and human-scientific discourses
Thomas Teo
York University
Originally published as: Teo,
T. (2004). The historical problematization of "mixed race" in
psychological and human-scientific discourses. In A. Winston (Ed.). Defining
difference: Race and racism in the history of psychology (pp. 79-108). Washington, DC: APA.
This web-based version is based on
the final pre-publication manuscript that is not identical with the published
version. For access to published version please contact your library or contact
author.
Address: Thomas Teo, Department of
Psychology, History and Theory of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele
Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. Electronic mail may be sent via
Internet to tteo@yorku.ca.
This research has been supported by a Standard Research
Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Address:
Thomas Teo, Department of Psychology, History and Theory of Psychology, York
University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. Electronic
mail may be sent to tteo@yorku.ca.
When Hitler (1927/1999) reflected on his political struggle,
he explored three topics regarding race mixture[1]:
race mixture was against nature; it meant the end of culture; and it lowered
the level of the higher race. Hitler's technique of problematization regarding
why race mixture was against nature was crude. He employed the concept of a
species when talking about races, a common practice in 19th century discourses.
Accordingly, race mixture was against nature because "the titmouse seeks
the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the
field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf" (p. 284).
Similarly, his readers were supposed to believe that human races did not seek
each other. Neither groups nor individuals but nature became the subject of
history, and nature did not desire the blending of a higher with a lower race.
In fact, nature had "little love for bastards" (p. 400).
Race mixture meant that the entire evolutionary progress was
"ruined with one blow" (p. 286). Yet, even if nature might not desire
the blending of human races, history showed that individuals did. If that were
the case then one should realize, according to Hitler, that racial crossing
meant the end of culture because "all great cultures of the past perished
only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning"
(p. 289). The reason was that the conquerors transgressed "against the
principle of blood purity" (p. 292) and began "to mix with the
subjugated inhabitants" (p. 292). The Aryan "became submerged in the
racial mixture, and gradually, more and more, lost his cultural capacity"
(p. 296). According to this type of problematization blood mixture was
"the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures" (p. 296).
Inevitably, racial crossing led to regression and a lowering
of the higher race. According to Hitler, the mixed race offspring might stand
higher than the racially lower parent, but certainly not as high as the
superior one. Crossing produced "a medium between the level of two
parents" (p. 285). Yet, the "stronger must dominate and not blend
with the weaker" (p. 285). Besides the lowering of the higher race,
crossing led to physical and mental regression and sickness (see p. 286).
Hitler even included existential-psychological arguments of problematization,
because "the lost purity of blood alone destroys inner happiness forever,
plunges man into the abyss for all time" (p. 327). And he invoked a
superior being as racial crossing was a "sin against the will of the
eternal creator" (p. 286).
Hitler was specifically concerned with the "Rhineland
bastards" (see p. 325) who were the result of the deployment of black
soldiers in the Rhineland after WWI. Based on the notion of a "national
disgrace" politicians and opinion makers demanded the sterilization or even
elimination of their bastard children. Accordingly, these biracial children
were the result of rape or prostitution and thus no moral obligation towards
this offspring, impure in a dual sense, was perceived (see Oguntoye, Opitz,
& Schultz, 1992). For Hitler (1927/1999), these children were the result of
a Jewish conspiracy against the white race (p. 325) as the Jews brought
"the Negroes into the Rhineland" (p. 325) (for an analysis of race in
the third Reich see Burleigh & Wippermann, 1991; Weindling, 1989).
Hitler neither invented the blood theory of inheritance (see
Corcos, 1997) nor the discourse on hybridity.[2]
He could rely on an ongoing reflection in the human sciences about the problems
of racial crossing. Philosophers, anthropologists, biologists, sociologists,
historians, and psychologists participated and promoted a discourse in which
race crossing was construed as an unnatural process leading to a decline in
culture, intellect, and personality. Empirical psychologists considered it
legitimate, appropriate, and worthwhile to test various hypotheses in the field
of hybridity without considering the political, social, and epistemological
background of this issue. In doing so psychologists contributed to making
hybridity a problem -- from Strong (1913) and Ferguson (1916) to Scarr and
Weinberg (1976).
This chapter focuses on the problematization[3] of hybridity
in psychological characteristics studying human sciences. Analyses of
problematization may reconstruct when, why, and how a particular
problematization took place (see also Foucault, 1997, pp. 111-119), but the
focus of this chapter will be on the "how," i. e., the techniques of
problematization. It is a selective history of the problematization of
hybridity and it will not answer exactly when hybridity became a problem in the
course of Western history, nor how the discourses on hybridity as a biological, psychological, cultural, and political
problem shifted over time. Instead I am more interested in the rhetorical
and non-rhetorical techniques that were
construed, used, and repeated in order to make hybridity a problem. I hope to
provide some understanding by tracing a few of these rhetorical techniques from
the Enlightenment to the present.
Before discussing techniques of problematization regarding
hybridity in the context of the human sciences and psychology I would like to
present a sample of the variety of discourses and the many terms that connote a
process or the result of a process in which two persons or groups come
together. Many of the terms have sexual connotations: Adulteration,
bastardization, interbreeding, intermixing, intermarriage, interpenetration,
miscegenation, mongrelization, race-amalgamation, race fusion, race mixture,
race-crossing, racial intermingling, and so on. Terms to refer to the offspring
of racial intermingling include bastard, cross, Eurasian, half-blood,
half-breed, half-caste, hybrid, metis, mixed blood, mongrel, mulatto, and so
on. In fact this terminology is not exhaustive in any way. Human scientists and
politicians developed various subclasses, for example, with regard to
Black-White mixture, researchers used the notion of quadroon (three parts
white), octoroon (seven parts white), and sambo (three parts black) (see
Ferguson, 1916). For the Spanish-American population more than 20 crosses
received names, for example, chino-oscura (Indian father and mulatto mother),
mestizo-claro (Indian father and mestiza mother), chino-cola (Indian father and
chino mother), and zambo-claro (Indian father and zamba mother) (see Young,
1995, p. 176).
The denotations and connotations refer to a blood theory of
inheritance as Corcos (1997) has highlighted. Even contemporary individuals use
this terminology and consider, for example, that a "mulatto" has 50%
black and 50% white blood. Moreover, it is assumed that 100% white or 100%
black blood is pure, whereas 50% white blood is impure. But of course this
terminology does not refer to any contemporary scientific theory of inheritance
and does not have any scientific meaning. Yet, the metaphysics of blood is
still invoked to convey the positive connotation of purity. For example,
Rushton (1999) employs the notion of pure
without quotation marks: "Mixed-Race Blacks have about 25% White ancestry.
