Mixed Race Studies

Dominican Republic Country Profile

BBC News
2011-12-06

Once ruled by Spain, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, a former French colony.

OVERVIEW…

…The Dominican Republic is inhabited mostly by people of mixed European and African origins. Western influence is seen in the colonial buildings of the capital, Santo Domingo, as well as in art and literature. African heritage is reflected in music. The two heritages blend in the popular song and dance, the merengue.

No blending of fortunes, however, is evident in the distribution of wealth between ethnic groups.

The Dominican Republic is one of the poorest countries in the Caribbean. There is a huge gap between the rich and the poor, with the richest being the white descendants of Spanish settlers, who own most of the land, and the poorest comprising people of African descent. The mixed race majority controls much of the commerce. …

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The Measurement of Negro “Passing”

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 52, Number 1 (July, 1946)
pages 18-22

John H. Burma

Older and popular methods of estimating the number of Negroes who pass over into the white group are no longer to be credited. Considerable misconception exists concerning passing itself, which is more frequently temporary and opportunistic than permanent and complete. In the absence of scientifically accurate counts, the lower estimates of passing are probably more reliable.

Whenever a minority group is oppressed or is the subject of discrimination, some individual members attempt to escape by losing their identity with the minority and becoming absorbed into the majority. In the United States the Negro is such a minority group. In many cases a foreigner may become indistinguishable in a country by adopting the language, customs, and dress of that country. This technique, of

TABLE 1: native whites of native parentage, by Age Groups, for 1900 and 1910

Ages		Populations		Increase or Descrease
1900	1910	1900	1910
0-4…	10-14	5,464,881	5,324,283	-140,589
5-9…	15-19	5,174,220	5,089,055	-85,165
10-14…	20-24	4,660,390	4,682,922	+22,532
15-19…	25-29	4,234,953	4,049,074	-185,879
20-24…	30-34	3,805,609	3,401,601	-404,008

course, avails the Negro little because of his high visibility.

Being a Negro in America is not just a biological matter, it is a legal and social matter as well. It has been declared, by law, how much Negro heredity makes one a Negro; and because of the determination to prevent the infusion of Negro blood into the white group, the law frequently decreed that a person of one thirty-second, one sixty-fourth, or “any discernible amount” of Negro blood was a Negro. This meant that many persons who were legally Negro had so much white blood that they were, biologically, indistinguishable from whites. This, in turn, led to a considerable number of “white Negroes” being mistaken for legal whites and being treated as such. Some of this group, we have long been aware, simply went where they were not personally known and became a permanent part of the white group.

This passing of the legal Negro for white has been well known for over one hundred and fifty years. What we have not been able to ascertain accurately was the number of these legal Negroes who passed as white. This lack of concrete knowledge did not, of course, prevent considerable speculation and opinionated estimates. By the very secrecy which must involve passing, its investigation is almost insuperably hindered, and seldom, if ever, have estimates agreed.

The first, and by far the most widely known, effort to arrive at an unbiased estimate of the number of legal Negroes who have more or less permanently passed into the white group was made by Hornell Hart rather incidentally to a study of migration. His method of analysis was a breakdown of the census returns for native whites of native parentage, by age groups. The reasoning involved hinges on the fact that this group cannot increase. Emigration might logically decrease it, as would deaths, but there should be no increases. Yet, as is seen by Table 1, Hart found a marked increase. In fact, the group who had been between…

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Race—Social or Biological?

International Socialist Review
Volume 21, Number 1 (Winter 1960)
pages 26-27

David Dreiser

Caste, Class & Race, by Oliver Cromwell Cox  Monthly Review Press, New York. 1959. 600 pp.

This penetrating and scholarly work originally appeared in 1948 and it is a well-deserved recognition of the author and a happy occasion for students of race relations that a new edition has appeared.

Dr. Cox has come to grips with the most basic and difficult aspects of the question of racial discrimination, that is, its fundamental nature and origin. He deals with the subject analytically, historically, all with substantial success.

It is evident that he found very early the necessity for proper differentiation of race from other social divisions such as class, caste, estate and nationality. Since identity of race and caste as social relations is the dominant view in academic circles, Dr. Cox has made an independent treatment of caste based on Hindu and other Indian sources. Oddly, the chief proponents of the caste theory of race relations in American sociology, including Gunnar Myrdal, have eschewed any serious study of Indian caste relations.

