RACE MIXTURE* By K. B. AIKMAN, M.D. M.R.C.P. T HE immense advances in the last So great are the differences between these hundred years in the medical sciences three Primary Races that they are compar- and their application have greatly able to the differences between the species of reduced death-rates, not only in civilized the zoologist rather than to those between the countries, but in savage countries as well. varieties. Therefore, the crosses between As a result there has occurred a general Primary Races will be described as hybrids, increase of population and thus of migration, and the offspring of the more closely related which has had important effects-economic, varieties and of the half-breeds, as mongrels. social, moral, religious and biological-both on the peoples who have provided the EFFECTS OF HYBRIDIZATION emigrants and on those who have received It may be said that the bulk of medical them. opinion is against hybridization between the We must accept it as a fact that large Primary Races and that the best eugenic numbers of different races cannot live side opinion is definitely against it. Thus, Major by side and compete for their daily bread Leonard Darwin wrote: " Theoretical rea- without the production of racial mixture. sons can be adduced for believing that There is one exception to this generalization: inter-breeding between widely divergent in proportion as there is intense antagonism, races may result in the production of types usually religious, the mixing of the races will inferior to both parent stocks: and that be lessened. The practical drawbacks, how- this would be the result of miscegenation is ever, to such a method of race-separation, at all events a common belief." Professor are proved by the history of India. We need Ruggles Gates also supports this view. The merely note that race-mixing will take place biological objection is based upon the fact when opportunity occurs and ask ourselves that, in these crosses, groups of inherited how far is this process desirable. It is a characteristics remain associated or " segre- question that cannot be answered in a word, gate," with the result that the offspring has because the nature of the races crossed is a " chaotic constitution." Each variety of important. man or of animal, in the course of time, THE PRIMARY RACES acquires a. constitution adapted to its particular mode of life and to the diseases to Mankind may be divided into three which it is exposed. When such constitutions Primary Races: (i) The Negro, black- are mixed by inter-breeding, a new con- skinned, with short woolly hair and, typi- stitution is produced, which is not adapted cally, African; (2) The Mongolian, yellow- to the mode of life of either parent and too skinned, with long straight hair and, typi- often is not fitted for any actual environ- cally, Asiatic; (3) The Caucasian, white- ment whatever. skinned, with abundant wavy hair and, As examples of simple skeletal maladapta- typically, European. These groups may be tions, we find hybrids with skulls too large subdivided, but I propose to do so only in to permit of their birth; others with teeth the last case, classifying the Caucasians as too large for their jaws; and others with the Fair Caucasians of the north and west of either the upper or the lower jaw a misfit Europe and the Dark Caucasians of the south with its neighbour. There are, however, and east. many more complicated disabilities, such as * Abridged from a paper read before the Eugenics altered resistance to disease and dishar- Society on June 20th, 1933. monies of the internal secretions. It is found i6i i62 THE EUGENICS REVIEW that the greater the difference between the environment, such as family-life, language, races crossed, the less likely is the result to be education, religion, and the whole standard beneficial: that the Caucasian is nearer to of living and of civilization. We must, then, the Mongolian than either is to the Negro, answer the question: Is the environment and that the Dark Caucasian is nearer to the of the hybrid likely to be as good as that of Mongolian than is the Fair Caucasian, and the child of pure race? The answer is, No! so the Dark Caucasian cross is the less Often it will be worse even than that of the harmful of the two. race of the inferior parent. Too often the These generalizations, to which there may hybrid is illegitimate, hating his white be exceptions, are supported by the Ameri- father and despising his black mother. But can, Professor N. S. Shaler: even if his parents are married and there is " It is not only a general belief that no racial prejudice against mixed marriages hybrids of blacks and whites are less where they live, it is exceedingly unlikely prolific and more liable to diseases than that the environment will be good, for at the pure bloods of either stock, but also least one of the parents is almost certain to that they seldom live so long. Statistics be reckless, improvident, disinclined to lacking on this point, I have questioned a settle down, and with poor ideals of parent- large number of physicians well placed for hood. judgment in this matter. All of them In considering how these factors will agreed that the offspring of a union affect the offspring, it should be recalled between pure black and white parents is, that the character of a child is formed at a on the average, much shorter lived and very early age, and that it is impossible to much less fertile than the race of either over-estimate the importance of the parents parent. My father, a physician of experi- as a factor in his environment. No one, ence and a critical observer, who had spent certainly no one who has been married, more than half a century in Cuba and the could doubt that the married life of parents slave-holding South, stated that, in his of such widely different races as European opinion, he had never seen mulattoes, and Negro would be grossly inharmonious, that is a cross between white and pure with consequent disadvantages