THE MULATTO IN THE UNITED STATES
KELLY MILLER
Reprinted for private circulation from
The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XXV, No. 2, September 1919
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The Mulatto in the United States. By Edward Byron Reuter.
Boston: Badger, 1918.- Pp.417. $2.50.
The case of the everlasting negro again intrudes itself on public
attention in the form of a scientific treatise upon the mulatto in the
United States. The author has brought together much interesting
and valuable material bearing upon mixed-blood races in all parts of
the world.
At the outset the author informs us that his treatise deals "with
the sociological consequences of race intermixture, not with the biologi¬
cal problem of the intermixture itself." The mulatto in the United
States has no sociological status; the Eurasian, the half-caste prod¬
uct between the European and the Hindu, constitutes a tertium
quid, an outcast by both parent types. But the mulatto in the United
States is socially stratified with the mother-race. His case constitutes
one of ethnological interest rather than of sociological significance.
The three most conspicuous Englishmen produced by the world-war
are Lord Kitchener, an Irishman, General Haig, a Scotchman, and
Lloyd George, a Welshman. No comparable names have arisen of
purely English blood, but the basal English idea predominates, and the
racial identity of these illustrious names has not the slightest sociological
importance. Moses, the renowned leader of the Israelites, might have
been Egyptian, but it was his mighty works rather than incident of
blood that counts through all the years. In the United States all
negroid elements of whatever blood composition are forced into one
social class by outside compulsion. The quantum of different bloods
coursing through the veins of distinguished individuals in this class is,
practically speaking, a sociological negligibility. The author is, there¬
fore, discussing a theory which he eagerly advocates rather than a con¬
dition that actually exists.
The scientific pretension of this treatise is vitiated by the vagueness
of fundamental definition. The word mulatto is used as "a general
term to include all negroes of mixed ancestry regardless of the degree of
intermixture." This definition is not only unscientific but practically
meaningless. A careful observation of negro schools, churches, and
miscellaneous gatherings in all parts of the country convinces the reviewer
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that three-fourths of the negro race have some traceable measure of
white blood in their veins. It is, therefore, not the least surprising
that practically all eminent negroes in the different walks of life are
classified as mulattoes. One is reminded of a famous historian who
proved conclusively that the Caucasian race alone had made valuable
contributions to civilization by claiming that all people who had made
such contributions were Caucasians. At the expense of great labor
and pains, the author has analyzed numerous lists of eminent negroes
and by some unexplained process has separated the mulattoes from
the blacks. Frederick Douglas tells us that genealogical trees did not
flourish among slaves. It is indeed a wise negro who knows his own
ancestry. Any negro can claim some degree of mixed blood without
successful refutation. There is no scientific test of blood composition.
The utter worthlessness of his classification is disclosed by a casual
selection of four consecutive names arranged in alphabetical order on
page 206. Monroe N. Work, R. R. Wright, Sr., R. R. Wright, Jr., and
Charles Young are classified as mulattoes. Both in color and negroid
characteristics these names would rank below the average of the entire
negro race. To rank Nannie Burroughs and Mrs. C. J. Walker as
mulattoes certainly evokes a smile. When William Pickens and
Colonel Charles Young are so described, the smile breaks into uncontrol¬
lable laughter.
The treatise is evidently based upon preconceived theory and
purpose. The undiluted negro element is supposed to accept with
satisfaction the status of inferiority, and the mulatto, who is lower than
white and higher than black, would or should dominate the lower section
of the biracial division, but must not so much as lift up his eyes to the
higher world of white opportunity and dominion. The author is unable
to control his temper in denouncing the attitude of the northern mulatto
because he insists upon a platform of equality.
The provincial spirit of the author is everywhere portrayed. His
range of vision is limited to southern bias and tradition. He fails to
grasp the universal human impulse. Julius Caesar tells us that all
men hate slavery and love liberty. The negro is no more satisfied with
servility than the poor is with poverty, the ignorant with his ignorance,
or the sick with his disease. Seeming hopelessness of relief causes the
unfortunate to sink into slothful yielding to an unfortunate lot appar¬
ently unescapable.
The normal human passion yearns for freedom and equality. The
negro forms no exception. The most picturesque and spectacular
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efforts put forth by the enslaved African in the Western world were
under the marshalship of Touissant L'Overture, Denmark Versey, and
Nat Turner, leaders of undiluted negro blood.
The author really proposes a triracial rather than a biracial division.
The utter impracticability of this scheme would be found in the impos¬
sibility of identifying the so-called mulatto class. The mixed race
always represents physical instability. I have known twin brothers
who were so diverse in racial characteristics that the one easily crossed
the color line and withheld all recognition from his brown brother who
could not follow whither he went.