There is an intimate connection between the theory that caste originated in a supposed racial antipathy between Aryan invaders and Dravidians in ancient India. In exploding this myth, Cox has contributed greatly to the proper understanding of caste as a peculiar social phenomenon in India, and also further to establish that race relations are a conjunctural aspect of history peculiar to capitalism and did not exist in the ancient world anywhere.

Cox treats race strictly as a social relation and not from the viewpoint of physical anthropology. As he points out, the same man may be recognized as a Negro in one country and as a white person in another and enter into race relations in both situations. The assumed races need not be biologically defined. It is enough that they have imputed physical differences which make them distinguishable.

He thus views anthropology as involving another subject with “no necessary relationship with the problem of race relations as sociological phenomena. Race relations developed independently of tests and measurements.” While true, it cannot be concluded so readily that anthropological tests and measurements developed independently of race relations. Cox might have done a great service to probe the extent to which “biological” classification has conformed with and depended on the world system of race relations…

…Cox concludes that the primary need of race relations is subjugation for purposes of exploitation. The maintenance of the relation requires prohibition of intermarriage and other social intercourse. For this segregation is required and from a segregated and economically subject condition race prejudice flows. Prejudice is a by-product and by no means a cause of race relations. From this can be seen the fallacy of all theories of education against prejudice as an answer to the race problem. Cox has presented a valid theoretical basis for the conclusion in action of Negroes everywhere that it is segregation that must be fought first. Education of whites comes in the process or later.

Cox analyses other relations which involve intolerance, but in which the conditions differ. The primary demand that society makes of Jews is that they assimilate. Their religion and culture are designed to unite Jews in resisting assimilation. The Negro is in an opposite situation; he wants to assimilate, but is prevented from doing so although Negroes are among our oldest and most “Americanized” inhabitants.

Intermarriage between castes is generally proscribed as between races but with vital differences. Caste is an organized membership group and an individual may under special circumstances change caste. Offspring of an occasional inter-caste marriage may enter the higher caste. No one can change his race and an offspring of a Negro-white marriage is always a Negro unless indistinguishability permits passing…

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Post-Racial America? Multiracial Identification and the Color Line in the 21st Century

Nanzan Review of American Studies
Volume 30 (2008)
pages 13-31

Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

The United States is more racially diverse than at any point in history. Once a largely black-white society with a distinct color line separating these two groups, the country has moved far beyond black and white due to contemporary immigration. Today, immigrants and their children comprise almost 66 million people, or about 23% of the U. S. population, but unlike the earlier waves of immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America’s recent newcomers have been mainly non-European, with 85% originating from Latin America, Asia, or the Caribbean (Lee and Bean 2004; U. S. Bureau of Census 2002; U. S. Immigration and Naturalization Service 2002). The shift in national origins―from Europe to Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean―is the single most distinctive aspect of the “new immigration” in the United States (Bean and Stevens 2003; Waldinger and Lee 2001).

America’s immigrant newcomers have undeniably altered the racial landscape of the United States. In 1970, Latinos and Asians comprised only 5% and 1% of the U. S. population, but today, they account for 13% and 4%, respectively. The Latino population has grown so rapidly that Latinos now outnumber blacks, and have become the nation’s largest minority group in the United States. While smaller in size, the Asian population is the fastest growing group in the country (Lee and Zhou 2004). America’s Latino and Asian populations are expected to continue to grow so that by 2050, they are projected to constitute 30% and 8% of the U. S. population. Clearly, today’s immigrants have transformed the United States from a largely black-white society to a newly multi-racial one…

…In this paper, I use patterns of multiracial identification as the analytical lens by which I gauge the placement of the contemporary color line in the United States. Multiracial identification speaks volumes about the meaning of race in American society, and in particular, signals where racial group boundaries are fading most rapidly and where they continue to endure. Multiracial reporting is a significant harbinger of racial change because the willingness of an individual to identify in multiracial terms reflects a jettisoning of the exclusive bases of racial categorization that have long marked the construction of race in the United States. It also reflects the diminishing significance of the current American racial scheme, which some sociologists believe will become increasingly less relevant in each generation until it disappears into obscurity….

