Abstract
At the turn of the century, geneticists and eugenicists across the globe continued the tradition of reporting the deleterious biological consequences of racial mixing, including a variety of physiological and associated medical problems. However, compared with the intensity of the US debates on ‘race crossing’, few zoologists and geneticists in Britain vociferously joined them. Anthropologists working on race crossing in the 1920s/30s did so within the field of anthropometry and drew few if any conclusions from their work about the adverse or beneficial biological consequences of race mixing. Attrition through death or retirement depleted many and the genre of anthropometry had largely petered out by 1939, though the influence of their ideas in the public consciousness continued to have an influential hold.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
During this time the eugenics movement also had an influence on popular thought. In Alice Eustace’s novel Flame of the Forest (1927), for example, her hero, attempting to explain his reluctance to explore his growing attraction to Princess Flame, an Indian aristocrat, sighs that miscegenation ‘leads to no good.… Haven’t you read any eugenics?’ (Teo 2004: 12).
- 2.
He wrote that ‘As a rule they (mulattoes) are not muscular, and they seem to have little power of resisting disease. Tuberculosis, especially, claims many victims among them’.
- 3.
‘Syphilis in Africa and Asia’. The British Medical Journal, 19 April 1902: 977.
- 4.
The Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Screening Programme has published quantified risks for haemoglobinopathies (the chance that the couple are both carriers) pre-screening by family (ethnic) origins of mother and baby’s father. The chance that a couple are both carriers of haemoglobin variant genes has been put at 1 in 14 when both are Black African but at 1 in 1811 when one is Black African and the other North European. If a couple are both carriers of a haemoglobin variant, there is a one-in-four chance with each pregnancy that the baby will have a sickle cell disorder. See Aspinall (2013).
- 5.
Widely attributed to but unidentified in her contribution in The Control of Parenthood (1920).
- 6.
Hall 1977: 182, quoting Muriel Segal in Australian Women’s Weekly, 19 April 1934.
- 7.
UCL Special Collections and Archives. HALDANE/5/2/1/185. December 1942.
- 8.
An archaic term for tuberculosis or a similar progressive wasting disease.
- 9.
In a 14-year-old boy, ‘One orbit was Chinese in shape, the eye dark opaque brown and the Mongoloid fold marked. The other orbit was English in type, eye colour the grey with a brown net so common in English people, and there was no Mongolian fold’. Fleming (1939: 59).
- 10.
The article, entitled ‘Woman defends mixed marriages’, also contained the subheadings ‘Cruel social taboo. Bitter cry of a half-caste girl. Race mixture inevitable’. Daily Express, 9 June 1932.
- 11.
British Medical Journal. Medical News, 20 November 1937: 1053.
- 12.
Personal communication, Michael Banton, 23 August 2013.
- 13.
The ‘Aims and Objectives of the Eugenics Society’ (Eugenics Society 1934) include a statement on ‘Race Mixture’: ‘In certain circumstances, race mixture is known to be bad. Further knowledge of its biological effects is needed in order to make it possible to frame a practical eugenic policy. Meanwhile, since the process of race mixture cannot be reversed, great caution is advocated’.
References
Aikman, K.B. 1933. Race Mixture. Eugenics Review 25 (3): 161–166.
Anon. 1936. Leonard Darwin Scholarship of the Eugenics Society. Nature 138 (Oct.): 756.
———. 1938. Progress Towards Internationalism. Nature 141 (Jan.): 196–197.
Aspinall, P.J. 2013. When Is the Use of Race/Ethnicity Appropriate in Risk Assessment Tools for Preconceptual or Antenatal Genetic Screening and How Should It Be Used? Sociology 47 (5): 891–909.
Banton, M. 2004a. Little, Kenneth Lindsay (1908–1991). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/49231
Barkan, E. 1992. The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bashford, A., and P. Levine, eds. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bland, L. 2007. British Eugenics and “Race Crossing”: A Study of an Interwar Investigation. New Formations 60: 66–78.
