At the very outset we must face three possible alternatives as we consider the concept of race:

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2013-07-25 03:44Z by Steven

At the very outset we must face three possible alternatives as we consider the concept of race: 1) there is such a thing as race  in mankind; 2) there is not such a thing as race in mankind; 3) even if race in mankind exists, it can have no significance save as people think of it and react to their conception of it. In the first alternative we shall turn to those physical anthropologists who treat race as a biological phenomenon, separating and classifying groups of mankind according to certain descriptive and mensurational categories. In the second alternative we must turn to those few geneticists and fewer physical anthropologists who, when they refer to mankind, use “race” in quotation marks as if by so doing they can, in effect, recognize its existence while denying its implications. In the third alternative we must turn to those social anthropologists who treat race principally in terms of social interaction.

Wilton Marion Krogman, “The Concept of Race,” in The Science of Man in the World Crisis, Ralph Linton, ed., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), 38.

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The Vanishing American Negro

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Media Archive, United States on 2012-05-21 01:43Z by Steven

The Vanishing American Negro

The American Mercury
Volume LXIV, Number 278 (February 1947)
pages 133-139

Ralph Linton (1893-1953), Professor of Anthropolgy
Yale University

In the question period following any talk on minority problems, someone invariably brings up the query, “What do anthropologists consider to be the long range solution of the Negro problem?” Though I usually avoid this point when I can, I sometimes have to reply that most anthropologists agree there will be no Negro problem in another two hundred years; by then there will not be enough recognizable Negroes left in this country to constitute a problem.

When a New York newspaper headlined this statement in reporting a lecture, the main body of which did not deal with this subject, I found myself quoted with indignation in both the white and Negro press. But I was not disturbed by these repercussions until I was misquoted, and with approval, by Senator Bilbo, who said in a campaign speech:

Dr. Linton . . . stated a few weeks ago that if the present rate of intermingling, intermarriage and interbreeding of whites and blacks in this country goes on . . . within nine generations we will have no whites and no blacks . . . only yellow. … I had rather see my race destroyed by the noted atomic bomb than to see it gradually destroyed by mongrelization of the white and black races.

This convinced me that some amplification and clarification of my statement was necessary.

The prophecy of the ultimate disappearance of the American Negro in the United States is based on three facts. First, while the number of Negroes has been steadily increasing since 1790, when the first Negro census was taken, the white population has increased so much more rapidly that the over-all proportion of Negroes to whites is steadily declining. Second, the Negro is no longer concentrated in the South but is redistributing himself more evenly over the entire country. Third, and most important, the American Negro is steadily becoming lighter…

…But the main reason for believing that the Negro will disappear as a distinct American minority is that the Negro population is becoming lighter with each successive generation. This is not a matter of paling out in a northern climate — it takes thousands ofyears to evolve a new biological type—but of steady infiltration of white blood into the Negro group…

Miscegenation has been going on since the Negroes first arrived in America. While most of the slaves imported were black Forest Negroes from West Africa, there were also a considerable number from the West Indies, where some race mixture had already taken place. At the beginning of the slave-trade era there were still many Indians in the Southeast, and considerable interbreeding took place between Indians and slaves. Runaway slaves frequently took refuge in the Indian camps, where they were protected and frequently adopted into the tribe. Indian genes began to take the kink out of Negro hair and to thin Negro lips…

Read the entire article here.

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