174 Eugene Rollin Corson 



process may be represented in a different way, again, where 

 the dominant race can be likened to a great polyp which, hav- 

 ing surrounded and ingested a smaller community of cells 

 than itself, proceeds to appropriate that which is assimilable, 

 and to throw off that which is foreign and non-assimilable. 

 This great selective process is evident to-day between the two 

 races. Thus thrown into intimate contact they cannot de- 

 velop on separate lines, each working out its own racial des- 

 tiny ; there must be a fusion more or less rapid and a struggle 

 for supremacy, where the dominant race holds to its racial 

 traits and its civilization, modified, perhaps, to a certain ex- 

 tent, by what it has appropriated from the inferior race. 



I have thus attempted .to show that, according to the 

 census, the colored race has not increased at the same rate 

 as the whites, that the colored race is an inferior race, that its 

 physique has deteriorated, and with a consequent higher 

 death rate ; that the mixed element has a lower vital equa- 

 tion, and that all these results are explainable from the teach- 

 ings of ethnology and biologj'. 



As to the future of the negro in the United States I can see 

 but one goal, and that is defeat, and by defeat I mean an in- 

 ability to maintain the race as a race with all its characteris- 

 tics. With the gradual fusion there will be a larger and 

 larger mixed class ; the lighter this element becomes the more 

 the African fades out, and the more the new product ap- 

 proaches the Caucasian. The term "African" will become 

 more and more of a misnomer. Even in the few j'ears, com- 

 paratively speaking, which have gone by, the colored popula- 

 tion is a quite distinct body from its African ancestors. In 

 this process of fusion and assimilation there will be a great 

 loss of life, but there will long be a Caucasianized element, 

 becoming larger and larger up to a certain point, and I can 

 believe in a vanishing point, so to speak, where it will be 

 hard to trace the alien blood. We see it in many individuals 

 to-day. Its different grades are but as mile-posts on the road 

 to extinction. All this will require time, and probably cen- 

 turies will go by before the extinction of the race, as a race, 

 will be accomplished. 



