CHAPTER VII

RACE DIFFERENCES

To the superficial observer all birds of a given species look alike. In reality they are not alike and it is possible to subdivide the species into many classes or races by grouping together those having the given characters. Our common little screech-owl sometimes has a reddish plumage, sometimes gray plumage, even in the same locality; but apart from color the two seem to be identical. The beautiful woodpeckers known as flickers or yellow hammers have a golden-yellow cast of plumage in the eastern part of North America. In the west, however, the yellow feathers are replaced by red plumes and the bird is given a very different appearance. Again, aside from this we cannot distinguish them, and every combination exists from the extreme yellow type to the extreme red. The same is true of meadow-larks, blackbirds, many warblers, tits and tanagers as well as of such different animals as squirrels, foxes and bears. Because of our recognition of these races or subspecies, exact classification is in many ways more difficult than it was in the days of Linnæus.

In earlier days it was supposed that such variations as were known had been directly caused by conditions of soil and climate. Now, as we have seen, the evidence is against this idea, and we have come to believe that variation has been produced by new germ cell combinations. It may still be true that some of these mutants are better

fitted to survive under given conditions and will therefore have an advantage over other types and tend to replace them. In other cases the character in question seems to have no possible significance in so far as survival is concerned. We can see no difference in the yellow and the red types of flickers in so far as strength or fitness to exist is concerned. They are different, that is all. When we turn our attention to the human species we find the same phenomena.

"The genus Homo has but one existing species: Homo sapiens. And this species. . . is fairly divisible into four subspecies, all of which are so fertile in their crossbreeding with one another that they have in the course of time given rise to many transitional races and intermediary types, so much so that only about two-thirds of the living peoples of today can be decisively allotted to one or other of the definite subspecies. The remaining third comprises the long-established mongrel, hybrid races formed by the mixture of some or even of all of these four divisions of the existing human species. These distinguishable subspecies are:

1. The Australoid, nearest of all living men to the ancestral Human, to the paleolothic man of Europe and North Africa; and to the possible parent thereof

- Homo primigenius, the man of Neanderthal and Heidelberg, of the Corrèze, of Spy, Krapina, and Gibraltar.

2. The Negro.

3. The Caucasian or European, possibly descended in a direct line from the Australoid or basal stock, with which in any case it is closely allied.

4. The Mongolic or Asiamerican.

"An ancient mingling of (1), (2), (3) and (4) has produced the Polynesian type; of (2), (3) and (4) (4) predominating-the Japanese. The Amerindian peoples are mainly descended from an early branch of Mongolic mixed with Proto-Caucasian; there are many tribes in the Malay Archipelago that are half Mongol, half Negrito (Asiatic Negro); the natives of Madagascar are a mixture of Mongolic-Polynesian and Negro. Negrito and Australoid in varying degrees of intermixture have produced the Tasmanian negroids and the Papuans. The aborigines of Ceylon (Veddahs) and India (Dravidians, Todas, etc.) are on the borderland between Australoid and Caucasian with (here and there) a touch of Negrito or Mongol. Some of the Central Asians or North Europeans are Caucasians crossed with Mongols, the two strains being either evenly balanced or one of them predominating. The proud peoples of Western and Southern Europe and of North Africa, of Syria, Arabia and Persia, are principally composed of Caucasian tinged very slightly or considerably with ancient or modern Negro, or Australoid (Dravidian) blood; the war-like tribes of Northeast Africa are half Caucasian, half Negro. The very Negro himself is scarcely of unmixed subspecific rank, except in his extreme Bushman-Hottentot, Pigmy and West-African Forest types. Elsewhere a meandering rill of Caucasian - perhaps even of Australoid-blood permeates Negro Africa and Negrito Asia." 1

There is a very widespread confusion as to the meaning of the word race. It should be used as above indicated to apply to groups of people who may be distin

1 JOHNSTON, H. H. The Negro in the New World, pp. 1–2.

guished from each other by certain physical traits. With the possible exception of the Eskimo, the inhabitants of America when the whites first came here were all of common stock and we may properly speak of an Indian race. In language, institutions and laws, they differed as much as did the north-Europeans of whom Cæsar wrote. The Germans, in spite of the claim of Tacitus that they were a pure, unmixed people tracing their descent from one god, were a mixed people descended from various stocks; and it is incorrect to speak of them as a race unless the term is limited to some definite part of the people. There were Aryan peoples speaking related languages but there was no Aryan race. Common language, culture, residence and nationality do not preclude differences in race. Nor does inclusion in the same race preclude individual differences which may be, and often are, quite as great as those which separate the races themselves. We are here considering, not these personal differences, but those between groups of individuals.

Whether there is any relation between the physical peculiarities which may exist and civilization is another and very different problem, and the student must be warned at the outset not to confuse the two. Deeply ingrained in human nature is the tendency to believe that we and our own ancestors have been and are superior people. Our men are the finest, our women the most beautiful. We come to prefer our own traits, to consider them as highest and best, and to forget that other groups have like notions and hence different standards. First then let us see what differences are to be found, and later consider their significance.

Color is perhaps the first character to attract attention.

"An ancient mingling of (1), (2), (3) and (4) has produced the Polynesian type; of (2), (3) and (4)· (4) predominating the Japanese. The Amerindian peoples are mainly descended from an early branch of Mongolic mixed with Proto-Caucasian; there are many tribes in the Malay Archipelago that are half Mongol, half Negrito (Asiatic Negro); the natives of Madagascar are a mixture of Mongolic-Polynesian and Negro. Negrito and Australoid in varying degrees of intermixture have produced the Tasmanian negroids and the Papuans. The aborigines of Ceylon (Veddahs) and India (Dravidians, Todas, etc.) are on the borderland between Australoid and Caucasian with (here and there) a touch of Negrito or Mongol. Some of the Central Asians or North Europeans are Caucasians crossed with Mongols, the two strains being either evenly balanced or one of them predominating. The proud peoples of Western and Southern Europe and of North Africa, of Syria, Arabia and Persia, are principally composed of Caucasian tinged very slightly or considerably with ancient or modern Negro, or Australoid (Dravidian) blood; the war-like tribes of Northeast Africa are half Caucasian, half Negro. The very Negro himself is scarcely of unmixed subspecific rank, except in his extreme Bushman-Hottentot, Pigmy and West-African Forest types. Elsewhere a meandering rill of Caucasian - perhaps even of Australoid-blood permeates Negro Africa and Negrito Asia." 1

There is a very widespread confusion as to the meaning of the word race. It should be used as above indicated to apply to groups of people who may be distin1 JOHNSTON, H. H. The Negro in the New World,

pp. 1-2.