Their IQs fall half way between pure Blacks (70) and pure Whites (100)"
(p. 50). Corcos (1997) reminds of the devastating effects of the blood theory
of inheritance during WWII when the American Red Cross segregated blood given by blacks "because it was
feared that through blood transfusions characteristics such as skin color from
'Negroes' would be transferred to 'non-negroes'"(p. 39).
Hybridity was part of the legal discourse. Already in Louis XIV's Code Noir of 1685 on slavery (in Long, 1774, pp. 921-934)
it was suggested that masters who had children with their slaves "shall be
condemned ... in a fine of two thousand pounds weight of sugar" (p. 924).
The code was "liberal"[4]
in the sense that if an unmarried man married his slave, then the slave and the
children were considered free and legitimate. The fate of mulattos also became
a topic of the French Revolution. Reformers discussed the status of free mulattos, for
example, in the colony of St. Dominque. In 1791 the French National Assembly
gave suffrage to mulattos born of free fathers and mothers and made them
eligible to participate in colonial assemblies (see Lokke, 1939). Other
prominent countries that were specifically concerned with legal issues
regarding hybridity are Brazil, Canada (Metis), Jamaica, India, China
(Shanghai), South-Africa, and the United States, to mention a few.
Legal debates in the United States
began in the 1600s. In 1661, Maryland enacted laws concerning free women,
mostly servants, marrying slaves (see Woodson, 1918). These women were forced
to serve the master of the slave during the life of the husband. These laws
were changed after it became evident that planters forced female servants to
marry slaves in order to take advantage of these servants and to use their
offspring as slaves. In 1662 Virginia imposed fines for "fornication with
a Negro" (p. 342). North Carolina provided in 1715 two years extra work
and a fine for a white servant woman having a child with "a Negro, mulatto
or Indian" (p. 345). Massachusetts enacted in 1705 a law that stated that
an African having sexual relations with an English woman should be sold out of
province. Pennsylvania suggested in 1677 that race mixture should be
prohibited. In the 19th century widespread "miscegenation" and a shift
in discourse made it a capital offense for a black man to cohabit with a white
woman in several US states.
It may be difficult to pinpoint the exact historical genesis
of the problematization of hybridity. Proponents of scientific racism even find
in the Bible a "Scriptural abhorrence of racial mixture" (see Dover,
1937, p. 78). Hannaford (1996) points out that in the 13th century Jews were
forced to wear a dress different from Christians in order to prevent
intermarriage. However, these measures were not based on a concept of
"race" but on religious conviction. The Prince of South Spain
Abu-Yussuff Almansur suggested that he would not oppose intermarriage of
genuine converts to Islam (p. 115). Hannaford argues that Jewish rabbis in the
14th century imposed harsh laws on their communities: "The law said that
any Jew found consorting with a Christian woman would be burned alive" (p.
119). A Jewish woman mixing with a Christian man could suffer facial
mutilation. These concerns, however, it seems were not nourished by a racial
but by a religious agenda (see also Geiss, 1988).
It has been argued that pre-modern society had no real concept of racial differentiation (see Goldberg, 1993; Malik, 1996). There was a lack of discourse on the fact that peoples of Northern Africa mixed with blacks. Woodson (1918) pointed out that there had been an "infusion of African blood" (p. 336) in ancient Greek and Italian civilizations, in Portugal, and even in western France and parts of Britain which did not lead to a discourse on hybridity. The discourse on hybridity flared up in the context of European conquest and slavery and many academics have linked it to the projects of Enlightenment and modernity. Goldberg (1993) emphasizes that modernity became obsessed with the issue of race and shows how anthropology and biology in the Enlightenment began to classify racial groupings according to physical and cultural indicators. Malik (1996) on the other hand vindicates modernity and blames romanticism for the "initial backlash against the egalitarian and universalistic assumptions" (p. 73) of the Enlightenment philosophers whose aims he sees betrayed.[5]
It is not task of this chapter to shed light on the role of
the Enlightenment in the context of race and racism. However, evident is that
important figures of the Enlightenment movement raised bybridity as an issue.
For example, Voltaire (1694-1778) covered mixture as a topic in 18th century
literary reflection. His novel's hero Candide (Voltaire, 1759/1999) killed two
monkeys who had followed two women and he was astonished that the women were
distressed about their loss. His servant Cacambo enlightened him that these
monkeys were the women's lovers. Candide himself realized that the results of
this mixture were centaurs, fauns, and satyrs.
Cacambo also explained to Candide that a monkey was a quarter human, as he was
a quarter of a Spaniard (see Chapter XVI).
The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) fought in his
lectures against the intermarriage of nations which "gradually
extinguishes the characters, and is, despite any pretended philanthropy, not
beneficial to mankind" (Kant, 1977, WA XII, p. 671)[6].
It is significant to mention that Kant who did not conduct any research on
hybridity had already a view on that issue, namely that mixture was a problem.
Kant suggested that intermarriage was not beneficial, but he provided no
concrete evidence for the extinction of national character. It seems that it
was already an article of self-evidence in European academia that required no
further explanation. At the same time Kant signified a general technique in the
problematization of hybridity in the human sciences: Merely stating that
hybridity was a problem made it a problem -- particularly when it was based on
the authority of a great philosopher (see also Mills, 1997).
Kant may not have had bad intentions when he wrote and
expressed his views. Josiah Royce (1855c1916), the American philosopher and
ethicist, had also good intentions when he suggested promoting a positive
racial identity of minorities. He posed the hypothetical question: "If
race-amalgamation is indeed to be viewed as always an evil, the best way to
counteract the growth of that evil must everywhere be the cultivation of racial
self-respect and not of racial degradation" (Royce, 1906, pp. 273-274).
Royce wrongly believed that the cause of hybridity was based on the need of the
colored populations to "raise" the color of their children and, thus,
that training self-respect would end race mixture. But Royce's
"enlightened" discourse based good ideas on a premise that was not
challenged. By not challenging it he continued the problematization of
hybridity.
The historian Long (1774) rejected the idea that Jamaica
should be owned or inhabited by mulattos. He hoped that white men "would
abate of their infatuated attachments to black women" (p. 327) and he
warned: "Let any man turn his eyes to the Spanish American dominions, and
behold what a vicious, brutal, and degenerate breed of mongrels has been there
produced, between Spaniards, Blacks, Indians, and their mixed progeny" (p.
327). He characterized the conjunctions of white and black as "two
tinctures which nature has dissociated, like oil and vinegar" (p. 332).[7]
Interestingly, on a political level, Long supported the idea of enfranchising
mulatto children. He hoped that this would dampen the economic interests of
planters in producing mulatto slaves. He also provided advice on how white
women in Jamaica could make themselves more desirable, "more
companionable, useful, and esteemable, as wives, than the Negresses and
Mulattas are as mistresses" (p. 331).
Long also described the physical and psychological features
of mulattos. He depicted them as "well-shaped, and the women
well-featured. They seem to partake more of the white than the black" (p.
