296 



The Journal of Heredity 



more intelligent than those of the 

 Southern States. The cleavage is so 

 marked as to lead one of the examin- 

 ers (at Camp Dix) who made a study 

 of 3,127 negroes of the July draft, 

 to comment that "in general the 

 Southern negro is as much inferior to 

 the Northern negro as the negroes 

 are inferior to the whites." 



The negroes of Ohio made the best 

 showing ; those of South Carolina the 

 worst. The great differences may be 

 indicated by the fact that of two 

 groups selected for study, the North- 

 ern negroes had 3.4% of A and B 

 grades, with 45.6% of of D and D-, 

 while the Southern negroes (from 

 Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and 

 Mississippi) had but .03% in the A 

 or B classes, and 86.2% in D or be- 

 low. 



How is this difference to be ex- 

 plained? It was found that the 

 Northern negroes had less illiteracy, 

 and conversely more education than 

 those in the Southern groups. But 

 since education is productive of re- 

 sults only to the extent that it has 

 material to work on, one need feel 

 no hesitation in concluding that the 

 Northern negroes are inherently su- 

 perior to the Southern; and two 

 ])rincipal reasons suggest themselves. 

 In the first place, it is possible that 

 the Northern contingent represents a 

 larger infusion of white blood than 

 those who remain in the South ; in 

 the second place it seems certain that 

 the more energetic, successful, and 

 able of the Southern negroes are 

 those who have had the ability and 

 courage to break away from their 

 home environments and come North ; 

 hence a selective influence has been 

 at work to differentiate the two 

 groups. But, to judge from all the 

 studies available, the greater energy 

 and ability of this group must be 

 closely correlated with greater amounts 

 of white ancestry. 



Just how great the difference be- 

 tween pure white and jnire negro is, 

 must, so far as these figures are con- 



cerned, be decided largely by infer- 

 ence, for the reason above noted, that 

 most of the records, even of Southern 

 negroes, apply to members of the 

 race, many of whom have more or less 

 white blood, and are therefore more 

 favorable to the negro stock than 

 actual facts warrant. It would be in- 

 teresting to know whether the negro 

 officers were, on the average, notice- 

 ably lighter in color than the negro 

 in the ranks. It seems probable that 

 they were, since their superiority to 

 their fellows is marked ; indeed, the 

 negro officers, who represented a 

 highly selected lot, represent almost 

 the same distribution of intelligence 

 as the average of the entire white 

 draft. When the negro officers are 

 compared with a white group equally 

 selected — namely, the white officers — 

 the true comparison is made and 

 graphically shown in figure i. 



While the evidence seems to war- 

 rant the conclusion that qualitative 

 differences between the negro and 

 white minds do exist, the greatest 

 difference is unquestionably merely 

 one of degree. The average mental 

 age of the white draft army was 13.08 

 years; the average of the negro was 

 that of a normal white child of 10.37 

 years.'' For adults this degree of in- 

 telligence would place a white man 

 definitely on the "border-line" of 

 feeble mindedness. 



Naturally, the army examiners were 

 concerned mainly with the negro's fit- 

 ness for military service. But, as the 

 report observes, with the white men 

 the tests were used to detect and 

 eliminate those not good enough for 

 service ; while with the negroes they 

 served more to detect the few who 

 were good enough for service. 



More specific information was 

 sought at Camp Upton, where the 

 company commanders were requested 

 by the chief psychological examiner 

 to make out, with the assistance of 

 their lieutenants and first sergeants, 

 a list of 50 negro recruits, 10 of 

 whom, in their estimation, fell in each 



"The curve for nc^ro literates is close to that for white illiterates. 



