VIRGINIA'S EFFORT TO PRESERVE RACIAL INTEGRITY 



W. A. PLECKER 



Richmond, Virginia 



It is presumed that no one in this audience will dispute the wisdom and 

 desirability of preserving the different races of man in their purity. This is 

 particularly true as to intermixture between the two extremes — white and 

 black. It is, therefore, deemed unnecessary to argue the question, but I 

 infer that all will accept as a theorem that the preservation of racial purity 

 is one of the fundamental objects of eugenic endeavor. 



It must be admitted also that the permanent preservation of the purity 

 of the distinct races when they remain in close contact is the most difficult 

 of eugenic problems, and one which has never yet been solved in any coun- 

 try or in any age except by ultimate amalgamation. In fact, as far as my 

 knowledge goes, but few serious attempts have been made by any nation 

 to prevent amalgamation when different races have been brought perma- 

 nently together, either by the migration of one race into the territory of 

 another, or by the introduction on a large scale of captives of war from a 

 race of a widely divergent type and the subjection of them to a state of 

 slavery. The Jewish people have perhaps made the nearest approach to 

 retaining their racial identity for a long period of time under many adverse 

 conditions. 



Increase in the number of mental defectives may be prevented, or an 

 actual decline may be induced by segregation and sterilization; but when 

 negro admixture with the white begins, there is no accepted method of 

 preventing an increase of the condition except separation. 



Laws forbidding intermarriage between members of different races re- 

 strain both through fear and through education as to the undesirability of 

 such matings. The serious defect with most laws which attempt to prevent 

 the legal intermixture of races, is that they permit classification as white 

 of individuals with one-fourth, one-eighth, or one-sixteenth negro heritage. 

 The actual situation is that marriage between whites and true negroes or 

 mulattoes would be rare if there were no legal restraint. The privilege, 

 therefore, extended to mixed breeds of less than half negro to be rated as 

 white, permits legal intermixture to go on almost as if there were no law. 



The only law worthy of consideration is one defining a white person as one 



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