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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Patterns of gene flow between Negroes and whites in the US

Journal of Biosocial Science
Volume 8, Issue 4 (1976)
pages 309-333
DOI: 10.1017/S002193200001083X

K. F. Dyer
Department of Genetics
University of Adelaide, South Australia

A review of the pattern and magnitude of negro–white mating in the US is presented from the time of the earliest arrival of negroes in the American colonies until the present, using historical, demographic, census and genetic evidence.

The relative magnitude of negro male–white female matings compared to the converse are analysed in view of the different genetic outcomes of these two types of mating for X-linked genes. Contrary to many strongly stated opinions it is conclued from the historical evidence that, even from the earliest days of slavery, negro male–white female matings were a significant proportion of all negro–white matings. Census and demographic evidence suggests that their frequency increased so that from the time of the Civil War on they have formed a majority of inter-racial matings.

Genetic evidence based on estimates of the amout of admixture of white genes in a number of negro populations is considered. Estimates of admixture for the X-linked genes G6PD, and those for colour blindness are as high or higher than those derived from comparable autosomal genes.

Some observations on the total magnitude of negro–white mating, on the phenomenon of passing and on the relative socio-economic status of those involved are also made.

The implication of the findings on these phenomena for investigations and hypotheses concerning differences in intelligence and intellectual abilites between the races, particulary spatial ability which is thought to be strongly influenced by a gene on the X chromosome, are considered.

It is concluded that some of the assumptions made in proposing hypotheses regarding the origin and distribution of these abilities in the American negro are at variance with genetic, historical and sociological findings.

Washed in the Blood

Mercer University Press
October 2011
420 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9780881462579

Lisa Alther

This unique three-part novel assumes that, regardless of what Americans learn in school, the Southeast was not a barren wilderness when the English arrived at Jamestown. It was full of Native Americans, other Europeans, and Africans who were there for various reasons. Based on extensive research into the racial mixing that occurred in the early years of southeastern settlement, this provocative multi-generational story shows that these people did not simply vanish, but that many were absorbed into the new communities that gradually formed throughout the southeast, becoming “white” whenever their complexions allowed. The inability to accept their true heritages illustrates the high price many of these people paid for their way of life. Diego Martin arrives in 1567 in the American Southeast—the region the Spaniards call La Florida—as a hog drover with a Spanish exploring party. The leader of the expedition turns against him and abandons him to the wilderness, where friendly natives rescue him. Daniel Hunter, a Quaker from Philadelphia, sets up a school among these “disadvantaged” mountain people and falls in love with a Martin daughter. Later, Daniel’s descendants are living in the same town, though with little awareness of their ancestral past. The Martin family has split in two, the merchants in town denying any relationship to their racially mixed cousins on Mulatto Bald. A young woman from town, Galicia, falls in love with a young man from the bald, Will, not realizing that he is her cousin. They marry, have a daughter, and move to a new industrial center, becoming prominent citizens. When Will’s son from a teenage liaison appears at his door, he invites him in, unwittingly setting the stage for a forbidden love between his unacknowledged son and his cherished daughter, neither of whom realizes that they are half-siblings. This is a novel you will not be able to put down without wondering “Where will it take me next?”