Boas, F. 1894. The Half-blood Indian: An Anthropometric Study. Popular Science Monthly 45: 761–770.
Carter, H.G. 1926. Inherited Immunity in Tuberculosis. American Review of Tuberculosis 13: 373–378.
Castle, W.E. 1926. Biological and Social Consequences of Race-Crossing. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 9 (2, Apr.–June): 145–156.
Davenport, C.B. 1917. The Effects of Race Intermingling. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 56 (4): 364–368.
———. 1931. The Negro Problem. Eugenics Review 23 (2): 160–161.
Davenport, C.B., and M. Steggerda. 1929. Race Crossing in Jamaica. Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Davies, S.C., Cronin, E., Gill, M., Greengross, P., Hickman, M., and Normand, C. 2000. Screening for Sickle Cell Disease and Thalassaemia: A Systematic Review with Supplementary Research. Health Technology Assessment 4 (3): i–v, 1–99.
de Lacerda, J.B. 1911. The Metis, or Half-Breeds of Brazil. In Papers on Interracial Problems communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, University of London, July 26–29, 377–382. London: P.S. King and Son.
Dickinson, A. 1949. Race Mixture: A Social or a Biological Problem? Eugenics Review 41 (2, July): 81–85.
Diggs, L.W., C.F. Ahmann, and J. Bibb. 1933. The Incidence and Significance of Sickle Cell Trait. Annals of Internal Medicine 7: 769–778.
Dobzhansky, T. 1956. The Genetic Nature of Differences Among Men. In Evolutionary Thought in America, ed. Stow Persons. New York: George Braziller.
East, E.M., and D.F. Jones. 1919. Inbreeding and Outbreeding: Their Generic and Sociological Significance. Philadelphia: JB Lippincott Company.
Eugenics Society. 1934. Aims and Objectives of the Eugenics Society. Eugenics Review 26 (2): 133–135.
———. 1938. Notes on the Quarter. Eugenics Review 30 (1, Apr.): 7–8.
Fairbridge, D. 1928. The Pilgrims’ Way in South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Farber, P.L. 2011. Mixing Races. From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Fischer, E. 1913. Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen. Jena: Gustav Fischer.
Fleming, R. 1927. Anthropological Studies of Children. Eugenics Review 18 (4, Jan.): 294–301.
———. 1930. Human Hybrids. Racial Crosses in Various Parts of the World. Eugenics Review 4 (Jan.): 257–263.
———. 1939. Physical Heredity in Human Hybrids. Annals of Eugenics 9: 55–81.
Fletcher, M.E. 1930. Report on an Investigation into the Colour Problem in Liverpool and Other Ports. Liverpool: The Liverpool Association for the Welfare of Half-Caste Children.
Fleure, H.J. 1934. (Review of) R Ruggles Gates. Racial and Social Problems in the Light of Heredity. Eugenics Review 26 (1, Apr.): 73.
Gates, R.R. 1923. Heredity and Eugenics. London, Bombay, and Sydney: Constable and Co., Ltd.
———. 1952. Disadvantages of Race Mixture (Letters to Nature). Nature 170: 896.
Gilroy, P. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.
Haldane, J.B.S. 1938. Heredity and Politics. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
———. 1941. New Paths in Genetics. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Hall, R. 1977. Marie Stopes: A Biography. London: André Deutsch Limited.
Herskovits, M.J. 1930. The Anthropometry of the American Negro. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hexter, J.H. 1975. The Burden of Proof. Times Literary Supplement (TLS) 24 (Oct.): 1251–1252.
Himes, N.E. 1934. In- and Out-Breeding (Letter to the Editor). Eugenics Review 1 (Apr.): 87–89.
Hodges, J.H. 1950. The Effect of Racial Mixtures Upon Erythrocytic Sickling. Blood 5: 804–810.
Hoffman, F.L. 1896. Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro. Publications of the American Economic Association 9 (1–3, Aug). New York: The Macmillan Co.