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Black Mexico: Race and Society from Colonial to Modern Times

University of New Mexico Press
2009
296 pages
6 x 9 in, 21 halftones, 4 maps
paperback ISBN: 978-0-8263-4701-5

Edited by:

Ben Vinson III, Professor of history and Director of the Center for Africana Studies
Johns Hopkins University

Matthew Restall, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History and Director of Latin American Studies
Pennsylvania State University

The essays in this collection build upon a series of conversations and papers that resulted from “New Directions in North American Scholarship on Afro-Mexico,” a symposium conducted at Pennsylvania State University in 2004. The issues addressed include contested historiography, social and economic contributions of Afro-Mexicans, social construction of race and ethnic identity, forms of agency and resistance, and contemporary inquiry into ethnographic work on Afro-Mexican communities. Comprised of a core set of chapters that examine the colonial period and a shorter epilogue addressing the modern era, this volume allows the reader to explore ideas of racial representation from the sixteenth century into the twenty-first.

Contributors:

Joan Bristol, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
Patrick Carroll, Texas A & M University, Corpus Christi
Andrew B. Fisher, Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota
Nicole von Germeten, Oregon State University, Corvallis
Laura A. Lewis, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Jean-Philibert Mobwa Mobwa N’djoli, Congolese native living in Mexico City
Frank “Trey” Proctor III, Denison University, Granville, Ohio
Alva Moore Stevenson, University of California, Los Angeles
Bobby Vaughn, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California

The Tiger Woods phenomenon: a note on biracial identity

The Social Science Journal
Volume 38, Issue 2, Summer 2001
Pages 333-336
DOI: 10.1016/S0362-3319(01)00118-5

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University

Traditional race based models exclude the unique developmental dynamics of biracial Americans such as “Tiger” Woods. Conversely, a substantial portion of the scholarly literature emphasizes social experience rather than physiological attributes as the keystone to individual identity development. In the aftermath biracial Americans are conflicted. In an effort to ensure their psychic health social scientist scholars and practitioners must inculcate a human development across the life span model to accommodate the nation’s increasing level of racial and cultural miscegenation.

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A Mestizo and Tropical Country: The Creation of the Official Image of Independent Brazil

European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Number 80 (April 2006) Constructing Ethnic Labels
pages 25-42

Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, Professor of Sociology
University of São Paulo, Brazil

The objective of this article is to consider how Brazil, in the first official images of it as a nation, was characterized by symbols that reflected its singularity and universality: a tropical monarchy with representations of indigenous peoples, flora and fauna mixed with the traditional elements of European monarchies. This makes use of original iconographic sources and texts emblematic of the Brazilian imperial period, which stretched from 1822 to 1889. There are hundreds of images, texts, coins, coats of arms, etc., that picture the country from the standpoint of miscegenation, while at the same time exposing a hierarchy of peoples: in a nation where 90 per cent of the population were African slaves, the selected national representation emphasized the environment of Brazil and its indigenous peoples.

In 1838, sixteen years after the political independence of Brazil, a new institution was created—the IHGB (Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute)—dedicated to the drafting of a new historical agenda, one more clearly identified with the young country now emancipated from its former Portuguese metropolis. Even more interesting was its first open competition, organized in 1844, whose title, ‘How to write the History of Brazil’, already revealed the institution’s intentions. First prize went to the acclaimed German scientist Karl von Martius, who advocated the idea that the country should define itself through its unrivalled mix of peoples and colours: ‘The focal point for the historian ought to be to show how, in the development of Brazil, established conditions are to be found for the perfecting of the three human races, placed here side by side in a manner hitherto unknown’. Drawing upon the metaphor of the Portuguese heritage as a powerful river that should ‘absorb the streams of the races India and Ethiopica’, he envisaged the emergence of a Brazil characterized by its unique miscegenation. It is no accident that the then recently installed Brazilian monarchy invested so much in a tropical symbology that mixed the traditional elements of European monarchies with some indigenous peoples and a few Blacks, and included a lot of fruit. Though it was complicated to highlight the Black participation because of the memory of slavery, this did not prevent the royalty from painting a picture of a country characterized by its own distinct racial colouration.