Table of Contents

• Part I – The Swine King: A. D. 1567
  • 1-The San Jorge
  • 2 – Landfall
  • 3 – Santo Domingo
  • 4 – Santa Elena
  • 5 – Orista
  • 6 – Cofitachequi
  • 7 – Joara
  • 8 – Cauchi
  • 9 – Land of the Lost
  • 10 – The Cave
• Part II – The Squabble State
  • 1 – The Five-Chicken Baby: 1818
  • 2 – Couchtown: August 1837
  • 3 – The Shenandoah: October 1837
  • 4 – Mulatto Bald: October 1837
  • 5 – Baptism by Fire: November 1837
  • 6 – The Frost Moon: December 1837
  • 7 – Seedbeds: April 1838
  • 8 – Soldiers’Joy: June 1838
  • 9 – The Wilderness Road: July 1838
  • 10 – Squatters: October 1838
• Part III – Passing Fancy
  • 1 – The Ringer: August 1909
  • 2 – Leesville: October 1909
  • 3 – Palestine: February 1911
  • 4 – Hijacked Happiness: March 1911
  • 5 – Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: April 1911
  • 6 – Homecoming: December 1911
  • 7 – Mongrels: August 1913
  • 8 – A Roll of the Dice: November 1913
  • 9 – The Perils of Pauline: March 1914
  • 10 – Holston: May 1914
  • 11 – Half-Breeds: 1920
  • 12 – Home to Roost: 1927
  • 13 – Mountain Meadows: 1930
  • 14 – The Plantation Ball: 1930

One ‘Speck’ of Imperfection—Invisible blackness and the one-drop rule: An interdisciplinary approach to examining Plessy v. Ferguson and Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana

Indiana University
2008
371 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3315914
ISBN: 9780549675372

Erica Faye Cooper

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

By 1920 virtually every state legislature had adopted “one-drop” laws. These laws were important because they served as the means for determining racial identity in the United States throughout the 20th century. In the past, scholars focus on either the social or legal history of the one-drop rule. Despite the exhaustive social and legal historical accounts, I argue that the “history” of the one-drop rule is incomplete without a rhetorical history. My findings suggest that a rhetorical history of the one-drop rule is vital because it explores how the doctrine emerged in legal and social discourse. In addition, a rhetorical history also uncovers the persuasive strategies used by rhetors to reinforce racist ideology.

In this dissertation, I found that the one-drop rule occupied a significant role in judicial rhetoric through the persuasive strategies of judicial actors—court justices and lawyers. I revealed that their language choices created a pseudo “racial” reality that was characterized by a rigid black-white racial binary. This “false” reality functioned persuasively to obscure the racial diversity that actually existed in the United States during specific moments in time. Using Critical Race Theory from legal studies and McGee’s notion of the “ideograph” from critical rhetorical theory, I examined the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the Court of Appeals’ holding in Jane Doe v. State of Louisiana (1985). My findings show that such terms as “white,” “black,” and the “one-drop rule” were used by lawyers and court justices in disputes involving racial identity and legal rights beginning in 1896. In both cases, the one-drop ideograph dominated discussions regarding who was “black” or “white.” Based on its ideographic relationship with the one-drop rule, “black” was defined to include mixed and unmixed blacks as well as whites. Within this ideographic analysis, I describe how the notion of invisible blackness was rhetorically constructed from the language used by the court. The one-drop rule continues to influence legislation and social attitudes.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1
  • Introduction to Problem
  • Justifying for Research and Statement of Purpose
  • Research Questions, Methods, and Overview
    • Methods: Case Analysis
    • Preview of Chapters
• Chapter 2
  • Socio-Cultural history
  • Definition of the one-drop rule
    • Rationales for why the one-drop rule emerge
    • The One-Drop Rule Today
    • Summary
  • Legal History
    • Emergence of the Color Line in the law
    • Summary
  • Prior Analyses of the Plessy and Phipps decisions
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 3
  • The Coming
    • Social Context: Racial Identity in Post-Bellum Louisiana
    • Legal Context
    • Introduction to Plessy
    • Summary
  • The ideographs
    • Plessy and Ferguson Briefs
    • Supreme Court Response
  • Rhetorical Implications
• Chapter 4
  • The Coming
    • Socio-Cultural Context
    • Summary of the Socio-Legal Context
    • Who is Suzy Phipps?
  • The ideographs
    • Phipps Briefs
    • The Judicial Responses
    • Summary
  • Rhetorical Implications
• Chapter 5
  • Summary and Findings
  • Implications
  • Conclusions
• Cases and Legislative Acts
• References
• Vitae

