The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the UnbornSmith, William Benjamin
History
The Color Line: A Brief in Behalf of the Unborn
Smith, William Benjamin
African Americans
The general inferiority of the mixed stock has passed into a proverb
even in Africa, where it is said: "A god created the whites; I know not
who created the blacks; certainly a devil created the mongrels." So
reports Livingstone (quoted by Lombroso), and adds that he had seen but
one Portuguese Mestizo of robust health. In Brazil it is held that the
mingling of Indian with Latin blood has not produced evil results,[14]
but everywhere else such remote crossings have been more or less
disastrous. Strikingly is this the case with the Zambos--the mixture of
Indian and Negro; they are mainly degenerates and degraded. Thus E. G.
Squier, writing of Honduras in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XII.,
says: "A small part of the coast, above Cape Gracias, is occupied by
the Sambos, a mixed race of Indians and Negroes, which, however, is
fast disappearing." In Mexico, Central and South America, the
half-breeds are everywhere stationary or declining. In India the
Eurasians (20,000 in Calcutta) "touch a level of degradation which is
far lower than any reached by the pure heathen about them. They inherit
defects more conspicuously than virtues from both races from which they
spring" (Pop. Sci. Mon., Nov., 1892). In Japan the inferior Ainos are
passing away before the superior Japanese. The hybrids are never
healthy or vigorous, and vanish with the third or fourth generation.
Here, in the United States, the testimony is all against the Mulatto.
In a report of the Provost-Marshal General, the opinions of physicians
stand eleven to one against the Mulatto as "scrofulous and
consumptive," "degenerated physically," and the one favourable
judgement reposes on only two instances. The anthropometry of the
Mulatto is decidedly against him. His average lung capacity, the most
significant of measurements, was found by Gould to be only 158.9 cubic
inches against 163.5 for the pure Black, and 184.7 for the White. His
respiration rate was equally unfavourable, being 19 per minute against
17.7 for the pure Black, and 16.4 for the White. We refer, also, to the
testimony of Dr. Shaler (p. 52), that he had never known a Mulatto to
pass threescore. The writer remembers the first use he ever heard of
the word "cachectic;" his father spoke of it as a term generally
applicable to Mulattoes.
[14] But Lapouge (_L'Aryen_): "That immense realm reverting
to barbarism."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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