And thus was provided a model through which to think ‘and invent’ a local history, one formed from the view of the foreigner and the good old rigmarole of the three races. The Empire was prodigious in the production of a series of official images linking the State with representations of a miscegenated nation. From the first engraving produced by the independent country—the ‘Stage Curtain’, painted by the French Neo-Classic artist Debret in 1822—up to the paintings celebrating abolition in 1888, the Empire took great care to produce a well-woven representation. There are hundreds of images, texts, coins, coats of arms, etc., that picture the country from the standpoint of miscegenation as much as they expose a hierarchy: in a nation where 90 per cent of the population were African slaves, the selected national representation emphasized nature and the indigenous peoples…

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The Negro Problem: Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States from a South African Point of View by M. S. Evans; The Mulatto in the United States, Including a Study of the Role of Mixed-Blood Races throughout the World by E. B. Reuter Review by: Ellsworth Huntington

Geographical Review
Volume 11, Number 2 (April, 1921)
pages 311-313

Ellsworth Huntington, Professor of Geography
Yale University

The Negro Problem

M. S. EVANS. Black and White in the Southern States: A Study of the Race Problem in the United States from a South African Point of View. xii and 299 pp.; map, bibliogr., index. Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York, 1915. $2.25. 9 x 6 inches.

E. B. REUTER. The Mulatto in the United States, including a Study of the Role of Mixed-Blood Races throughout the World. 417 pp.; indexes. Richard G. Badger, Boston, 1918. $2.50. 8 x 5 inches.

Many people have written on the problem of the negro, but it is doubtful whether anyone has written with a truer balance than Mr. Evans. His “Black and White in South-East Africa” is the standard book on the problem in Africa, and the present book on the United States is equally good. According to Mr. Evans, “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour line.” His method of solving it is first that the white man should really know the negro…

…In the Geographical Review for October last there appeared a review of Houghton’s book on the Metis or French-Indian half-breeds. The gist of the book was that the “Indians” who have distinguished themselves have been almost wholly half-breeds. By far the best results have come from intermarriages of scions of the French nobility with the daughters of chiefs. In other words heredity is of dominant importance. It is most interesting to find that in Mr. Reuter’s book on the mulatto in the United States the general conclusion is the same. The method, however, is so much more exact than in any previous study of this subject that the book may almost be considered the final word.

The first part of Mr. Reuter’s book is a straightforward account of the races of mixed blood in all parts of the world and at all times. This is interesting and valuable for reference but contains little that is new. Then follows a discussion of types of mulattoes or mixed races and of their position as the key to the race problem. This leads to the main problem of racial intermixture in the United States. First an attempt is made to estimate the actual number of the mixed types who stand between whites and negroes. For the country as a whole about a fifth of all those classed as negroes are mulattoes, but this proportion varies, being least in the South and greatest in the North and West where negroes are least numerous. The first half of the book ends with a good account of the growth of the mulatto class in the United States, the types of intermixture at various periods and in various regions, and the social status of the mulattoes. Reuter believes that a large part of the mulattoes are the descendants of white men of a decidedly inferior type and on the whole the colored women of the baser sort. Exceptions, however, are very numerous.

The second half of Reuter’s book is an accurate and painstaking statistical study of the leaders among the negroes, using the word to include every one who has even a trace of negro blood. From every available source the author procured lists of prominent colored people. Then by means of photographs or descriptions he classified these according to the color of the skin, texture of the hair, regularity of the features, etc. Those who plainly show Caucasian characteristics are counted as mulattoes, the rest as full-blooded negroes. So far as this classification errs, it is on the side of putting too many into the full-blooded group…

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Amalgamations, New and Old: The Stratification of America’s Mixed Black/White Population

University of California, Berkeley
2004
184 pages

Aaron Olaf Gullickson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology and Demography

This research focuses explicitly on the life chances of biracial black/whites. I contrast the “new” biracials, those born to interracial couples in the post Civil Rights era, to the “old” biracials, the lighter-skinned descendants of the original mulatto elite. Both groups have occupied privileged positions relative to monoracial blacks within educational and occupational institutions. For the old biracials, this privilege derives both from the inherited advantages of the mulatto elite and from the independent signi cance of skin tone within the black community.

I show that the skin tone privileges of lighter-skinned blacks declined for cohorts coming of age during and after the Civil Rights era. This decline marked the end of a system of stratification that characterized the black population for over a century. Furthermore, it seems to suggest that the new biracial advantage over monoracial blacks in educational outcomes is not the result of a skin tone hierarchy within the black population.