to the chil- black, who had attained the age of sixty dren of the marriage. years, and that they were often sterile. The United States presents these problems The judgment of medical men seems to be on the largest scale and has devoted much that when the blood of either race pre- research to them. Indeed, in many States ponderates, and in proportion as it verges the American view is crystallized into laws to one or the other, the longevity and absolutely forbidding marriage between fertility increase or decrease." white and coloured persons. Furthermore, as the statistics of divorce show, family life in the United States is less stable than it was. THE FACTOR OF ENVIRONMENT I attribute this instability, in very large This opinion, then, supports the view that measure, to the mixed blood of the bulk of hybrids are usually worse than mongrels. her citizens. It is said that people of I would, however, remind you that there is foreign birth and their children make up more in this matter of heredity. There is one-third of her population, while another environment as well. While it is no doubt third has had one foreign parent. Under such hereditary effects which interest us in the conditions, it must be increasingly difficult first place, we must cultivate a broad outlook to find two partners for life with similar and give full consideration to those other ideals, tastes and outlook, and there would effects which are scarcely less important be a growing tendency for marriages to result because they are environmental. That at purely from mutual sex-attraction. This is any rate is the eugenic standpoint. Race- indeed a valuable ingredient in married life, mixture may alter many factors in the but marriages of which it is the main RACE MIXTURE I63 foundation are not likely to be a permanent intermingling of different races. Booker T. success. Washington, himself a coloured man and the It is noteworthy that many of the Ameri- founder of the Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, can cases to which I refer are marriages the foremost Negro educational establish- between Europeans of different races. If ment in the world, said that " the problem instability is a characteristic of such mar- is not so much what the white man will do riages, it must be commoner still in the with the Negro, as what the Negro will do hybrid marriages between the Primary with the white man and his civilization." Races, and commoner still when these unions Other serious writers hold that the ultimate occur without a marriage ceremony. future of the United States of America will be to be inhabited by a mixed race of Cau- CROSSES BETWEEN ALLIED RACES casian-Negro hybrids and mongrels with a On the other hand, crosses between races dash of Mongolian from the Red Indian that are closely akin, whether of men or of stock. It happens that South America is animals, may result in superior and vigorous already peopled mainly by such a mixed race, offspring, at least in some cases. This is of although the proportion of American Indian, especial interest to ourselves, because it that is to say of Mongolian, is higher in most supports the view of such authorities as parts; and, with the South American T. H. Huxley that the races which inter- example of instability, backwardness, politi- mingled in these islands must have been cal and other weaknesses at their door, it is closely allied by blood; for it cannot be small wonder that the white Americans are denied that the intermarriages of all the alarmed for the future of their country, peoples who crossed the North Sea, both quite apart from any emotions which might with each other and with the earlier inhabi- be attributed to race-prejudice. tants of Britain, produced a vigorous and Nor is political instability the only issue, efficient people. for the biological weakness of the hybrid That this kinship may have been closer stock is attested by such an authority as than is popularly supposed is also suggested F. L. Hoffman, of the Prudential Insurance by the fact that, among the more distinct Company of America, who asserts that the nationalities of Europe, it is very difficult to people of mixed race in the United States decide where to place the line dividing those are physically inferior to either the pure who are good or bad for crossing with each white or black. This inferiority, he says, is other. So much is this the case that one shown in their weaker vitality and less authority, Professor Eliot of Harvard, con- resistance to disease. This view is reinforced siders that the marriage of people of different by the interesting observation in the Philip- European races produces children weaker pines, that, among the men of the United and less able than those whose parents States' Forces invalided home, the ratio of blondes to brunettes was as IOO to I26. belong to the same nation. Moreover, it was the brunettes among whom the proportion of mixed bloods and especi- AMERICAN VIEWS AND EXPERIENCE ally of Negro-white mixtures would be The prejudice and emotion that may be highest, who suffered especially from neuras- aroused by this question of race mixture are thenia and tuberculosis. abundantly shown in the diametrically opposed opinions, expressed with the great- MONGOLIAN HYBRIDS est vehemence, which may be found in the When from the Caucasian-Negro hybrid copious (mainly American) literature on the we tum to the Caucasian-Mongolian, we find subject. This vast literature, these prejudices (according to Dr. J. A. Mj0en, of Norway, and emotions, not only give a measure of the who has made a special study of the hybrids importance of the problems concerned, but between the Lapps, who are Mongolians, and illustrate one of the drawbacks to the close the Scandinavians, who are exceptionally 164 THE EUGENICS REVIEW pure Fair-Caucasians) that the offspring are of the nation produced by the Negroes and inferior to either of their parents. " They hybrids. are often mentally and physically unsound; It is not