The dual caste system is undemocratic and un-Christian enough;
to add a third would be inexcusable compounding of iniquity.
The first fruit of contact of two races of ethnic or cultural diversity
is a composite progeny. There exists no biological dead line. Social
custom and priestly sanction have never been able to control the cosmic
urge to multiply and replenish the earth. The sons of God in their
supercilious security never fail to look lustfully upon the daughters of
men, while shielding their own females from the embrassure of the lower
order of males. The composite progeny is generally the offspring of
the male of the stronger race and the female of the weaker race. There
is no discovered race repugnance or antipathy when it comes to the
fundamental principles of reproduction. Political pronouncements,
religious inhibition, social proscription, operate only upon the con¬
trolled sex. The first laws regulating slave relations were made to
prevent intermarriages of negro males and white females. In the long
run it makes no difference whether the races are mixed through the
relation of the higher male and the lower female or by the reverse
process. The social stigma against the bastard progeny dies out with
the third and fourth generation. Intermingling of Norman and Saxon
took place largely through bastardization, which has not the slightest
influence or effect upon the pride of the Anglo-Saxon today.
The Germanic races advocate a brotherhood of blood rather than
of culture. Other sections of the white race show less racial intolerance.
In the one case the offspring is made to follow the status of the mother
and in the other that of the father. The effect of the one is to mix the
lower race by keeping the upper race pure, while that of the other is the
reverse.
We see the contrasted effect of these wide-apart policies in Rich¬
mond, Virginia, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The mulatto in the United
States received every initiatory advantage over his black half-brother.
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He had the sympathy of his father-master. In many instances he was
educated and sent to the free states where he would have a man's chance.
Hon. John M. Langston recounts in his autobiography the paternal
regards of his white father who personally superintended his education
and left in his will a large sum of money for his removal to Ohio and a
good start in life. As the author more than once states, the free negro
before the war was more or less of mulatto element. Small wonder then
that they became the first leaders of the negro race of the generation
immediately following freedom. The author fails to notice or note the
rapid increase of leadership on the part of the unmixed negro under the
stimulus of education and opportunity since the war.
Whether succeeding generations of the mulatto element maintain
the vigor and aggressive spirit of the first-fruit of race intermixture
constitutes an interesting thesis for some keen-minded social student
who may have no better use to make of his time.
The case of the mulatto fails to prove the doctrine of the transmission
of mental and moral quality. While it is true that the mulatto has more
numerously risen to places of distinction, it does not appear in any
instance that they have reached a higher level of renown than the pure
black. Phyless Wheatly and Paul Lawrence Dunbar mark the highest
literary genius of the African in America.
In organizing ability, W. W. Brown, author of the The True Reformer,
laid the basis of subsequent negro enterprise. Granville T. Wood
leads the race in inventive genius. Robert E. Elliot is conceded to be
the ablest negro who had a seat in our federal Congress.
While it is true that no American negro or mulatto has reached
the highest pinnacle of renown, this is no discredit or discouragement
to their just aims and aspirations. The emergence of genius depends
upon social opportunity and not upon inherent capacity. The white
race of Mississippi has produced comparatively few illustrious names
as compared with Massachusetts, although they justly lay claim to the
same underlying racial capacity. Their environment has not been
conducive to the emergence of genius or talent of the highest order.
Neither negro nor mulatto has had the opportunity for the exhibition of
transcending genius. For but half a century he has been playing in
the back-yard of civilization. The few men of eminence who have
risen under these circumstances are hopeful indications of what may
be expected as the area of opportunity and privilege is enlarged.
The cause of the negro regardless of blood equation before the
American people is one and inseparable. The cleavage which grew up
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under slavery is rapidly dying away under the more enlightened policy
of freedom.
The author is again fundamentally mistaken in presuming that the
mulatto constitutes a self-continuing class without intermingling with
the mother-parent group. If this contention were true, there would be
no mixed blood less than one-half white.
On the other hand, the amount of white blood already injected in
the negro race is not likely to be greatly increased by further fresh
infusion. The rapid growth of the mulatto element as shown by the
federal census is due to the wide diffusion of white blood already injected
in the negro race.
The laws of a great majority of the states of the Union prohibit
intermarriages between the races; this absolutely prevents legitimate
mulatto offspring. The growing sense of self-respect and decency on
the part of the black has checked almost to the point of stoppage the
illegitimate progeny. Even where illicit relations between the races
are indulged in, it is not likely to result in issue.
