ASSORTATIVE MATING FOR COLOR IN THE AMERICAN NEGRO 



IRENE BARNES TAEUBER 



Mount Holyoke College 



The determination of the physical type the American Negro is developing 

 has profound social and economic significance, especially as regards skin 

 color, the main physical characteristic on which race prejudice is based. 

 Is it only a matter of a hundred years or so until the Negro shall disappear 

 as such, leaving as his heritage a slightly darker tinge to the skin color of 

 the other groups composing the American population? Or is the Negro 

 forming a homogeneous physical type as regards color? Obviously one 

 can predict only on the assumption that the present mores governing racial 

 matings continue, or at least are not radically changed. The amount of 

 primary race crossing is probably decreasing, and there is an appreciable 

 but unknown percentage of Negroes, especially men, who pass into the white 

 group. 1 Hence the future physical type of the American Negro depends 

 primarily on the type of inheritance mechanism operative and the type of 

 mating occurring within the Negro group itself. 



The pigmentation of approximately 5,659 individuals was measured with 

 the color top by Dr. M. J. Herskovits and his associates in 1924-27. 2 

 This sample, consisting of two unselected and one selected series from 

 Harlem and one series from rural West Virginia, is probably representative 

 of the American Negro as a whole. Genealogical data were secured for all 

 individuals and families, and on the basis of statements of the Negroes 

 themselves as to Negro- White composition of their ancestry, the entire 

 population was divided by Herskovits into classes according to the amount 

 of mixture represented. 



N, unmixed Negro 



NNW, more Negro than White 



NW, approximately equal amounts of Negro and White 



NWW, more White than Negro 



Herskovits showed by a consideration of physical traits that the genealo- 

 gies given were statistically valid in the sense that, in the majority of traits 



1 Reuter, E. B., Race Mixture. New York, 1931, pp. 61-71. 



2 Herskovits, M. J., The American Negro. New York, 1928. 



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