Hogben, L. 1961. Darwinism and Human Society in Retrospect. In Darwinism and the Study of Society, ed. M. Banton, 37–48. London: Tavistock Publications.
Huxley, J. 1938. Letter to the Editor. Eugenics Review 29: 294.
Jennings, H.S. 1930. The Biological Basis of Human Nature. New York: WW Norton and Company, inc.
King, C., and H. King. 1938. ‘The Two Nations’: The Life and Work of Liverpool University Settlement and Its Associated Institutions, 1906–1937. London: Hodder and Stoughton with the University of Liverpool Press.
Klebs, A.C., ed. 1909. Tuberculosis. A Treatise by American Authors on Its Etiology, Pathology, Frequency, Semeiology, Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company.
Little, K. 1941. The Study of Racial Mixture in the British Commonwealth. Some Anthropological Preliminaries. The Eugenics Review 32 (4): 114–120.
Little, K. 1942. Racial Mixture in Great Britain: Some Anthropological Characteristics of the Anglo-Negro Cross. Eugenics Review 33 (4, Jan.): 12–120.
Lorimer, D. 1978. Colour, Class and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Love, A.C, and Davenport, C.B. 1919. Defects Found in Drafted Men (Printed for the use of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs). Seattle, WA: Government Printing Office.
Mazumdar, P. 1991. Eugenics, Human Genetics and Human Failings: The Eugenics Society, Its Sources and Its Critics in Britain. London: Routledge.
McBride, D. 1991. From TB to AIDS: Epidemics Among Urban Blacks Since 1900. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Mjöen, J.A. 1926. Biological Consequences of Race-Crossing. Journal of Heredity 17 (5): 175–182.
Mjöen, J.A. 1931. Race-Crossing and Glands. Some Human Hybrids and their Parent Stocks. Eugenics Review 23 (1): 31–40.
Montagu, A. 1942. (and 1945). Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nobles, M. 2000. Shades of Citizenship. Race and the Census in Modern Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Powell, R. 1938. Political Biology (Review of Heredity and Politics by JSB Haldane). New Masses, 3 May, pp. 23–25.
Provine, W.B. 1973. Genetics and the Biology of Race Crossing. Science 182 (4114): 790–796.
Reuter, E.B. 1918. The Mulatto in the United States. Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press.
Reverby, S.M. 2009. Examining Tuskegee. The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Shapiro, H.L. 1929. Descendants of the Mutineers of the Bounty. Memoirs of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History, 11 (1).
Stepan, N. 1982. The Idea of Race in Science: Great Britain 1800–1960. London: Macmillan Press.
Teo, H.-M. 2004. Romancing the Raj: Interracial Relations in Anglo-Indian Romance Novels. History of Intellectual Culture 4 (1): 1–18.
Trevor, J.C. 1938. Some Anthropological Characteristics of Hybrid Populations. Eugenics Review 30 (1, Apr.): 21–31.
———. 1953. Race Crossing in Man: The Analysis of Metrical Characters (Eugenics Laboratory Memoirs’ Series). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
UNESCO. 1950. UNESCO and Its Programme. III. The Race Question. UNESCO Publication 791. Paris: UNESCO. July.
———. 1951. Statement on Race. Paris: UNESCO. November.
Waddington, C.H. 1939. An Introduction to Modern Genetics. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Watson, J.D., and A. Berry. 2003. DNA: The Secret of Life. London: Random House Group.
Williams, G.D., and J.D. Applewhite. 1939. Tuberculosis in the Negroes of Georgia: Economic, Racial and Constitutional Aspects. American Journal of Epidemiology 29-Section A (2): 61–110.
Wissler, C. 1924. Distribution of Stature in the United States. The Scientific Monthly 18 (2, Feb.): 129–143.
Young, R.J.C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London and New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Caballero, C., Aspinall, P.J. (2018). ‘Disharmony of Physical, Mental and Temperamental Qualities’: Race Crossing, Miscegenation and the Eugenics Movement. In: Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-33927-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33928-7
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)