INTRODUCTION TO THE INVISIBLITY OF BLACKNESS: THE ONE DROP RULE AS A RHETORICAL CONSTRUCT

In the 1990s, a popular figure, Tiger Woods, attempted to claim an intermediate racial status by embracing his mixed race lineage. Woods, whose mother is Thai and whose father is Native American, African American, Caucasian, and Chinese, publicly refused the label of black. Woods created the term, “Cablinasian” to reflect his Caucasian, Native American, black, and Asian ancestry. Although many supported his attempts to embrace a multi-racial heritage, the doctrine known as the “one-drop-rule” shaped public opinion on the subject of his racial identity. The one-drop rule, also known as the rule of hypo-descent, recognizes a person as “black” if she possesses any trace of African ancestry.

After winning a Master’s Tournament, fellow golfer Fuzzy Zoeller’s responses to Tiger Woods reflected one-drop reasoning and racist thinking. Zoeller stated, “he hoped that Woods would not request that dinner consist of ‘fried chicken and black-eye peas’.” Zoeller assumes that because Woods’s father is partly “black” Woods must also be black. In this one-drop argument, the presence of other “blood lines” is irrelevant. Zoeller’s statement also supported a stereotype of black people, suggesting that all members of a group behavior the same. The stereotype is also racist because of the image of blacks eating fried chicken and/or watermelon supported white supremacist beliefs.3 Despite Woods’ attempt to embrace his ethnic and racially diverse heritage, some people continued to define him as black. In essence, this example illustrates how the doctrine known as the “one-drop rule” shapes contemporary public thought on matters involving race.

Although the one-drop rule has been studied by scholars in various disciplines, none have focused on how the one-drop rule operates rhetorically. Instead, scholars have traced its history or commented on how it influenced the formation of racial identity in the United States. In this dissertation, I offer a different perspective to understanding the significance of the one-drop rule by analyzing how this doctrine operates rhetorically in legal discourse. Through a rhetorical history of the doctrine I show how the one-drop rule becomes legally sanctioned through rhetorical commitments of court justices. I argue that one-drop reasoning serves as a persuasive strategy, used by court justices, operating as rhetors, in 1896 and 1985, to promote a commitment to racism.

Using, McGee’s theory of the ideograph, from Critical Rhetorical Theory, and Critical Race Theory, from legal studies, I reveal how race (Negro, mixed race, and white) is an integral component of legal discourse. Through this analysis I explore the relationship between racial identity, rhetoric, and power in legal discourse. The manner in which race is rhetorically defined in legal discourse highlights the racist nature of traditional legal theory and contributes to a racial hierarchy that is enforced through the law. Taking a critical rhetorical and legal approach, I believe, provides useful information to the on-going discussion of racial identity and the one-drop rule in rhetorical and legal studies…

Purchase the dissertation here.

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…

Read the entire review here.

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies: Proposal Deadline

Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies
2012-03-16 throught 2012-03-17
University of California, Berkeley

Co-Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and Ethnic Studies Department

Call for Proposals – Deadline: 2012-01-15

In traditional Ethnic Studies, mixed race scholarship has often been marginalized, misappropriated, tokenized or simply left out. In order to allow for a collaborative environment given the need for more critical scholarship on the experiences of mixed race people, in Fall 2009, a group of graduate students at UC Berkeley formed the inter-disciplinary working group at the Center for Race & Gender, Transnational Mixed Asians In-Between Spaces (TMABS). The goal of the working group is to to create a safe space for scholars to discuss issues of mixed race identity and also to provide a venue for those doing work in this area to present developing ideas and projects. Furthermore, the working group seeks to expand the notion of mixed race to include other factors such as culture and space. Overall, it is our intent to encourage and promote research on mixed race/culture in Ethnic Studies and bring together scholarship from multiple disciplines to collaborate on future research areas.
 
