EUGENICS OF THE NEGRO RACE
By Professor KELLY MILLER
Reprinted from The Scientific Monthly, July, 1917
Copyright, 1916, by THE SCIENCE PRESS
[Reprinted from The Scientific Monthly, July, 1917.]
EUGENICS OF THE NEGRO RACE
By Professor KELLY MILLER
DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, HOWARD UNIVERSITY
THE problem of eugenics is receiving much attention from
students of sociology at the present time. The future
welfare of society depends very largely upon perpetuating and
carrying forward the best characteristics derivable from phys¬
ical heredity and social environment. The application of eu¬
genics to the colored race of the United States suggests several
new and interesting lines of inquiry.
A study of the number of children, contributed by the fifty-
five colored teachers in Howard University, Washington, D. C.,
throws an interesting sidelight on the question of eugenics as it
affects the negro race. Howard University is an institution for
the higher education of the negro, comprising a student body of
over fifteen hundred. The negro members of the faculty main¬
tain, on the whole, perhaps, a status as high as any other group
of colored people to be found in the United States. The present
study is limited to the teachers of the academic faculties, as they
constitute a coherent social entity, whose life focuses about the
institution.
As outgrowth of sudden change of condition due to the Civil
War, the negro has developed a small upper class with a wide
fissure between it and the great mass life of the race. There are
about fifty thousand negroes belonging to the professional class,
who earn a livelihood by some form of intellectual endeavor;
while the great bulk of the race lives mainly by manual exertion.
All social stratification rests ultimately upon occupation. The
negro has no considerable middle class, such as is found in well-
regulated societies, which shades imperceptibly in both direc¬
tions. According to the occupational test, the demarcation be¬
tween the professional and laboring classes of the negro is as
sharp as a knife-cut line.
It becomes a matter of sociological interest to know how far
this upper class is self-sustaining through its own reproduc-
tivity. I have therefore undertaken to make a study of race
eugenics in so far as this particular group is concerned. In the
fifty-five families from which these teachers were derived, there
were 363 children, or an average of 6.5 for each family. On the
other hand, these fifty-five teachers who have passed from the
lower to the upper section of negro life, have, so far, contributed
58
THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY
only 37 children, or an average of .7 for each potential family
involved. Of this number there are 41 males, 14 females; 22
are married, and 83 are single; the number of children for each
family so far formed is 1.6; the largest number of children in
any family is 6; four of the families are barren and four have
one child each. The average age of the single members is over
32 years. This strongly indicates that the upward struggle
defers the age of marriage to a time when only limited progeny
might be expected. Considering all the probabilities in the case,
it seems to me entirely likely that these fifty-five potential fam¬
ilies, when the whole record is in, will not produce more than an
average of two children to each family, while the fifty-five
parent families, under the old regime, gave rise to 363 children.
The new issue will scarcely produce sufficient progeny to per¬
petuate its own numbers.
There is always a certain sort of social restraint, in the case
of an individual advancing from a lower to a higher level of life.
The first descendants of foreigners in this country have a lower
birth rate than any other element of our population. The in¬
tolerant social environment created by the white race may also
produce a strong deterrent influence. Animals, in captivity or
under restrained environment, do not breed as freely as when
placed under free- and normal surroundings. The educated
negro, especially when submerged in a white environment, is
under a sort of social captivity. The effect of this psycho¬
physical factor upon reproductivity awaits further and fuller
study, both in its biological and psychological aspects.
From a wide acquaintance with the upper life of the negro
race, under wide variety of conditions and circumstances, I am
fully persuaded that this Howard University group is typical
of like element throughout the race so far as fecundity is con¬
cerned. The upper class is headed towards extinction, unless
reinforced from the fruitful mass below. It is doubtless true
that the same restraining influence is exerted upon the corre¬
sponding element of the white race. But as there is not the
same sharpness of separation between the social levels, nor such
severe transitional struggle, the contributing causes do not per¬
haps operate with the same degree of intensity.
The prolonged period of education delays the age of mar¬
riage. The negro during the first generation of freedom ac¬
quired his education at a later period than the white children
and by reason of the hard struggle he has had to undergo, his
scholastic training was completed at a somewhat advanced'age.
The high standard of living, which the professional negro feels
he must maintain, still further delays the age of marriage. A
EUGENICS OF THE NEGRO RACE
59
single illustration will serve to clarify this point. I half-jocu¬
larly asked one of our bachelor instructors, who has passed
beyond his fortieth birthday, why he did not take unto himself a
companion and help-mate. His reply was that his salary was
not sufficient to allow him to support a family in the style and
manner which he deemed appropriate. My reply was: " If your
parents had been constrained by like consideration, you would
probably not be in existence." His father was a laboring man
with a family of eight children. It was the opinion of Grant
Allen, the eminent English literary and scientific authority,
that the human race would become extinct if all females de¬
ferred marriage beyond the age of twenty-six.
The conscious purpose of race suicide doubtless contributes
somewhat to the low birth rate. There are some of sensitive
and timid spirit who shirk the responsibility of parenthood,
because they do not wish to bring into the world children to be
subjected to the proscription and obloquy of the negro's social
status.
Will this tendency, which threatens the extinction of the
higher element of the negro race, continue to operate in the
future with the same degree of intensity as at the present time?
Probably not. The first generation after slavery was subjected
to the severe strain and stress of rapid readjustment. The sud¬
den leap from the lower to the upper levels of life was a feat of
social acrobatics that can hardly be repeated under more orderly
scheme of development. The life of subsequent generations will
be better ordered, and therefore we may expect that the result¬
ing effect will be seen in the family life. The birth rate of the
mass of the race is not affected by like considerations. They
feel little or nothing of the stress and strain of the upper class,
and multiply and make merry, in blissful oblivion of these
things. The rate of increase of the upper class is scarcely a
third of that of the bulk of the race, as is clearly indicated by the
relative prolificness of the Howard University faculty as com¬
pared with that of their parents. The higher or professional
class in the negro race will not be recruited from within its own
ranks, but must be reinforced from the great mass below. This
will produce healthy current throughout the race which will
serve somewhat to bridge the chasm produced by the absence of
a mediatory class.
The whole question suggests the importance of a more care¬
ful and extended study in this field of inquiry which is as fruit¬
ful as any other in its far-reaching effect upon the general social
welfare.