LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE AMERICAN NEGROES
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—May I reply very briefly to Mr. Heath's long letter in your issue of January 17th, much of which is taken up by rather sweeping statements by his friend Dr. Phenix? In regard to these latter : (1) I only quoted Professor Gregory's suggestion for what it was worth—as a suggestion ; and said myself, that although it did not sound likely, yet it remained a possibility. My views on it seem to agree on the whole with Dr. Phenix's, who, however, accuses me of " folly " in quoting it at all ! (2) As to the negro mentality, I can only record what I have seen and what I have gathered in conversation with many Southerners. Neither Dr. Phenix nor Mr. Heath has paid any attention to what I mentioned as one of the great difficulties of the problem—namely, that in U.S.A. the word " negro " is used to denote anybody with negro blood in his veins, whereas " white " means all white. The proportion of absolutely pure negroes, although hard to ascertain, cannot be large. The general impression (and that is all that is now available until proper tests are made) among those who have lived long among negroes undoubtedly is that the purer negro stocks are, on the whole, more chikV, like (it is only Dr. Phenix who uses the word " feeble- minded "—I did not) than the white stocks. The next few years should decide the problem if suitable intelligence tests can be devised.
As to Mr. Heath's points : (1) The question of pure negroes rising to eminence. One of your contributors in a previous issue showed what a difficult question this was. He mentioned someone as a pure negro who had achieved eminence, but was immediately corrected next week by another correspondent, who pointed out that his example did have white blood in his veins ! Perhaps Mr. Heath and the scientific conscience will be satisfied if I say that the phenomenon of a pure negro achieving eminence in U.S.A. is extremely rare. (2) Mexican immigration. Naturally, this will be first felt in the States adjacent to the Mexican border. Housten is several hundred miles from the border, and yet the immigration of Mexicans is so marked as to have struck my eye at once as something new. They are in this city taking the places of the negroes in various occupations. If the northward migration of negroes continues, it is perfectly possible that the Mexican imMigration will spread eastwards. I wish, for the sake of the world at large and America in particular, that we could, as Mr. Heath urges us to, take a hopeful view of the negro problem ; but he would be a rash man who would be too optimistic over the facts as they arc
Previous page