generally realized how great is they are more likely to be a burden on the this effect already. It is likely to become State, both from moral and physical in- even greater. Not only because the number firmity; they are far more subject to tuber- of people with some negro blood in their veins culosis." He urges that " until we have is increasing (and I would remind you that more definite knowledge of the effect of there are some twelve million Negroes and race-crossings, we shall certainly do our coloured persons in the States), but also best to avoid crossings between widely because the Negro is increasing in material different races." " Crossings," he repeats, prosperity and in education. It will become " between widely different races can lower progressively more difficult to limit his the physiological and mental level." political power in the Southern States and Professor H. Lundborg, of Sweden, sup- his political power in the North is much ports this view and urges that " we must also greater than it was before the war. Little pay great attention to immigration so that wonder, then, that there are many Americans inferior individuals belonging to foreign who feel that all is not well with their races cannot enter the country and settle culture, art, music, sexual-morality, family- without any hindrance. A mixture between life and religion, and who attribute much of nations who, from a race-biological point of the alleged deterioration to the effect of the view, stand high and others containing lower extraordinary mixture of races and colours race-elements is certainly to be condemned." and unassimilated aliens present in the In connection with the Mongolian-Negro " Melting Pot," as Israel Zangwill termed hybrid, there is little recent scientific the United States. observation. As the Mongolian is closer, biologically, to the Negro than is the A CONTROLLED EXPERIMENT Caucasian, my impression is that the Mon- But for those who feel that we cannot yet golian-Negro cross is less detrimental. Cases see the end of the greatest experiment on occur, for example in Jamaica, but they are earth in race-mixing, a striking historical not regarded with enthusiasm, either socially case exists in the fate of the people of or biologically. the Northern Kingdom of Israel, after they began freely to intermarry with foreigners. It may be recalled how they rapidly forsook SOCIOLOGICAL PROBLEM OF RACE their religion and became idolaters, soon MIXTURE acquiring all the vices of the surrounding That is the biological side, but we must nations and losing their own virtues. They remember that immigration of different deteriorated until they became so weak that races leads to the complication of a whole they fell a prey to their neighbours, the host of administrative problems which are Assyrians. Later, the same thing happened all too difficult already in modem civiliza- to the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The tion. One need only instance the segregation prophet Nehemiah well knew both the direct of races, as in the " Jim Crow " cars on and the indirect effects of race-mixture, and railways in the Southern States; the racial it was not without good reason that he cried friction which often expresses itself in lynch- to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, after their ings; the economic problems and trade return from Babylon: " Shall we then disputes due to wage-cutting and to different hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to standards of living; the legal problems, trespass against our God in marrying strange often of the most distressing kind, due to women" (xiii, 27). The parallelism is strik- laws in the United States rendering illegal ing. The same sequence of events occurred marriages between white and coloured per- both in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and sons, and the profound effect upon the life then, more than a century later, in the RACE MIXTURE I65 Southern Kingdom of Judahl: race-mixture, exclude the Mongolian and the Negro races deterioration; defeat and captivity. from their countries. I need only refer to Here we have two clean scientific experi- recent legislation in Canada, Australia and ments, both on a nation-wide scale. The the United States to show this. But this is second may be regarded as a control. Both much more than an Imperial problem, it produced the same result and clearly demon- affects the future of the white race itself and strated cause and effect. If, in Palestine, the through it the future of civilization. result of this mixing of rather similar races The Report of the Census Director of was unfavourable, which cannot be denied, South Africa stated that, unless increased by we should expect an even less favourable accessions from abroad, the European race result when the primary races are crossed. in South Africa " must for ever abandon the And, indeed, we find that our deductions are prospect of maintaining a white civilization, justified, and that when a similar experi- except as a proportionately diminishing ment is made in modern times history repeats minority in face of an increasing and itself. In the United States there was a ultimately overwhelming majority. It may people, mainly of Caucasian stock like the then be forced to abandon its domination or Israelites, and like them believing in a even abandon the country." These are the monotheistic religion and enjoying a rela- words of a serious official report and they tively superior civilization. The introduction should make us think. The Negro in the of people of a different race, idolaters and of past has not shown any great genius for a relatively inferior civilization, has led to stable political institutions. The native racial mixture. The result, in the words of states established a century ago in South Professor Van Dyke of Princeton University, Africa ended in collapse. The Black Repub- is " perhaps the greatest and most perplexing lics of Hayti and Santo Domingo