On account of the "sage femme" and the practice of race suicide,
such issue arising from the process of the old-order complacent con¬
cubinage will not be prolific in the red-light district and city slums.
The segregation of the races, making relationship less easy, tends to the
same end.
As an illustration of the infrequency of the direct mulatto progeny,
the student body of Howard University, about 1,500 in number, is com¬
posed largely of the mixed element. There are probably not a half-
dozen children of white parents in this entire number. On the other
hand, the first pupils in this institution a generation ago were very largely
the offspring of such parentage. The ones who are of lightest hue and
show closest physical similarity to the white race are known to be the
legitimate children of a colored co-parency. Of the more than two
million so-called mulattoes in the colored race, an overwhelming number,
especially of the younger generation, are offspring of colored fathers and
mothers. It is safe to say that they average about one-fourth of the
full-blooded white men who have become absorbed in the colored race.
This European blood cannot remain in any one compartment of the
race but will tend to diffuse itself throughout the entire mass until it has
assumed an approximate oneness in color and physical likeness. The
process of diffusion will be facilitated by the well-known tendency of
the male to mate with the female of lighter hue. There are comparatively
few monochrome marriages within the negro race. The colored male
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of all shades is prone to mate upward and the female downward on the
chromatic scale. The poet Dunbar speaks of the swarthy maid with
her swarthier swain as typical of this, tendency.
The hundred thousand quadroons and the sixty-nine thousand
octoroons together with numerous thousands of the nine hundred
thousand mulattoes returned by the census of 1890 are crossing and are
still likely to cross the great social divide and incorporate into the white
race, in order to escape the lowest status of the despised fraction of their
blood.
In some states a person with only one-eighth negro blood is given
the legal status of white. The transition of the quadroon, octoroon,
and lighter mulattoes will widen the physical margin between the two
races. The male more easily crosses the social dead-line than the
female. This gives a darker male a wider area for his well-known
propensity to mate with a lighter female and will thus facilitate the
rapid diffusion of white blood throughout the race.
Negro schools, especially in cities and towns, show few children
of unadulterated negro type and very few of the other extreme which
cannot be detected from white. Both extremes, however, are a rapidly
diminishing quantity, while the average of the race is approaching a
medium yellowish-brown rather than black. Under this tendency,
within the next three or four generations, a pure negro will be hard to
find outside of the black belts and remote rural regions of the South.
Leadership within this group will be determined by those who evince
the capacity and enterprise without reference to hue or complexion.
The sociological problem of the mulatto is merely the sociological
problem of the non-white element of our population.
This treatise bears the date of 1918, but was probably worked out
before the world-war had injected a new spirit in the human race. This
titanic struggle has given tremendous impulse toward the universal
sanction of common standards, aims, and ideals.
The great vice of American slavery was that it strove to identify
the color line with the cultural level. This is the crowning evil of the
prevailing method of dealing with the race question today. The
dominant word of civilization today is that culture, and not color shall
constitute the world-standard. Japan has put the world on warning
that there must be no race or color line in the relationship of men. The
Germanic element of the Peace Congress, who had just united to over¬
throw a logical embodiment of racial arrogance in the German nation,
defeated, for the time being, the acceptance of Japan's proposition. A
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distinguished senator bases his objection to the League of Nations
upon the ground that the majority of its constituent members are not
disposed to obliterate the color line on the world's affairs.
The human race is moving rapidly toward the adoption of universal
laws, which, like the laws of science, admit of no ethnic deviation.
There never can be peace and good-will on earth or in any part of it
where the color line prevails. It is the author's misfortune that the
appearance of this treatise might not have been delayed until he had
time to reshape it in harmony with the new democratic ideas. As long
as men take counsel of color rather than of conscience, there will be
turmoil and confusion in the world.
A biological civilization can only be local and temporary. The
equilibrium of the world must be based on the universally acknowledged
and accepted scientific ethnical, social, and spiritual laws, not subject to
variation to meet the pride and arrogance of men. Those who argue
otherwise tend to frustrate the fulfilment of the universal longing of the
human heart for peace on earth and good-will toward men.
Those who profess Christianity as the world-wide religion and yet
justify the operation of a color line disprove and discredit their preten¬
sion. If Christianity is to be a biological religion, it cannot be universal.
The ideal of Christianity is that all of its devotees, regardless of ethnic
deviation, are baptised in one spirit. Spiritual kinship transcends all
other relations among men. Unless Christianity can overcome the color
line, the universality of its claim will be discredited, and the world must
still repeat the query propounded by the rugged teacher of righteousness
to his august relative and rival.
"Art thou he that should come or do we look for another ?"
Kelly Miller
Howard University
Washington, D.C.