A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1
John Stuart Mill · en
If we begin with 1810, the first census year after the constitutional
suppression of the slave trade, we see from this table that the growth
of the Negro element followed the ordinary law of population, viz: a
gradual decline in the rate of increase. In 70 years the decennial rate
of increase declined from about 30 per cent to 22 per cent. But from
1880 to 1890 there was a _per saltum_ decrease from 22 to 13 per
cent--that is, the decline in ten years was equal to that of the
previous seventy. And all this has happened during an era of profound
peace and prosperity, when the Negro population was subject to no great
perturbing influences. When a number of observations follow with
reasonable uniformity a fixed law, but a single result deviates widely
from this law it is usual to suspect the accuracy of the discrepant
observation. The author nowhere assigns any adequate cause for this
sudden "slump" in the increase of the colored population. Instead of
attributing it, in part at least, to the probable imperfection of the
eleventh census, he relies wholly upon a blind force recently discovered
and named by him "race traits and tendencies." The capriciousness of
this new factor, in that it may suspend operation indefinitely or break
loose in a day, does not seem to have occurred to the author, at least
it does not seem to affect the confident assurance with which he relies
upon it. As has been shrewdly remarked by an able reviewer, "It would
seem incumbent on him (Mr. Hoffman) further to prove that these race
traits, after being held in abeyance for at least a century, first took
decisive action in the decade 1880 to 1890."[12]
In 1810 there were 1,377,808 Negroes in the United States. In 80 years
this number had swollen to at least 7,470,040, and that, too, without
reinforcement from outside immigration. It more than quintupled itself
in eight decades. Does it not require much fuller demonstration than the
author anywhere presents to convince the ordinary mind that a people
that has shown such physical vitality for so long a period, has all at
once, in a single decade, become comparatively infecund and threatened
with extinction?