335). He suggested that mulatto girls reach puberty early but "from the
time of their being about twenty-five, they decline very fast, till at length
they grow horribly ugly" (p. 335). Moreover, according to Long, mulattos
were lascivious, lively, sensible, clean, ridiculously vain, haughty, fond of
finery, and, tender in their disposition, which "makes them excellent
nurses to the sick" (p. 335). He also believed that mulattos had a reduced
fertility, being of the "mule-kind"[8]
(p. 335). For Long there were "extremely potent reasons for believing,
that the White and Negroe are two distinct species" (p. 336).
For 19th century ideologists
of scientific racism such as Count Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882), who was
influential in academia for understanding the whole of history in terms of the
racial question, race mixture was the
central concern. Gobineau prepared ideological elements that one would find
again in Hitler's discourse on hybridity. Gobineau (1854/1966) suggested that
"the human race in all its branches has a secret repulsion from the
crossing of blood" (p. 29). Yet, history showed that hybridity occurred
which meant in consequence that "the blood of the civilizing race is
gradually drained away" (p. 33). The fall of cultures was not caused by
any socio-cultural events but by degeneration. It meant that a race (or people)
had no longer the same quality "because it has no longer the same blood in
its veins, continual adulterations having gradually affected the quality of
that blood" (p. 25).
History taught, according to Gobineau, that a civilization
would die "when the primordial race-unit is so broken up and swamped by
the influx of foreign elements" (p. 25). Gobineau used the historical
example of the Persians and Romans whose history would supposedly have
continued if they had kept to the purity of blood. Gobineau also raised the
topic of infertility of hybrids, but because he had no evidence of infertility
he relied on hearsay c another technique in the problematization of hybridity.
Gobineau had learned "that in certain parts of Oceania the native women
who have become mothers by Europeans are no longer fitted for impregnation by
their own kind" (p. 116). His recommendation was straightforward:
"Civilizations belonging to racially distinct groups should never be fused
together" (p. 179).
It is difficult to understand comprehensively why
race-mixture was one of the central problems for scientific racism. There were
political, economic, military and psychological reasons. But I suggest that
such explanations do not justice to the complexity of the problem. The symbolic
meaning of hybridity suggests that mixed race was and is also significantly
about sexuality and sex, and thus an understanding of hybridity as an emerging
issue should be accompanied by an analysis of the sexual fascination with the
"other." From a white male's perspective sexual relationships with
female slaves or indigenous women were outside the accepted standards. This
contact was objectionable because it was not sanctioned by Christian marriage.
It was desirable because it promised pleasure and power outside the norms (see
also Young, 1995).
At the same time it was unacceptable and outrageous when a
"colored man" had sex or even sexual desires for a white woman. It
even could mean a black man's death. This double standard was rationalized in
scientific explanations of the 19th century. Dr. Serres suggested
"scientifically" why a white man could have sex with a black woman
but why a white woman should not have intimate relations with a black man.
Impressed by the lengthy penis of the Ethiopian (African) race he suggested:
This dimension coincides with the length of the uterine
canal in the Ethiopian female …. There results from this physical
disposition, that the union of the Caucasian man with an Ethiopian woman is
easy and without any inconveniences for the latter. The case is different in
the union of the Ethiopian with a Caucasian woman, who suffers in the act, the
neck of the uterus is pressed against the sacrum, so that the act of
reproduction is not merely painful, but frequently non-productive. (Serres, as
cited in Broca, 1864, p. 28).
This does not necessarily mean that one should turn to
psychoanalytic interpretations. Some psychoanalysts participated in the
construction of hybridity as a problem. Even post-war psychoanalysts focused,
for example, on the psychopathology of mixed marriages. These marriages were
understood in the psychoanalytic literature as an "exaggerated phobia of
incest" (Lehrman, 1967, p. 68). Or, a mixed marriage might have been based
on an intense Oedipus complex and partners outside one's ethnicity must have
been chosen in "defiant hostility ... toward parents" (p. 78).
Interestingly, the psychoanalyst Lehrman mentioned that patients reported
mainly social pressure against their mixed marriages as their problem but he
diminished these reports as his patients were "only peripherally aware of
the contributions of neurotic drives to their choice of mate" (p. 78). In
such a discourse the hybrid became a result of psychopathology.
Race crossing was covered in literature and as the subject
of literary studies. Dover (1937) suggested that in literature the half-caste
was presented "mostly as an undersized, scheming and entirely degenerate
bastard. His father is a blackguard, his mother a whore. His sister and
daughter … follow the maternal vocation" (p. 13). The story of the
H.M.S. Bounty may be seen in this context. In 1789 the Bounty's mutineers under
the command of Fletcher Christian left Tahiti (see Shapiro, 1953). Nine men
headed by Christian, together with 12 Tahitian women, retreated to Pitcairn,
2500 miles southeast of Tahiti and in 1856 the children who were
half-Polynesian and half-British, moved to Norfolk Island. The interest in this
story and the successes of several films may be attributed to the
anti-authoritarian character of the rebellion, loss of
"civilization," and adventure into a new land, but also with the symbolic
meaning of sexual relations between blackguards and bare-breasted supposedly
uninhibited young native women. Of course, no clear conclusions about the role
of hybridity in the development of this group could be derived, but Darwin
(1871) and postwar academics referred to it as evidence on hybridity.
The biological discourse, which
quite often included concerns regarding the effects of hybridity on human
mental life, used very effective techniques of problematization. One of the
most significant representatives in this context was Charles Davenport,
Harvard-trained as a zoologist and a leading eugenicist (see Barkan, 1992).
Davenport "knew" the negative consequences of race crossing before he
did any empirical research. In 1917, long before his famous book on Race
Crossing in Jamaica (Davenport &
Steggerda, 1929), he presented a paper on The effects of race
intermingling (Davenport, 1917). This paper
is historically interesting as contemporary researchers sometimes forget that
there was not only a focus on the "White, Black, and Yellow races"
but also a focus on European race differences as Gould (1996) has pointed out
in the context of immigration restriction.
Davenport (1917) was interested in the intermingling of Northern
and Southern Europeans (see also Tucker in this book). He compared the Scotch
who were described as "long-lived and whose internal organs are well
adapted to care for the large frames" (p. 366) with the Southern Italian.
The latter had "small short bodies" with "well adjusted
viscera" (p. 366). Both groups of people did fine when left alone. But the
hybrids in the second generation of those two groups might be expected to yield
"children with large frames and inadequate viscera - children of whom it is
said every inch over 5' 10" is an inch of danger; children of insufficient
circulation" (p. 366). From a perspective of problematization it is
important to emphasize the phrase "of whom it is said." It shows that
Davenport based his theory on prejudice and hearsay accounts. Specifically, he
mentioned dentists' reports who supposedly agree that "many cases of
overcrowding or wide separation of teeth are due to a lack of harmony between
size of jaw and size of teeth c probably due to a union of a large-jawed,
large-toothed race and a small-jawed, small-toothed race" (p. 366).