These new biracials differ from the old in that they have access to intimate white relatives within their family networks. On the one hand, the new biracial advantage could potentially result from race-based resources, such as access to the cultural and physical resources of their white parent. On the other hand, the new biracial advantage may result from class-based resources, primarily the selection of highly-educated parents into interracial unions.

I show that the new biracial advantage over monoracial blacks in educational outcomes can be largely explained by their relatively privileged family backgrounds. These advantages, and not biraciality itself, result in higher grades and lower grade retention, although they do not explain differences in standardized test scores. Thus, in order to understand the new biracial advantage, we must understand the dynamics of union formation in the immediately prior generation.

I show that this this pattern of interracial union formation can be most accurately described as one of lower-class black isolation. While traditional models of interracial union formation are all plausibly supported by the data, the most accurate model focuses on the exclusion of blacks with a high school degree or less from interracial unions, regardless of their potential partner’s education. This results holds in both marital and non-marital unions and points to the possibility of greater isolation for lower class blacks as interracial unions increase and to a generational bifurcation of the black class structure directly tied to issues of racial identity.

Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Table
• 1 Understanding Race in America, Understanding Race Mixing in America
  • 1.1 The Race Concep
  • 1.2 New and Old
  • 1.3 The Life Chances of Mixed Race Individuals
    • 1.3.1 The mulatto vanguard or the black elite?
    • 1.3.2 Eve and the new biracials
  • 1.4 Outline of this study
• 2 The Demise of the Mulatto Legacy
  • 2.1 The Skin Tone Legacy
  • 2.2 Colorism
  • 2.3 The Rise and Fall of the Skin Tone Hierarchy
    • 2.3.1 Trends across cohorts
    • 2.3.2 Formal multivariate models
  • 2.4 The Unremarked Demise
• 3 The New Biracials
  • 3.1 The K-12 Racial Hierarchy
    • 3.1.1 The Biracial Advantage
    • 3.1.2 Understanding the Racial Hierarchy
  • 3.2 Understanding the Biracial Advantage over Blacks
    • 3.2.1 Data
    • 3.2.2 Measures
    • 3.2.3 Models
    • 3.2.4 Analysis
  • 3.3 The Uncertain Position
• 4 Back a Generation
  • 4.1 The Selectivity of Interracial Unions
    • 4.1.1 Theories of Interracial Marriage
    • 4.1.2 Interracial Unions outside of Marriage
  • 4.2 Models
  • 4.3 Data
  • 4.4 Understanding Black Selectivity
    • 4.4.1 Interracial Marriage
    • 4.4.2 Interracial Cohabitation
  • 4.5 The Unnoticed Isolation
• 5 Tommorrow
  • 5.1 The Story So Far
  • 5.2 Possibilities
  • 5.3 Directions
  • 5.4 A Final Note
• A Supplemental Tables
• B Genealogical Data
• C Sensitivity Analysis
• Bibliography

List of Figures

• 1.1 Stylistic depiction of interracial sexual contact across United States history
• 1.2 Race and skin tone strati cation
• 2.1 Skin tone differences relative to light-skinned blacks in years of education across birth cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.2 Skin tone differences in occupational attainment (Duncan SEI) relative to light-skinned blacks across birth cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.3 Skin tone differences relative to light-skinned blacks in spousal years of education across marital cohorts, National Survey of Black Americans
• 2.4 BIC’ statistic for educational attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.5 Predicted effect of skin tone on educational attainment (highest grade completed) across birth cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 2.6 BIC’ statistic for occupational attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.7 Predicted effect of skin tone on occupational attainment (Duncan SEI scores) across birth cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 2.8 BIC’ statistic for spousal attainment threshold models based on year of threshold
• 2.9 Predicted effect of skin tone on spousal years of education across marriage cohorts, based on fourth-degree polynomial models
• 3.1 Logit effect of race on probability of having ever been held back across nested models, Panel Study of Income Dynamics 1995
• 3.2 Logit effect of race on probability of having ever been held back across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.3 Effect of race on grades in 8th grade across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.4 Effect of race on CAT-ASVAB scores across nested models, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 4.1 Spousal educational distributions by race, race of spouse, and sex, Census 1990
• 4.2 Stylized depiction of racial intermarriage patterns
• 4.3 Parameterizations for models of interracial educational partnering
• 4.4 Parameters from models of interracial educational partnering for married and cohabiting unions
• 5.1 Possible scenarios for the future, based on two dimensions of change
• B.1 Strength of interracial sexual contact in Herskovits sample, based on different assumptions
• C.1 Comparison of parameters from log-linear models with different age groups
• C.2 Comparison of parameters from log-linear models with marriages of various durations

