AMERICAN NEGROES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 75, 19 November 1931, Page 2

AMERICAN NEGROES

gECOMlNG WHITE TEEND REVE4LED ,RY RECORD GROWJNG .PABIT OF "PASSING." NEW SOCIAL' PROBLEM. The cu^rerit United States. census disclo'ses the huge increase of 63 per cenf, in Neg'rp population in the North, cpmpared with the nermal 5 per cent. increase in the Sputh, Tlie tctal Negrp pppulatien • is, now 11,891,143, ior 10 per cent. of the" whole populaition. .. .. Ameficans,( as a rule, .see no possible social complication in the northward trek of the Negro. Consequent-

ly, editorial comment concerns ltself . only with the danger. of political hlocs, The. census dqes, not tell the whole tale of this migration, for it is not only geographical, but economical and cultural. The North offers material and educational advantages which the Negro eagerly grasps. As a result there is arising in the United States. a . class ,of we.althy colpured citizens, together with the Negro group in literature and art — painting, music and the ,dr ama— which. is acclaimed, hy some as tKe renaissance of a people long in .bondage. , 3 , , There is yet another new.chapter in this drama of life. It is what the ; Negro calls the "passing." In Har- , lem, the, Negro quarter of New York, i| 10,000 persons qf African descent have "passed" during the last few l years, and this number, who do not i acjcnowledge their Negrp ancestry, j but pass for. white, is rapidly grow- ' ing. They have," of course, a large : admixture of white blood. They are never "given away" hy their Negro friends. Many of them are well known for nafr'onal achievemeht. I Coiour Does not Reve'rt. . The "passing" of these thousands, ! together with the rising standards } and demands of the Negro population, | has its social problem. Dr. Charles | B. Davenpqrt, Director of the Depart- ; ment of Experimental Evolution of the | Carnegie Institute, says: "A. matter of gr eat social moment to hundreds of Qur citizens is the possibility of a reversion in the off spring of a whiteskinned descendant of a Negro to a brown skin coiour. There is a current opinion that such an extracted white, married to a purebred white may have. a black child. In our studies no clear case of this sort has been found, and our fundamental hypothesis leads us not to expect it. "It follows that from our studies . persons of African descent whose skin coiour contains 10 per cent. or less of black pigment will, if mated with a like person, produce only white-skin-ned children. Such persons constitute 'fixed' white." Mr. Johnson insists that this report establishes s.cientific proof. of .the domination of white blood. What it does establish, of course, is that the recorded "passing" is always from black to white, the dominance of the white caste. If that social dominance continues, then there is reasonable, if remote, ground for the conclusion that the "American Negro will eventually vanish,"- completely absorbed in the white. It is a solution, but probably not one that will be widely acclaimed. by the American . white — nor, perhaps, by the American black.