Davenport also discussed psychological consequences of hybridity. For the
mulatto he identified "an ambition and push combined with intellectual
inadequacy which makes the unhappy hybrid dissatisfied with his lot and a
nuisance to others" (p. 367).
A significant technique of problematization, invoked by
Davenport, was the application of "metaphysical" concepts such as disharmony by which he meant disharmony of physical, mental,
and temperamental qualities and disharmony with the environment.[9] The lack of
evidence was compensated by this technique and the general belief that
"miscegenation commonly spells disharmony" (p. 367). Davenport also
applied a scare technique of problematization by drawing people's attention to
the negative health effects of hybridity. He wonders "how much of the
exceptionally high death rate in middle life in this country is due to such
bodily maladjustments" (p. 367). Because hybridization, according to
Davenport, led to a decline in civilization, the solutions were clear: to stop
intermixing and to apply eugenic measures and restrictions on immigration. The
1917 paper laid out Davenport's credo before any concrete empirical research
was done, and empirical studies were executed in order to confirm the belief
system - a very common strategy within scientific racism (see Gould, 1996).
In a 1928 article, Davenport (1928) summarized the results
of extensive empirical studies on racial intermingling in Jamaica. He understood
himself as the Caucasian spokesperson:
"Especially we of the white race, proud of its achievement of the past,
are eagerly questioning the consequences of mixing our blood" (p. 225).
Human hybridity was made into a problem by looking at the problems of animal
hybridity. In order to appear objective and neutral, Davenport reported both
positive and negative effects of intermingling in the animal world.
"Genetical experimentation" (p. 227), so Davenport, had shown several
principles of race crossing. Hybrid vigor of the first generation in the
offspring was such a principle.[10]
The most popular example in this context was the infertile mule[11]
which was "more vigorous than either of the parental species
involved" (p. 227). On the other hand hybridity led to diminished
efficiency of certain hybrids of dogs. But Davenport never clarified what the
concepts of "vigor," "efficiency," and
"disharmony" meant scientifically in the animal or human world.
Davenport and Steggerda (1929) compared Jamaican Blacks,
Whites, and Browns (hybrids) on a variety of variables, from physical traits
(nasal breadth, pelvic breadth, length of hair on arms, etc.) to physiological
and psychological differences (tooth decay, rhythm, pitch discrimination,
etc.). The psychological results showed with regard to intelligence (Army
Alpha Test) that browns (hybrids) do better
at ages 10 to 16 but as adults were "clearly inferior to either of the
parental stocks" (Davenport, 1928, p. 236). This information was
reinterpreted as a problem that fits with the ideology: "Apparently the
browns mature earlier … but their development stops earlier" (p.
236). Findings that some browns do quite well were interpreted as a larger
variability within the hybrids:
The browns, as a whole, have a superior capacity to the
blacks, but there is a much larger proportion of them who through becoming
rattled or through general muddleness are unable to make any score; while, on
the other hand, a large number do brilliant work. (p. 236)
The reader was left with the question: Should one for the
sake of these individuals who do brilliant work accept a
population of hybrids? Davenport's answer was clearly "no" as this
population would carry "an excessively large number of intellectually
incompetent persons" (p, 238). This high variability, that included many
incompetent persons, made hybrids as a group undesirable. Davenport
himself interpreted the results again with the help of metaphysical concepts as
the true outcome of hybridization was "the production of an excessive number
of ineffective, because disharmoniously put together, people" (p. 237). Physical ineffectiveness meant for Davenport that
"some of the hybrids are characterized by the long legs of the Negro and
the short arms of the white, which would put them at a disadvantage in picking
up things from the ground" (p. 238). According to Davenport, American
society must realize that it is "this burden of
ineffectiveness which is the heavy price that is paid for hybridization"
(p. 238).
Davenport and Steggerda's (1929) book
appears as a masterpiece of empirical research: a collection of more than
three-hundred tables, more than hundred figures, and thousands of numbers,
based on a battery of sophisticated tests and an impressive number of research
subjects. Davenport, in his
self-understanding, was not producing ideology but pure objective
empirical science. As an objective scientist he even entertained the question
of whether it would benefit the English race to
increase their musical capacity by mixing with Blacks. After careful
consideration he rejected this idea because one would not be able to control
the process and more importantly, there was "a strong instinct for
homogeneity" (Davenport, 1928, p. 238).
It meant that race conscious white people would not intermingle with the other
races, anyway.
Davenport's counterpart in Germany
was Eugen Fischer (1913/1961), whose work Davenport knew well. Fischer who
became famous and infamous for his role in Nazi Germany eugenics (see Weingart,
Kroll, & Bayertz, 1988) had already published a systematic anthropological
empirical study on "bastards" in German Southwest Africa in 1913.
According to Fischer, who emphasized how rewarding his research experiences
were, the study was the first anthropological study to deal with a bastard
people. From a perspective of
problematization the whole book made this people a problem. The study was
impressive: It covered history, anthropology, economy, customs, and the lives
of the bastards of Rehoboth c hybrids between Dutch and Hottentots. It included
the genealogical reconstruction of single families, hundreds of measurements,
many tables, pictures, graphs, and plentiful data.
Fischer, for example, addressed the idea that mixed race
persons possessed attractive faces. He argued that the notion that
bastardization leads to beautiful faces was an illusion. These faces were,
according to Fischer, beautiful in comparison to the non-mixed colored people.
He rejected that one could seriously compare them to the "truly beautiful
well-balanced pure European faces" (p. 166).[12]
Fischer praised the bastards while at the same time he left no doubt about
their inferiority. He commended the bastards' support for Germany and their
courage and dedication as allies in the wars in Southwest Africa. He even
called this group "the best of the colony" (p. 299). On the other
hand he left no doubt about their social and psychological shortcomings. His
language - although difficult to convey in English - was condescending, and he
used a style of description and interpretation that one would rather use for
animals than for humans. With regard to measuring the fatness of his research
objects, he reported that more than half of the bastard women had fat contents
and extensive fat deposits at their "hips, outer part of their thighs and
at the bottoms" (p. 66). These women "match the fattest European
woman, even surpass her" (pp. 66-67).
Fischer also had a section on psychology in his book in
which he characterized the mental life of bastards. A subtle technique of
problematization was to suggest, as Fischer did, that there were difficulties
in making general judgments on bastards, while at the same time judgments were
made anyway. According to Fischer, the bastard's emotional life was dull (p.
