A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro Part 2

"Man is an organized being, and is subject to certain laws which he cannot violate with impunity. These laws affect him in the air he breathes, the food he eats, the clothes he wears, and (in) every circ.u.mstance surrounding his habilitation. In the wholesale violation of these laws after the war, as previously stated, was laid the foundation of the degeneration of the physical and mental condition of the Negro.

Licentiousness left its slimy trail of sometimes ineradicable disease upon his physical being, and neglected bronchitis, pneumonia, and pleurisy lent their helping hand toward lung degeneration."[33]

It will be noticed that Dr. Miller accepts all the facts alleged by our author, but places the causes squarely upon the ground of conditions, habits and circ.u.mstances of life. He does not seem to be acquainted with Mr. Hoffman's discovery of "race traits." The fact that under the hygienic and dietary regime of slavery, consumption was comparatively unknown among Negroes, but that under the altered conditions of emanc.i.p.ation it has developed to a threatening degree, would persuade any except the man with a theory, that the cause is due to the radical changes in life which freedom imposed upon the blacks, rather than to some malignant, capricious "race trait" which is not amenable to the law of cause and effect, but which graciously suspended its operation for two hundred years, and has now mysteriously selected the closing decades of the nineteenth century in which to make a trial of its direful power.

No people who work all day in the open air of a mild climate and who sleep at night in huts and cabins where crack and crevice and skylight admit abundant ventilation, will be subject to pulmonary weakness. Now take the same people and transplant them to the large cities of a colder climate, subject them to pursuits which do not call for a high degree of bodily energy, crowd them into alley tenements where the windows are used only for ornament and to keep out the "night air," and a single door must serve for entrance, exit, and ventilation, and lung degeneration is the inevitable result. The cause of the evil suggests the remedy. The author in a previous chapter points out the threatening evil of crowding into the cities; a counter movement which would cause a return to the country, or would at least stay the mad urban movement, would not only improve the economic status of the race but would also benefit its physical and moral health. Here is an open field for practical philanthropy and wise Negro leaders.h.i.+p.

The increase in consumption among Negroes is indeed a grave matter, but it is possible to exaggerate its importance as sociological evidence. If we listen to the alarmists and social agitators, we would find a hundred causes, each of which would destroy the human race in a single generation. The most encouraging evidence on this subject from the Negro's point of view is afforded by the last report of the Surgeon General of the United States Army. The statistics thus furnished are the most valuable for comparative study, since they deal with the two races on terms of equality, that is, the white and colored men are of about the same ages and initial condition of health, they receive the same treatment and are subject to the same diet, work, and social habits. "It is to be noted, also," says the Surgeon General, "that during the past two years the rates for consumption among the colored troops have fallen so as to be much lower than those for the whites, whereas formerly they were much higher."[34]

The following table prepared by Mr. Hershaw, shows plainly the gradual decrease of the death rate from consumption in Southern cities for the past fifteen years.

_Death rate per 1000 among Negroes from Consumption._[35]

City. Period. Rate. Period. Rate. Period. Rate.

Atlanta 1882-1885 50.20 1886-1890 45.88 1891-1895 43.48 Baltimore 1886 58.65 1887 55.42 1892 49.41 Charleston 1881-1884 72.20 1885-1889 68.08 1890-1894 57.66 Memphis 1882-1885 65.35 1886-1890 50.30 1891-1895 37.78 Richmond 1881-1885 54.93 1886-1890 41.63 1892-1895 34.74

It appears that the total death rate as well as that due to consumption among Negroes reached the maximum about 1880 and has been on the gradual decline ever since.

Consumption is only one of the contributing causes of the total death rate. It has been shown that the death rate from all causes does not necessarily point to the extinction of the race. This being so, there is no need of unnecessary alarm over a single factor; for in sociology, as in mathematics, we cannot escape the fundamental truth that the whole is greater than any of its parts.

VITAL CAPACITY AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY.