The co-founders of TMABS are: Kevin Escudero, Joina Hsiao, Ariko Ikehara and Julie Thi Underhill, doctoral students in the Ethnic Studies Department at UC Berkeley.
 
In Spring 2012, we will host our inaugural conference entitled, “Crossing Lines: Praxis in Mixed Race/Space Studies.” The conference will take place March 16-17th at the UC Berkeley campus and will include panels, film screenings, poetry performances and an art exhibit. We are currently seeking submissions that are of any of the following genres: academic papers, art work, poetry and/or film and that address the theme of emerging and future discourses in mixed race studies…

For more information, click here.

Show me your CDIB: Blood Quantum and Indian Identity among Indian People of Oklahoma

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume 47, Number 3 (November 2003)
pages 267-282
DOI: 10.1177/0002764203256187

James F. Hamill, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Discourse concerning the legitimacy of claims of Indian identity characterize much of the debate in Indian country today. Any legitimate claim to an Indian identity rests, in part, on tribal membership, which requires certification by the U.S. government in the form of a Certified Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) and a tribal membership identification. Once a person establishes biological heritage with the CDIB, the blood quantum—full, 1/2, 1/256, and so forth—often is taken as a rough measure of “Indianness.” This emphasis on blood quantum has been an important feature of both Indian and Tribal identity in Oklahoma throughout the 20th century. Using data from interviews with Oklahoma Indian people taken in the 1930s, 1960s, and gathered in the field from 1994 on, this report will look at the meaning and importance of blood quantum in Indian identity and how that has been expressed by Indian women and men throughout the past 100 years.

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Sewing Ourselves Together: Clothing, Decorative Arts and the Expression of Métis and Half Breed Identity

University of Manitoba
2004
450 pages

Sherry Farrell Racette, Professor of Native Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies
University of Manitoba

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

When I was a university student, I worked at a summer education program in The Pas in northern Manitoba. There I met three women from the Manitoba Métis Federation who had obtained a grant to teach people who worked with their children. Tired of requests to come into classrooms to teach children beadwork, they had decided that the best use of their time and skills was to “teach the teachers” with the expectation that beadwork would be incorporated into the curriculum. The women seemed to take special care that I learned what they had to teach. Maybe it was because I was the only aboriginal woman in the workshop; maybe it was because I was interested. Kathleen Delaronde, a traditional artist of the highest caliber, was one of those women. I got to know her and her family and during another northern summer, I stayed at their home and learned at her kitchen table. Nobody in my family did beadwork but I felt an immediate connection with beads and leather.

Although beadwork and traditional arts were new to me, sewing clothes and making decorative objects for the home were not. Both my parents had been poor as children and took tremendous pleasure in dressing well. My grandmother always dressed up to go to town, and tortured my uncles by dressing them in little matching suits and hats. One summer while we were visiting my grandmother in Quebec, she sat me down at her treadle sewing machine and helped me sew a dress for my doll. At home I started sewing by helping my mother who was always making something. My job was to rip her mistakes while she forged ahead and to do hand sewing which she still loathes. In addition to what she had learned from my grandmother, my mother had taken a tailoring course that was offered by the Singer sewing machine company, and she sent me off to take a similar course when I was a teenager. Now she helps me when I embark on projects that involve sewing. For an art exhibit, Dolls for Big Girls, I merged what I knew about Métis and First Nations history and traditional arts and clothing. While I made little moccasins, my mother dressed the old woman for a piece entitled Flight based on her memories of clothing worn by my great-grandmother, Annie Poison King.