292), his emotions were slow, and thus he made the impression of being
apathetic. This apathy explained for Fischer why the bastards were described as
brutal and cruel. The bastard was serious, curious, but a steady will was
missing (p. 294). He was characterized as lazy, vain, and proud and, at the
same time, good-natured and complaisant. All in all, he lacked the energy of
the European. The bastard's intelligence was "not low" although
Fischer observed that cognition processed remarkably slowly (p. 295). Foresight
was lacking which made the bastard prone to alcohol. Fischer summarized that
bastards were "inferior [minderwertig] regarding mental powers compared to
the pure Whites" (p. 296). In addition, regarding their racial
character (Fischer referred to a
combination of energy, fantasy, intelligence, self-awareness, character, and
physical ability) "our bastards are immensely inferior to the European, as
all bastards" (p. 298). His book ended with a call for more
anthropological research, which should pave the way for practical eugenics c a
chilling ending given what is known now about his role in Nazi eugenics.[13]
Fischer and Davenport laid the
foundation and other scientists followed their lead by using the same
techniques of problematization and referring to their research. For example, Herbert
Spencer Jennings, a Harvard trained professor at Johns Hopkins, wanted
experimental biology in The Biological Basis of Human Nature (Jennings, 1930) to provide a "solid foundation"
(p. 269) for understanding race mixture. Jennings, too, problematized human
race mixture by looking at the problematic results of hybridity in the animal
world. For example, biology showed that when very diverse organisms mix then
the effect could be "poisonous" (p. 270). Another effect might be
sterility, shown by many crosses between different species, and another might
lead to "disharmonious combinations" (p. 274). Jennings suggested
that the offspring might even be superior - but only if two slightly diverse
races were mating (see below, for the distance theory or race mixture).
After having established race crossing in the animal world - which showed more
negative than positive results - Jennings suggested that there was no
incompatibility of chromosomes, fundamental structures, and functions between
human races. He even discussed advantages of race crossing, namely hybrid
vigor, which had been observed in race mixture. But Jennings concluded that
this hybrid vigor was "probably lessened owing to the fact … that in
certain details the characteristics of the two races may be inharmonious"
(p. 280). As evidence for inharmonious characteristics he summarized the
studies of Davenport, suggesting that mulattos showed a disharmonious
combination of legs and body, that race mixture might lead to a large body with
small kidneys, or large teeth crowded in a small jaw, and that crowded and
defective teeth were less common in less mixed nations.
As "evidence" for
inharmonious combinations, Jennings reported a study by the German Lang who had
analyzed the effects of breeding a dachshund with a Great St. Bernard dog (see
also Tucker in this book). Jennings (p. 281) reprinted a drawing from Lang that
showed a dog with short crooked legs and a large body. As Jennings put it:
"The result … was neither beautiful nor efficient" (p. 282). Jennings
also discussed mental characteristics of cross breeding and again relied on
Davenport and Steggerda suggesting that hybrids demonstrated inharmonious
mental combinations more frequently. He even discussed the impact of race
crossing on social systems, and concluded that "the hybrid individual does
not fit either system; he is rejected by both" (p. 287).
Jennings in his problematization
of human hybridity relied on the arguments of Davenport and Fischer, who had
based their ideas on various techniques of problematization. Just like
Davenport, he sought to present the aura of objectivity and thus discussed
favorable bybrid combinations. However, in the case of favorable outcomes he
solely focused on the positive effects produced by various animal breeders.
Jennings' conclusion in the human domain was unambiguous: "A nation
composed of races in process of mixture will not be among those happy peoples
whose annals are vacant" (p. 288). As the white race was superior in
"matters of judgement, of adjustment to condition" (p. 286), in
Jennings' own words, "to the superior race, admixture with the inferior
one is adulteration; it means a lowering of quality" (p. 287).
From a presentist perspective one should add that critics of these findings then (and now) were trapped in a dilemma. They might reject this discourse based on the concepts used and the questions asked. They might challenge ideas on whether, for example, the organs of a mixed Scot and Italian were harmonious or not. But their opponents also included "empirical" data, a strong authority in a scientific and technology-based society. Critics would loose in academia and in the public sphere as long as they were not able to counter the knowledge constructed in research. However, challenging the knowledge meant listening to the questions, implicitly sharing some of the assumptions, participating in the empirical language game, and providing alternative empirical data. I suggest that in providing alternative empirical evidence they contributed to the problematization of hybridity as they were forced to test the same hypotheses as their opponents.[14]
The zoologist William Castle (1930) challenged the notion of "disharmony." He pointed out in his criticism of Jennings that the St.Bernard-Dachshund cross did not show more disharmony than the dachshund itself. He also argued that the notion of disproportional organs in crosses between Northern and Southern Europeans showed a "complete vacuum of evidence" (p. 604). With regard to Davenport's and Steggerda's account of the hybrids with long legs and short arms he suggested that not one of the many pictures in the book would indicate this problem. Castle concluded that the "broad sweeping statements" (p. 605) "will be with us as the bogey men of pure-race enthusiasts for the next hundred years" (p. 606). The anthropologist Melville Herskovits (1934) opposed scientific racism's interpretation of results on race crossing based on his own empirical studies. He pointed out that ancestry was more important than the mere act of mixing. If the ancestors were capable, then the descendants will inherit it. Thus, purebred stock with poorly endowed ancestors would be poorly endowed. His conclusion was that "the mere fact of crossing cannot be held a causative one of primary importance" (p. 402).[15]
The North American social-psychological and sociological
discourse before WWII can be characterized as a move from a racist to a
racialized problematization of hybridity (see Richards, 1997; Samelson, 1978).
Many sociological discourses listened to the biological voice while introducing
a sociological one. For example, Frank Hankins (1926), professor of sociology,
added the "psycho-social handicaps under which hybrids usually labor"
(p. 329) to the canon of questions relevant in the discussion on hybridity.
However, his reflections focused mostly on the results of biology including
those of Fischer and Davenport. Hankins rejected some of Davenport's
interpretations as appearing "to be pure pseudo-scientific bunk" (p.
344) and concluded that "race crossing as such is not biologically
injurious" (p. 343). Hankins' concern was the inferior imbecile or moron,
whether purebred or hybrid, for which he desired eugenic measures regardless of
race. He saw "no sound biological argument" (p. 347) against
white-black crosses, yet, did not challenge the idea that the mulatto in
intellectual ability ranks intermediate between white and black norms:
"Average mulattoes are doubtless superior to average pure negroes in
general intelligence, but inferior to average whites" (p. 347). Beyond
race mixture, Hankins' critical concern focused solely on challenging the idea
that the Nordic race was more productive than the other European races.
