“I have presented enough I think … to illustrate what an intensely sensuous and lascivious race the Negro race is—utterly lacking in sexual chastity …”19
William Benjamin Smith, late professor of philosophy, Tulane University: “At no time have two such distinct races each numbered by the millions, the one representing the highest stage of civilization and advancement, the other practically but a day removed from savagery and cannibalism, been thrown together in the same geographical region and not separated by any natural barriers. And our glorious Anglo-Saxon blood—the flower of the human race—is being polluted by the African taint, beastialized by ‘gorilla damnifications.’ This is a terrible thought to him who reveres the mortality of his ancestors, and prizes above earthly possessions the unblemished caste distinction of a thousand years of Europe’s best culture.”20
Sir Harry Johnston, noted colonial administrator, traveller, and authority on the Negro: “He (the Negro) has certainly been endowed by nature with a degree of race fertility probably far surpassing that of the European, Asiatic, and American Indian living under conditions similarly unfavorable to the struggle for existence. Those few scientific men in Britain, Germany, France, the United States and Brazil, who have striven to understand the anthropology of the Negro and to compare it with the white man are rather inclined than otherwise to argue now that the Negro and the Negroids have contributed in the past and still more may contribute in the future, a very important quota to the whole sum of humanity—an element of soundness and stability in physical development and certain mental qualities which the perfect man of, let us say, twenty or twenty-two centuries after Christ, cannot afford to do without.”21
Dr. J. B. Lacerda, Director, National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: “Gallon’s deduction in regard to hybridity in animals cannot be wholly applied to human half-breeds. In the case of man there is an inheritance of moral and intellectual qualities that follows no fixed and absolute rules. Under the influence of agencies of which we do not know the nature, the intellectual qualities, often reach in the mixed progeny of the white and black a degree of superiority which cannot be explained in terms of heredity either remote or proximate. Some unknown force gives rise in them to an intelligence that is capable of developing to a pitch neither of the parents could reach. It is, in fact common to find as the offspring of a white of very mediocre intelligence mated with a Negress of the lowest grade of culture an individual of considerable intellectual powers; just as if one of the effects of crossing in the case of man was precisely to improve the intelligence, or the moral and reflective qualities which distinguish individuals of the two races crossed.”22
J. W. Gregory, British anthropologist :”The extreme view of some American writers that ‘no race has maintained its civilization when tainted even slightly with African blood,’ need not be accepted; but in view of the debt that the world owes to the northern section of the white race—its dilution to the extent that would take place in the United States by the absorption of all its Negroes would be a disaster to humanity, yet this occurrence is probable. Although I recognize that nothing seems to rouse more intense indignation among some Americans than the idea that racial intermixture is taking place in their country to any serious extent, the evidence seems to me to be overwhelming to support those who like Prof. Bowman (1924, p. 17) report that the intermixture of the races goes on with increasing momentum.”23
H. B. Fantham, professor of zoology, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, “Intermarriage between white and black seems invariably to induce degeneration. The white becomes more animal-like, less energetic, more careless …
“White society long ago instinctively reached the conclusion that intermarriage between white and black must be banned.”24
Otto Klineberg, professor of psychology, Columbia University: “Little can be said with any definiteness either in favor of or against race mixture … Miscegenation as such is biologically neither good nor bad; its effects depend entirely upon the health and vigor of the individuals, who enter into the mixture. The observed effects of race crossing appear to depend very much more on social than on biological factors.” He also says, “Miscegenation between all racial groups has been going on since the beginning of history.”25 Luther Burbank, plant wizard (1849-1926), holding that “Nature does not approve of crosses” between races as have in “the ages grown widely apart” from the white as the Negro and the Mongolian, says: “No permanent results have been generally achieved, for example, through the commingling of Mongolians and Aryan blood, or of Aryan and Negro. I have said before and I say it again, that part of America’s greatness and part of our country’s possibilities for influence and leadership in the world are due to the crossing of races—the mixing of blood. But … there is a limit in the crossing of diverse strains beyond which it is not politic to go.”26
M. F. Ashley Montagu, Department of Anatomy, Hahnemann Medical School and Hospital: “One of the most strongly entrenched of popular superstitions is that interbreeding, or crossing between “races” results in inferior offspring, and that the greater part of such crossings leads to degeneration of the stock. The commonly employed stereotype has it that the half-caste inherits all the bad and none of the good qualities of the parent stocks. These bad qualities the half-breed is said to transmit to his offspring so that there is produced a very gradual and a very definite mental and physical deterioration within the group, finally resulting in complete infertility …
“As is the case with most of the evils which have been attributed to so-called miscegenation, or race mixture, there is not one particle of truth in any of these statements. Such facts as they may have reference to, are in practically every case due to purely social factors …
“There can be little doubt that those who deliver themselves of unfavorable judgments concerning race-crossing are merely expressing their prejudices. For in the framework which encloses the half-caste we are dealing with a conspicuous example of the action of socially depressing factors and not the effects of biological ones. The truth seems to be that far from being deleterious to the resulting offspring and the generations following them, interbreeding between different ethnic groups is from the biological standpoint highly advantageous to mankind.”27
Charles Richet, professor of physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Paris, and Nobel Prize winner: “A white woman should by no means marry a Negro. Even if the signs of his ethnic inferiority is little apparent, they will appear in the children … All mixture of race is detestable … “28a
“I would gladly let my sons marry an Italian, Spanish, German, or English woman, or a Jewess but I would be very much pained if they married a Chinese or a Negro woman … Prejudice, perhaps, but I readily believe that this prejudice would be shared by all the whites even those who criticize me most strongly.”28b“
Lancelot Hogben, mathematician and biologist: “As an experimental scientist I know of only one way of finding out whether mixed marriages are advisable. That is to encourage them where we can assure the offspring the same cultural advantages as children whose parents belong to the same ethnic group.”29
* “Hear and obey although a Negro slave whose head is like a dried grape be appointed to rule over you.” (Al Hadis Chap. 2, para. 108. trans. Fazul Karim. Book 1, p. 231. 1938.) The text says “Ethiopian slave,’ which is correctly translated “Negro” because of the kind of hair mentioned. For slaves who rose to be rulers in Islam see pp. 221-2. Also Volume 1 of Sex and Race, Chaps. 10 and 11.
† For a list of these works see Work, M., Bibliography of the Negro, under the headings, “Slavery and the Bible,’ and “Slavery and the Church.” 1928.
1 Phenomena of Hybridity in the Genus Homo, p. 28. 1864.
2 Yale Review, Jan. 1921. p. 395.
3 Symposium on Race-Mixing conducted by T. Dabney in Baltimore Afro-American, February-April, 1925.
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