obvious that, given a negro pelvis and the
head of a white, results damaging to the offspring cannot but occur. And
these results are of a nature likely to be transmitted by heredity. The
same would hold true with other races as well. Although the differences
between the Hawaiian and the white are much less than those between the
negro and the white, it is notorious that while the labours with pure
Hawaiians are easy, those with half-whites are difficult. The same
conditions have been observed from time to time between different breeds
of dogs, whose pelves vary. Therefore it is safe to assume that admixtures
of races of different grades of evolution will, if carried to any great
extent, tend to render the superior race more liable to the action of the
factors producing degeneracy. Dixon[149] has shown that mulatto families
tend to disappear, if they be not crossed with either black or white, and
that the limit of descent is the fourth generation. He has also pointed
out that morbid proclivities and retrogressive tendencies are peculiarly
rife among mulattoes. The fact, long ago shown by Menatta,[150] that the
conflict for existence between brain growth and reproductive organ growth
at puberty, results, in the mulatto, as in the negro and anthropoids, in
the triumph of the reproductive, indicates that the mulatto has factors of
degeneracy which would be fatal to the establishment of an intermediate
type on the environment of the white. While Menatta is in error in
regarding skull mal-development as the cause, when it and brain growth
disturbance are defects due to the same cause, still general observation
supports his opinion that "negro children are sharp, intelligent, and full
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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