RACIAL ELEMENT IN NATIONAL VITALITY 331 



THE EACIAL ELEMENT IN NATIONAL VITALITY 



Br Dr. CHAS. B. DAVENPORT 



COLD SPRING HARBORj N. T. 



OCR population is made up of such a variety of racial elements that it 

 is hardly possible to make any statement about it as a whole that 

 is both true and significant. Especially is this so in the field of statistics. 

 When we say the death rate in the United States is 15.0 for the regis- 

 tration area, the number may be very accurate; but is it very signifi- 

 cant? It throws together data of partly black states and those of 

 nearly pure white: those of the slums of great cities with masses of 

 recent immigrants and those of Kentucky. We have a number, to be 

 sure, and one that we can compare with numbers similarly derived from 

 other countries; but, aside from affording facts for almanacs, I con- 

 ceive that such a number has little significance biologically or scientif- 

 ically. I want as my contribution to this discussion to point out how 

 widely different in vitality the races of the United States are. And first, 

 it is necessary to point out that for the most part we use the term race 

 too narrowl}^ I will use it collectively for the possessors of a racial 

 (t. e., inheritable) character. Such are potentially members of a race; 

 they may easily become actually such in consequence of a certain amount 

 of isolation or inbreeding. To illustrate the fact that many traits that 

 we think of merely as variations are really racial traits, we may con- 

 sider eye color. If I ask a brown-eyed person whether he got his brown 

 eyes from the mother's or the father's side of the house, he takes no 

 umbrage at the inquiry and informs me if he knows. But if I ask an 

 inhabitant of the island of Earatonga who prides himself on his race 

 purity whether he got his brown eyes from the mother's or the father's 

 side of the house, he feels at once insulted. His brown eyes he recognizes 

 as a racial characteristic. As a matter of fact the brown eye color is a 

 racial characteristic in both cases, but persons of European origin are 

 used to the intermingling of the brown-eyed and the blu-eyed races that 

 are found in this country, and forget the racial significance. Similarly, 

 if I ask a colored man of our south whether it was from the father's or 

 the mother' side of the house that he got his light color, he answers me 

 without objection, but if I should ask any of this audience whether they 

 got their white skin color from the father's or the mother's side, they 

 would naturally take exception to the inquiry. All of our inheritable 

 characteristics have, indeed, the essential traits of specific characters. 



Beginning with the generally recognized races, as is well known the 

 mortality of the negro is very different from that of the white. Thus, 

 the census report gives the death rate among whites as 17 per 1,000 and 

 among negroes 28 per 1,000, or nearly double, and for every 100 white 

 children per 1,000 who die under 15 years, there are 150 negro chil- 