Edward B. Reuter (1931), professor of sociology at the State
University of Iowa, compiled his many studies on hybridity in a book.[16]
He suggested in 1917 that the mulatto and other mixed races were not inferior,
as some researchers held, but superior
to the pure-blood natives. For Reuter (1917), the mixed-blood was not a median
group but "stands nearer to the Caucasian than to the Negro parent"
(p. 105). He tried to make sense of this "superiority" by discussing
various possible factors such as "superior racial heredity" (p. 87).
Reuter also discussed social psychological factors to account for the
superiority of the mulatto but rejected the idea that superiority can be
explained based on environment and opportunity. Instead he suggested that
"there has been in the past a biological selection in favor of the mulatto
group" (p. 97) founded on expectancy effects and social prestige. Reuter
(1930) also challenged various hypotheses in the context of the assumed
relationship of civilization and race crossing. After careful consideration he
concluded that races and cultures were independent issues and that
"neither racial amalgamation nor racial purity is a causal factor in
civilization" (p. 449). Despite his critical intentions in challenging the
inferiority of the mulatto and the decadence theory Reuter did not overcome the
problematization of hybridity.
The breakthrough for sociologists and social psychologists
arrived with the introduction and dissemination of the concept of the marginal
man, which elicited its own research
tradition independent of biology. This did not mean, however, that the circle
of problematization had been overcome, rather, it made hybridity not a
biological but a social problem. The term marginal man was popularized in
academia by Robert E. Park, professor of sociology at the University of
Chicago, who published in 1928 a paper on Human migration and the
marginal man (Park, 1928). Park's basic
thesis was that human migration produced a situation in which individuals meet
and mix and that "ordinarily the marginal man is a mixed blood, like the
Mulatto in the United States or the Eurasian in Asia" (p. 893). However,
Park already provided a more comprehensive definition in arguing that the
concept of the marginal man not only referred to racial hybrids but also
included cultural marginal men living in permanent transition and crisis.
It was clear for Park that the marginal men could be
described and understood as a personality type with a particular mental life.
Park (1931) described the personality and the mentality of racial hybrids in
greater detail in a 1931 article. He emphasized that "the character of the
intelligence which he displays, and the general level of the intellectual life
he has achieved c is very largely due to the social situation" (p. 540).
Park even suggested that the many intelligence tests that had been administered
were "inconclusive" (p. 540) as they did not properly distinguish
between nature and nurture. It did not hinder him to point out that the "mulattoes
were superior to the Negroes" (p. 541) in these tests and that there was
in terms of achievement and status "no question at all in regard to the
actual superiority of the mulatto in comparison to the Negro" (p. 542).
According to Park, mulattos as a group exhibited specific
personality characteristics. They were "more enterprising than the
Negroes, more restless, aggressive, and ambitious … often sensitive and
self-conscious to an extraordinary degree" (p. 545). The mulatto was
"more intelligent because, for one thing, he is more stimulated, and, for
another, takes himself more seriously" (p. 545). Park then attributed
"the general egocentric behavior of the mulatto" (p. 546) to the
"infusion of blood of the dominant race" (p. 546). As a sociologist
he emphasized not only the biological but also the cultural inheritance of the
marginal man:
If the mulatto displays intellectual characteristics and
personality traits superior to and different from those of the black man, it is
not because of his biological inheritance merely, but rather more, I am
inclined to believe of his more intimate association with the superior cultural
group. (p. 547)
Park's ambiguous attribution of certain mental and personal
characteristics of racial hybrids to biology and culture did by no means overcome the problematization of hybridity -
it solely introduced sociology as an apt tool for problematization.
Park (1937) also wrote the introduction to Everett V.
Stonequist's (1937) book The Marginal Man,
who further popularized the concept. Park pointed to the European expansion
that had produced a personality type, a marginal man, who was forced to live in
two antagonistic societies or cultures. On the background of European politics
in the 1930s, he mentioned positive outcomes of marginality such as a
"wider horizon, the keener intelligence, the more detached and rational
viewpoint" (pp xvii-xviii). Park specifically moved away from the mulatto
as a racial marginal man to the Jew as a cultural marginal man who was
"relatively the more civilized human being" (p. xviii) - the Jew in
the Diaspora "has everywhere and always been the most civilized of human
creatures" (p. xviii).
For Stonequist (1937) the marginal
man was an "individual who through migration, education, marriage, or some
other influence leaves one social group or culture without making a
satisfactory adjustment to another finds himself on the margin of each but a
member of neither" (pp. 2-3). Marginality could be constituted through
class, culture, religion, and other group memberships but "the most
obvious type of marginal man is the person of mixed race ancestry" (p.
10). Discussed in detail were the Eurasians of India, the Cape Colored of South
Africa, the mulattos of the United States, the colored people of Jamaica, the
Indo-Europeans of Java, the part-Hawaiians, and the mixed populations of
Brazil. Regarding the hybrids of the United States Stonequist pointed to the
social situation (one drop of Negro blood rule) in the United States that
presented a specific situation: "He is more likely to be restless and
race-conscious, aggressive and radical, ambitious and creative" (p. 25).
Stonequist devoted a whole chapter
in his book to the personality traits of the marginal man. Basically, the
marginal man was estranged from both cultures and thus showed an
"ambivalence of attitude and sentiment" (p. 146). Hybrid
disharmonies, as described by biologists (see above), were reinterpreted
sociologically: ambivalence, "together with nervous strain, is at the root
of most if not all of the behaviour which has frequently been viewed by the
biologically minded in terms of 'racial disharmony'" (pp. 147-148). It was
the marginal situation that produced "excessive self-consciousness and
race-consciousness" (p. 148). Too, an inferiority complex was a common affliction
among the marginal men (see p. 148). Stonequist who described the marginal
mulatto as creative (see above) suggested that the marginal Jew's increased
mental activity was "imitative and conformist, not creative, in
nature" (p. 155).
Stonequist was not working with
the premises of scientific racism; however, he shifted between accepting
some parts of the racist discourse and an environmental sociological discourse.
It seems that his problematization of the ambivalent
marginal man expressed more of Stonequist's own theoretical ambivalence towards
racial hybrids. On the one hand he believed that the hybrid possesses
characteristics of manner, thought and speech which were biologically inherited
from both lines of ancestry whereas on the other hand he emphasized that
"the marginal personality is a function of social conditions" (p.
211). He even portrayed the marginal personality as the "key-personality
in the contacts of cultures" (p. 221) who "sometimes succeeds in
making an adjustment to his situation" (p. 221). This discourse clearly
did not overcome the problematization of hybridity but contributed to it.