The author's proposition as to the low vitality of the Negro and its effect upon his economic efficiency is contrary alike to the traditional and prevalent belief. The whole fabric of slavery rested upon the a.s.sumption that the Negro was better able to resist the trying condition of the southern climate than the white laborer. The industrial reconstruction of the South is building upon the same foundation. No one doubts that the Negro is able to resist certain miasmatic and febrific diseases which are so destructive to the white race in the tropical regions of the earth. Science and wise hygienic appliances have improved the condition of the white race in this respect, it is true, but will not the same appliances benefit the Negro in the same degree?

Dr. Daniel H. Williams, surgeon-in-chief of the Freedmen's Hospital, at Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., informs me that during his professional experience he has performed upward of 3000 surgical operations, one-fourth of which at least were upon white patients, and that he has found unmistakable evidence of higher vital power among the colored patients. I am also informed that this is the general opinion of the medical profession.

Although the author treats exhaustively the whole catalogue of diseases and the numerous ills which flesh is heir to, it can be safely claimed that he does not establish his main proposition set forth in the beginning of the chapter, and that at least a Scotch verdict is demanded: "not proven."

CHAPTER III.

_Subject._ Anthropometry.

_Gist._ "In vital capacity, the most important of all physiological characteristics, the tendency of the race has been downward."[36]

Ample statistics are presented to show that in proportion to structure the Negro is heavier than the white man. This fact, the author tells us, is ordinarily considered favorable to a healthy development and freedom from pulmonary weakness. "The elaborate investigations of the medical department of the New York Mutual Life, in 1874, of the Was.h.i.+ngton Life, in 1886, the Prudential Insurance Company of America, in 1895, and the New York Mutual Life, in 1895, prove conclusively that low weight in proportion to age and stature is a determining factor in the susceptibility of an individual to consumption."[37]

In order to explain away this apparent advantage in favor of the Negro, the author has invented a unique physiological principle, viz: "A physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another."[38]

It is noticeable that the author applies this principle only when it suits his convenience but withholds it whenever it runs across his theory.

By a series of measurements based, confessedly, upon insufficient data, it is concluded that the Negro has a smaller lung capacity, smaller chest expansion, and a higher rate of respiration than the white man, and that the Mulatto is inferior to both the parent races in these vital functions. These differences are considered a powerful factor in lung degeneration, and proof positive of physical inferiority. In these respects he tacitly repudiates his erstwhile principle that "a physiological law may hold good for one race and not for another," and a.s.sumes that the two races are subject to like conditions of disease and death.

On the whole it may be said that this is the least interesting chapter in the whole book. The data are so slender and the arguments are so evidently shaped to a theory, that we are neither enlightened by the one nor convinced by the other. But the author's judgment must be justified.

The gloomy warning comes with Catonian regularity at the end of each chapter. Listen to his last words: "A combination of these traits and tendencies must in the end cause the extinction of the race."[39]

If the Negro is inferior in vital function and power to the Caucasian, he will be a public benefactor who scientifically demonstrates the fact.

But the colored race most stubbornly refuses to be argued out of existence on an insufficient induction of data and unwarranted conclusions deduced therefrom.

CHAPTER IV.

_Subject._ Amalgamation.

_Gist._ "The crossing of the Negro race with the white has been detrimental to its true progress and has contributed more than anything else to the excessive and increasing rate of mortality from the most fatal disease, as well as to its consequent inferior social efficiency and diminis.h.i.+ng power as a force in American national life."[40]

The importance of this proposition is apparent when we consider that the Negroes in this country are a thoroughly mixed people. The pure African type has been well nigh obliterated. It is pointed out also that the mongrel progeny has been produced by illicit intercourse between the white male and the black female. The moral and conservative qualities of a race reside in its womanhood. The Negro people, then, have missed these transmitted qualities. The author is either ignorant of or ignores the large cla.s.s of mixed Negroes who are the legitimate offspring of colored parents, but would place the whole cla.s.s under the ban of b.a.s.t.a.r.dy.