When I began my journey into traditional arts, my mother brought me a birch bark basket that belonged to my grandmother, Helen King Hanbury. Disappointed that, in a fit of creativity, my grandmother had painted it with green boat paint, I put the basket aside. I didn’t open it until shortly after my grandmother died. One day I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed with the basket in my lap. When I took off the lid, I found moccasin patterns, a piece of embroidery, assorted odds and ends, and a handmade needle case with a simple flower embroidered on the cover. I realized that I had unknowingly picked up a needle to an aesthetic tradition that my grandmother had put down. Since that time I have taken opportunities to learn from elder artists, such as the late Margaret McAuley of Cumberland House, and struggled on by myself. I have also thought a great deal about what it means when we wrap ourselves up and present ourselves to the world in a certain way and what it means when we stop. This study is an extension of the journey that began when Kathleen Delaronde helped me pick up the needle. It has been done with the greatest respect for the women who have taught me and the artists from long ago, who I am sure have been standing beside me guiding my research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• PREFACE: Picking Up the Needle
  • Acknowledgements
  • Glossary
  • Abbreviations
• CHAPTER ONE: Métis and Half Breed Clothing and Decorative Arts
• CHAPTER TWO: Métis, Half Breed and Mixed Blood: Identifying Self and Group
• CHAPTER THREE: The Métis Space of New Possibilities: Elements of Hybrid Style
• CHAPTER FOUR: “After the Half Breed Fashion”: Reconstructing 19th Century Métis and Half Breed Dress
• CHAPTER FIVE: Tent Pegs: Material Evidence
• CHAPTER SIX: Spirit and Function: Symbolic Aspects of Occupational Dress
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Clothing in Action: the Expressive Properties Of Dress
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Sewing for a Living: the Commodification of Women’s Artistic Production
• CHAPTER NINE: Artists, Making and Meaning
• CHAPTER TEN: Half Breed, but not Métis: Lakota and Dakota Mixed Bloods
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: Final Thoughts and Conclusions
  • Sewing Ourselves Together
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• PLATE GALLERY

Read the entire dissertation here.

Migration and Race Mixture from the Genetic Angle

The Eugenics Review
Volume 51, Number 2 (July 1959)
pages 93-97

Sir Macfarlane Burnet, O.M., F.R.S., Director
Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

This paper was prepared at the request of the Department of Immigration for discussion by delegates at the Australian Citizenship Convention. The views expressed in it are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department.

From the long-term point of view, immigration is chiefly important to Australia for the overall changes that it will eventually make in the genetic character of our population. Every growing country that receives substantial immigration from other parts of the world is in a sense a melting-pot from which new combinations of body-build, of skin colour, and even of personality, may eventually emerge. The process is immensely complex and can only be described in broad outline. In many ways our description can be no more than an attempt to interpret the human observations in terms of genetic ideas that have been developed from the study of such very different animals as fruit ffies and mice. Yet the very fact that basically similar gentic laws are evident in the behaviour of mice, of fruit flies, and of bacteria, makes us confident that they are equally applicable to man…

…Advantages and Disadvantages of Race Mixture

Extensive reading has failed to locate a single example where it can be shown that hybrid races or individuals living under circumstances where no social disability attached to their condition, were demonstrably inferior to both parents. Where healthy typical individuals of each race are concerned, the offspring can be expected to show greater physical health than either and-though here the evidence is slighter-a greater likelihood of exceptional mental ability.

Serious attempts have been made to show that where different racial groups mingle, there the likelihood of an outcropping of genius is highest. Kretchmer considered that where the Alpine race containing Neanderthal genes made contact with Nordics in the German speaking parts of Europe, there had appeared an exceptional number of outstanding men. Toynbee generalized that “the geneses of civilization require creative contributions from more races than one”. It seems to be the general rule that there is a lag period of a few centuries between the beginnings of race mixture in a given region and the full flowering of a new culture or civilization.

There are potential genetic disadvantages of race mixture and it is probably true that particularly in later generations than the primary hybrid, occasional individuals with discordant characters, e.g. teeth over-large for the jaw that carries them, can be seen. It has not been shown decisively that such discordancies are more frequent than in people not descended from recent racial mixture…

Read the entire article here.