Stonequist had no clear understanding of the relationship between forms of
personality and society and no understanding with regard to viewing problems
from the perspective of the hybrid. Although sympathetic to the fate of the
hybrid his analyses were paternalistic and the premise was clear: Because of
his "peculiarities the mixed blood presents a special problem for the
community" (p. 10).[17]
Pioneers of psychology on hybridity
Some pioneers of psychology had strong opinions about race
mixture. Paul Broca (1824-1880), the famous brain researcher, dedicated a whole
booklet to the phenomenon of human hybridity. Broca's (1864) self-understanding
was that of a neutral and objective scientist and he warned that "the
intervention of political and social considerations has not been less injurious
to Anthropology than the religious element" (p. 69) whereas in science
"facts must answer the question" (p. 15). Rejecting Gobineau's
universal rejection of hybridity, he was a supporter and promoter of what one
could call the distance theory of hybridity:
mixture of closely related races is beneficial whereas mixture of distant races
is perilous.[18]
Broca considered the French and the British to be mixed races; in fact
"the greater part of Western Europe is inhabited by mixed races" (p.
18). Mixture in this context was labelled "eugenesic," meaning that
the hybrids were totally fertile.
Broca argued that the intermixture
of distant races was not eugenesic, surveying systematically the literature of
his time. He concluded that "Mulattoes of the first degree, issued from
the union of the Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) race with the African Negroes, appear
inferior in fecundity and longevity to individuals of the pure races" (p.
60), and that "it is at least doubtful, whether these Mulattoes, in their
alliances between themselves, are capable of indefinitely perpetuating their
race" (p. 60). Rejecting accounts of monogenism he concluded:
To be inferior to another man
either in intelligence, vigour, or beauty, is not a humiliating condition. On
the contrary, one might be ashamed to have undergone a physical or moral
degradation, to have descended the scale of beings and to have lost rank in
creation. (p. 71)[19]
Francis Galton (1822-1911), one of the most important British figures in the history of Western psychology, supported partially the hypothesis that mixture among closely related races can be favorable. He praised the mixture in which vigor of the Scandinavians joined with the vivacity of the Gaul and the Huguenots were beneficial to England as "the cross breed between them and our ancestors was a singularly successful mixture" (Galton, 1869/1962, p. 38). On the other hand Galton (1874/1970) raised the question of whether "a mixture of one or more of the various civilized races is conducive to form an able offspring" (p. 18). It "appeared" to Galton with regard to his men of science that "their ability is higher in proportion to their numbers among those of pure race" (p. 18).[20]
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903),
another supporter of the distance hypothesis, suggested that there was "abundant proof, alike
furnished by the inter-marriages of human races and by the inter-breeding of
animals, that when the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight degree
the result is invariably a bad one in the long run" (Spencer, 1972, p.
256). Describing the abilities of the hybrid in his Principles of Sociology he concluded: "The half caste, inheriting from one
line of ancestry proclivities adapted to one set of institutions, and from the
other line of ancestry proclivities adapted to another set of institutions, is
not fitted for either" (Spencer, 1972, p. 163). Hybrid societies were unstable
and thus should be organized based "on the principle of compulsory
co-operation; since units much opposed in their natures cannot work together
spontaneously" (p. 166). His advice to the modernizers of Japan included
that the inter-marriage of foreigners and Japanese "should be positively
forbidden" (p. 256). He warned his American readers:
If the Chinese are allowed to
settle extensively in America, they must either, if they remain unmixed, form a
subject race in the position, if not of slaves, yet of a class approaching to
slaves; or if the mix they must form a bad hybrid. (p. 257)
G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924), one of the fathers of American
psychology, had a long chapter on Adolescent
races and their treatment in
his famous book on Adolescence (Hall, 1907), in which race mixture was a
recurring topic. Accepting the distance theory, he mentioned the beneficial
qualities of the "neo-Aryan" type (p. 723), and identifying the
Anglo-Saxons, the Germans, and the Jews as mixed races. Hall doubted that race
mixture among differing races was beneficial, referring to Negro and American
Indian crosses, warning of increased mixed race populations in Mexico. He
summarized research suggesting that the decrease of pure whites in the
population led to "bad food, shelter, medical treatment, especially the
ravages of smallpox, and premature marriages" (p. 682). On the other hand
he was sensitive towards social prejudice in the characterization of hybrids:
"The bad qualities of half-breeds are generally due to prejudice and social
ostracism" (p. 722). A similar ambivalent pattern can be detected in his
discussion of India's Eurasians. Reviewing research Hall emphasized that some
Eurasians were legitimate children of honest parents and that they suffered
under taboos even when they came from formidable backgrounds. On the other hand
he did not distance himself from the burning question:
What to do with the
festering hordes of low-class Eurasians, mostly the fruits of sin, the very
sediment of pagan Asia, the best of them constantly roving, often begging with
effrontery from Englishmen as if they had claims upon them, often with
hereditary languor and constitutional laziness … . (p. 708)
Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931) (1924), heralded by historians as
one of the fathers of social psychology, divided - based on psychological
characteristics - humans into primitive, inferior, average, and superior races
(pp. 26-27). He did not doubt that "very different races, the black and
the white for example, may fuse, but the half-breeds that result constitute a
population very inferior to those of which it is sprung, and utterly incapable
of creating or even of continuing, a civilisation" (p. 52). As a supporter
of the distance hypothesis Le Bon stated
that interbreeding of distant peoples would destroy "the soul of the
races" (p. 54). However, cross-breeding might be a source of improvement
if it occurred among superior races such as the English and Germans of America
(p. 53). He also believed that peoples with a high degree of civilization
"carefully avoid intermarrying with foreigners" (p. 54) and predicted
that "as the world grows older, the races become more and more stable and
their transformation by means of fusion rare and rarer" (p. 59-60).
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), the great man of German experimental psychology, had surprisingly little to say about race mixture in his ten volumes of folk psychology. He suggested in his analysis of language (Wundt, 1921) that there were three factors responsible for changes in phonetic expression [Lautwandel]: the influence of natural environment, the mixture of peoples and races, and the influence of culture. Neither this analysis was based on a racial ideology nor his suggestion that the caste system in India cannot be explained by race mixture or race differences (Wundt, 1929, p. 235). A more ambiguous statement can be found in his analysis of society, in which he wrote (Wundt, 1928, pp. 269-270) that the mulatto was not just a blend but a new type. This type was considered (Wundt did not mention by whom) inferior in terms of resilience [Widerstandskraft] and capacity [Leistungsfähigkeit]. Although he seemed to buy into the distance theory, suggesting that the mixture of persons with few race differences might lead to improvement, an ideological discourse of problematization was lacking in his folk psychology.[21]
Many of the above-cited examples represent a rhetorical
problematization of hybridity by which I mean the verbal (discursive, written)
construction of mixed race as a problem. It can easily be observed in the
speculations, the interpretation of data and the conclusions that researchers
drew. The more ideological the discourse, the more important it was to
emphasize the scientific and objective nature of research. But if human
scientists want to become epistemologically objective they must include
questions of where research problems came from and of the historical nexus
between academic and social agendas. Besides the rhetorical construction of
hybridity as a problem, I suggest that in empirical psychology the mere act of
hypothesis testing (of the impact of various degrees of hybridity on
psychological variables), sometimes without prejudiced interpretation,
contributes to the problematization of hybridity - I label this act the
non-rhetorical problematization of hybridity. Of course, in many cases the
rhetorical and non-rhetorical problematization went hand in hand (Davenport and
Fischer).