After judicially balancing the testimony furnished by world-renowned authorities upon the effect of race crossing, the author espouses one side of the contention with all the ardor of a retained advocate.

Three points are sought to be established.

I. THE MULATTO IS PHYSICALLY INFERIOR TO BOTH PARENT RACES.

The opinions of examining surgeons during the civil war are quoted which quite unanimously show that the Mulatto is strongly inclined to consumption, scrofula, and vicious taints of blood.

The following table, made out on the basis of Gould's measurements, is full of interest:

White. Black. Mulatto.

Weight 141.4 pounds. 144.6 pounds. 44.8 pounds.

Circ.u.mference chest 35.8 inches. 35.1 inches. 34.96 inches.

Capacity of lungs 184.7 cubic in. 163.5 cubic in. 158.9 cubic in.

Rate of respiration 16.4 per minute. 17.7 per minute. 19.0 per minute.

It appears from this table that in the most important vital organs and functions the Mulatto is inferior to both parent stocks. This opinion is almost or quite universal among competent authorities upon this subject. And yet the last word of science has not been uttered on this question. There is no subject in all the domain of social science which offers a more interesting or more fruitful field for investigation. The Freedmen's Hospital at Was.h.i.+ngton, and similar inst.i.tutions elsewhere, by prosecuting accurate and scientific methods of inquiry can throw much light upon this subject.

2. THE MULATTO IS MORALLY INFERIOR TO THE BLACKS.

This alleged inferiority is attributable to the fact as well as to the manner of generation. Strangely enough Mr. Hoffman does not employ the statistics which would seem to bear out his suggestion. The eleventh census shows that there were 10,377 pure and 3,218 mixed Negroes in penitentiaries in 1890. Supposing that uniform methods of race-tests were used throughout the census inquiry, this would show that while the mixed Negroes const.i.tute only 16 per cent of the total Negro population, they furnished 30 percent of the penitentiary convicts. But these figures cannot be relied upon since the census bureau acknowledges that it has no definite method of determining the different shades of color and grades of mixture among Negroes.

It is also alleged in proof of this proposition that illicit intercourse between the races is carried on mainly with the Mulatto women. Can this not be explained on grounds other than native depravity? The light-colored Negro woman is made the victim of the l.u.s.tful onslaught of the male element of both races. She is placed between the upper and nether stress of the vicious propensities of white and black men. And if her sins are greater, is it not because her temptations are greater also? The following quotation from a distinguished Southerner is significant; "There was little improper intercourse between white men and Negresses of the original type in the period before emanc.i.p.ation (after the creation of the Mulatto cla.s.s)."[41] Every time a Negro woman is indicted on this score some white man is inculpated. The reproach hurled against colored women from such sources reminds us very much of the lines in Butler's Hudibras:

The selfsame thing they will abhor, One way, and long another for.

3. THE MULATTO IS INTELLECTUALLY SUPERIOR TO THE BLACKS BUT INFERIOR TO THE WHITES.

In substantiation of this proposition it is claimed that the greater number of Negroes who have attained distinction have been those of mixed blood. The truth of this statement must be conceded, and yet the cause should not be overlooked. Leaving aside the doctrine of inheritance as a debatable question, the initial advantage of the mixed over the pure Negroes was considerable. Feelings of blood ties prompted many a slave holder to deal kindly by his slave descendants, and often to liberate them and give them a start in the race of life. That an infusion of white blood quickens the energy and enlivens the disposition of the progeny is probably true; but that it adds to the intellectual capacity is far from a self-evident proposition. The Negroes who have shown any unusual intellectual activity, in America at least, have usually been of the purer type. Phyllis Wheatly, Benjamin Banneker, Ira Aldridge, Blind Tom, Edward W. Blyden, and Paul Dunbar are ill.u.s.trations of this argument.