List of Tables

• 2.1 Sample size and years for waves of the National Survey of Black Americans and the General Social Survey, 1982
• 2.2 Fit of threshold models and year of best- tting threshold compared to models without cohort change
• 2.3 Threshold models predicting educational attainment (total number of grades completed)
• 2.4 Polynomial models predicting occupational prestige (Duncan SEI Score)
• 3.1 Cross-classi cation of biological parents’ race in two surveys
• 3.2 Outcome measures by race
• 3.3 Variables by race, National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997
• 3.4 Variables by race, Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• 3.5 The relative position of biracials
• 3.6 Structure of the nested models
• 3.7 Race effects, gross and net
• 4.1 Union type distribution of new parents by race of parents
• 4.2 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have more than a high school education by sex and race of partner
• 4.3 Sample size of data sets
• 4.4 Fit of different interracial union formation models to marriages from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
• 4.5 Important parameters from log-linear models, 1980
• 4.6 Important parameters from log-linear models, 1990
• 4.7 Important parameters from log-linear models, 2000
• 4.8 Comparison of isolation model to an alternative educational propensity model
• 4.9 Comparison between gender symmetry and BM/WF only models
• 4.10 Fit of models comparing interracial union formation between marital and cohabiting unions
• A.1 Polynomial models predicting educational attainment (years of schooling)
• A.2 Polynomial models predicting spouse’s years of schooling
• A.3 Models predicting whether respondent has ever been held back, Panel Study of Income Dynamics
• A.4 Models predicting whether the respondent has ever been held back, NLSY97
• A.5 Models predicting grades in 8th grade, NLSY97
• A.6 Models predicting CAT-ASVAB test scores, NLSY97
• A.7 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have a college degree by sex and race of partner
• A.8 Proportion of black partners in each union type who have more a high school diploma by sex and race of partner
• B.1 Possible Genealogies in the Herskovits Sample

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Intelligence of Negroes of Mixed Blood in Canada

The Journal of Negro Education
Volume 10, Number 4 (October, 1941)
pages 650-652

H. A. Tanser

Miscegenation, as between the White and Negro races, presents an interesting field for study. Herskovits, Hooton, Peterson and Lanier, and others have attempted to investigate such so-called racial differences as those which concern colour of skin, hair and eyes, thickness of lips, the nasal breadth, prognathism, interpupillary distance, texture of hair, etc. An attempt has also been made to study the relationship between intelligence and certain Negroid traits. As a result of his research a few years ago Herskovits came to the conclusion that the American Negro is forming a type which lies somewhere between the European, the African, and the American Indian. The increasing uniformity of type in the American Negro he attributes to social rather than biological factors. Peterson and Lanier, after testing ninety-one cases on the Otis, and forty-nine cases on the Myers, report that there is no significant relation between lightness of skin colour and intelligence. They find a coefficient of correlation of .044±.067 for the first group, and .180±.091 for the second group.

While Davenport and Steggerda, on investigation of race crossing in Jamaica, hold the opinion that crossing Whites and Negroes results in disharmonic combinations, Reuter, on the other hand, champions the cause of mulattoes on account of the hybrid vigour they display as compared with the general lack of achievement on the part of full-blooded Negroes. He makes the interesting contention that mulattoes are the result of a process of biological selection in which the best elements of the Negro race have been assimilated into the mixed blood of the mulattoes. He also makes the observation that in the days of slavery the White masters naturally selected the intellectually superior Negro women for their mistresses. He and Herskovits further contend that this process of biological selection has been perpetuated by the tendency that exists for talented Negroes to marry girls whose skin is light in colour. On account of the social cleavage that still exists between the Whites and Negroes, to a greater extent in the Southern States and to a less extent in the Northern States and Canada, one would naturally expect that any race crossing that takes place would represent the best elements of the Negroes and the less superior elements of the Whites.

In investigating the intelligence of Negroes, Mixed-bloods, and Whites, the present writer would like to emphasize…

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