in the problem that any nation has ever had to West Indies are examples of Negro rule after face." While W. P. Livingstone declared, a considerable degree of white influence and " so gigantic does the problem appear, so their record is one of wholesale massacre. difficult of peaceful solution, that the nation Even in Liberia, at the present day, slavery is helpless in face of it. . . . It remains, and torture are common. Thus, there is what it has been for a century, the darkest good reason to fear that if Africa is to fall and most menacing cloud on the horizon of back under Negro rule, it will deserve its national life." Can it be doubted that the name-the Dark Continent. many Americans who agree with these When we turn to the Mongolian races of writers wish that their nation had devoted Asia, we must recognize that, speaking more time in the past to the study of practically, they are the most serious eugenics and ethnology and had acted on its menace to the Caucasian race. Even now results ? we are feeling severely the commercial competition of one of them and there is POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE nothing incredible in the idea of another Any race which is in possession of a land invasion of Europe from the East. It has should take all these facts into consideration. happened several times before, and evidences Such a race is morally bound to give the of these invasions remain, not only in closest attention to the effects of race- written history, but in the Hungarians and migration, not only as it affects the present the Lapps, who are Mongolians, and in the generation of its citizens, but as it affects the Alpine Sub-race which is Asiatic in origin. future generations, both as regards their We have all heard of the Yellow Peril, and heredity and their environment. a recent writer expresses his opinion of its It is surely of great significance that all the reality in three words-" Ex oriente-Nox ! " peoples of our own Celtic-Anglo-Saxon stock That is one view of the ethnological future. who have had the most practical experience For us it is a gloomy one, but there is of these problems are doing their utmost to another-and you may take your choice- i66 THE EUGENICS REVIEW which is that the world will ultimately be We have seen that the effects of hybridiza- peopled by an intimate compound of white tion between the Primary Races are bad, both and yellow and black. It may be! Some biologically and socially, and that they are people profess to look forward gladly to that likely to be especially bad if one race is time when national rivalries shall be no more, primitive, while the other is in an advanced because nations will have ceased to provide state of civilization. that variety which is the spice of life, all Among primitive peoples of the same sunk into a monotonous morass having the Primary Race, there appears to be less colour of coffee and milk. But if these objection to intermarriage. Biologically, alternatives are to be avoided-and I hope there may be an accession of hybrid vigour that this is still possible-it can only be and the production of more efficient types: through our studying the problems of race- on the other hand, there may be degenera- mixture and by acting before it is too late. tion. In the present state of our knowledge The impression I have formed is that, until we cannot predict the result and so are not our real knowledge of heredity has made justified in encouraging such unions. We very great advances, any policy of encourag- must bear in mind that these Primary Races ing racial mixtures is a gamble which is are capable of much subdivision and we unjustified. Our progress will be more must carefully study the mass of material certain and more rapid if we apply the which is available; if only because this is principles of positive and of negative eugenics essential to any intelligently planmed scheme to the races which already exist. Eugenists of Empire migration. are absolutely confident that all these races Socially, intermarriages between some of can be improved biologically and no one these primitive peoples may be unobjection- denies that they are also capable of improve- able, because they are sufficiently primitive ment socially and environmentally. to have escaped the devastating complexities of civilization, but each case must be THE NEED FOR " SEGREGATION " considered on its merits. Difficult as it undoubtedly is, some form Among civilized peoples of the same of mass-segregation of races seems to be Primary Race, intermarriage is less desirable desirable but, by this term, I do not mean than is commonly thought. Biologically, complete segregation. The ideal would there are the same possibilities of hybrid seem to be that teachers, administrators, vigour and of degeneration and the distinc- judges and doctors should have access to the tion between Fair Caucasians and Dark more backward races and that interchange Caucasians is probably important. Socially, of ideas should be allowed full play. In this however, the complexities of the civilized way, each people would make its contribu- mind militate against the harmony of such tion to the culture of the world and would married lives and this must have great have the opportunity of fuller development. weight with the eugenist. If some of these races showed themselves Much of what I have said may be sum- more fitted than others to certain districts marized in one verse of Kipling's poem, of the world and proved their survival value, The Stranger." they would tend to spread and the present "This was my father's belief inhabitants of these districts would in time And this is also mine: be reduced to vanishing point. This has Let the corn be all one sheaf been the course of biological progress in the And the grapes be all one vine, past and it is still its truest course in the Ere our children's teeth are set on edge present state of our knowledge. By bitter bread and wine."

Eugenics Review, Vol. XXV, No. 8.