One of the first studies was conducted by Strong (1913) who
tested and compared white and colored children on the Binet-Simon scale. In a
small sub-study she divided her colored sample into three groups according to
color: dark children, medium
in color children, and light
colored children. She found that "the
darkest children are more nearly normal, the lightest show the greatest
variation, both above and below normal" (p. 506). She admitted that
"this classification was not a scientific one and the statement of results
may be entirely worthless" (p. 506). This was a variation of the "it
is difficult to make statements, but I make them anyway" technique of
problematization pointed out earlier (Fischer). On the one hand Strong admitted
that the findings might be without scientific value; on the other she reported
her results. The mere act of reporting the results and introducing degree of
color as a psychological variable in empirical studies contributed to the
problematization of hybridity. Later literature reviews failed to cite the
caution.
Ferguson (1916), who provided a good overview of ideas and
early empirical studies on hybridity, cited Strong's results without caution
(p. 87). He himself tested systematically the mulatto hypothesis, meaning the effects of hybridity on various
(psychological) variables. The sample was classified by Ferguson "who had
had considerable experience with negroes" (p. 92) into four groups: pure
negroes; negroes three-fourths
pure; mulattoes proper; and (d) quadroons (p. 91). He "knew" that the average
performance of the colored population in tests of higher capacity was
"only about three-fourths as efficient as the performance of whites of the
same amount of training" (p. 123) and he even suggested that his results
underestimate racial differences as the "unselected masses of
Negroes" (p. 123) had a much smaller percentage of white blood. With
regard to his hypothesis, Ferguson found that intellectual performance in
general depended on the degree of color (see p. 125): Pure negroes reached 60% of intellectual white efficiency; negroes
three-fourths pure achieved 70%; mulattoes 80%; and quadroons 90%, respectively. Willing to share his predictions
regarding bybridity, Ferguson, who showed some sympathy for the fate of the
colored people, comforted the (white) reader because "the white blood in a
mulatto does not return to the white race through intermarriage; the white
stock will remain pure" (p. 130). Finally, he predicted race friction
because "the mulatto is not as tractable or as submissive to white
domination as is the pure negro" (p. 130).
Interestingly, there were numerous empirical studies on
mixed-blood Indians (native Americans) in North America.[22]
For example, Hunter and Sommermier (1922) studied the level of intelligence
based on degree of Indian blood, developing the following participant
categories: pure Indian blood; three-quarters
Indian blood; one-half Indian
blood; and one-quarter Indian
blood - well aware "that the white
blood present in the various hybrids is of a low grade" (p. 259). The
authors tested whether "the ability involved in the Otis test decreases
with a decrease in the amount of white blood" (p. 257). The results,
displayed in scientific tables, graphs, numbers, and statistics, indicated
indeed differences between white and Indian children (white children were not
tested but data from previous tests were used), and a correlation between
degree of Indian blood and intelligence. Admitting that the Indian's social
environment is probably "inferior" (p. 274) to that of white
children, and even discussing age, sex, social status, schooling, and school
grade as potential factors to account for the differences they had found,
nevertheless, Hunter and Sommermier concluded that the main explanation was
reduced to "tempermental [sic]
and intelligence differences due to race" (p. 277). The conclusion was
possible because the authors biologized social status, which "may well be
the result of low intelligence" (p. 274).
Garth (1923) expressed empirical psychology's basic
hypothesis on hybridity clearly, namely, that "mixture of different lines
brings about differences in intelligence" (p. 388). His subjects included Mexicans; mixed-blood Indians; Plains and Southeastern full-blood
Indians; Pueblo full-blood
Indians; and Navajo and Apache
full-blood. The results yielded that the
mixed-blood scores were highest, followed by the Mexicans, the Plains and
Southeastern full-blood Indians, and the Pueblo full-blood Indians. The Navajo
and Apache were "the least intelligent" (p. 393). Surprisingly, Garth
included arguments for explaining these results based on education, suggesting
that the mixed bloods experienced the highest education. He also argued that
the social status of the mixed-blood was the highest. He concluded for the
groups under question that "because of the fact that social status and
education have not been controlled, we may not positively state that these data
indicate innate racial differences in intelligence" (p. 401).[23]
Jamieson and Sandiford (1928) tested pupils of the Six
Nations near Brantford, Ontario. Although the authors pointed out that the
Indian children suffered from a language handicap, that the social status was
not the same for these children, and that the results depended on the tests
used in the study, they concluded that "IQ seems to rise with the
admixture of white blood but the results must be interpreted with caution
… also because the amount of white blood cannot be determined with
accuracy" (pp. 325-327). This was a variation of the "it is difficult
to make statements, but I make them anyway" technique of problematization,
and the results were reported because they fitted the Zeitgeist, and fulfilled
social and academic expectations.
Telford (1932) on the other hand found "no evidence of
a relationship between degree of white blood and test performance, unless it be
a slight negative one for the Chippewas" (p. 140). He concluded that the
results obtained could be explained by selective breeding: "there probably
exist blood strains within any race which are superior to certain blood lines within
any other race" (pp. 140-141). This meant that the hybrid could achieve
high or low scores depending upon the strains of the mixed races. He also
suggested that the superiority of the mulattos could be explained by biological
selection that favored the mulatto (see above).
One could list many more studies in this context but the
general theme should be clear: an infinite possibility to test various
hypotheses regarding hybridity with a sheer unlimited amount of psychological
variables leading nowhere but to the reproduction and production of
problematization. Although studies on the mulatto hypothesis have become rarer
after WWII, it was again in the 1970s that the mainstream psychologists Scarr
and Weinberg (1976) posed the question: "Do interracial children (with one
black and one white parent) perform at higher levels on IQ tests than do
children with two black parents; that is, does the degree of white ancestry
affect IQ score?" (p. 727). The authors find significant differences in IQ
scores but attribute them mainly to environmental factors. They also kept to
this variable in their longitudinal follow-up studies (e.g., Weinberg, Scarr,
& Waldman, 1992). Rushton (1999) later used this research in order to
suggest that "Mixed-Race" (p. 66) children prove his theory of
inherited racial differences in intelligence.
The paradigm shift
After WWII and the international recognition that racism was
the essential component of German fascism and its atrocities, it became more
difficult to promote studies that claimed the inferiority of minority ethnic
groups. Nevertheless, given the power of pre-war discourses it was considered
essential to take a position on these issues. In this context, Shapiro (1953)
published the UNESCO booklet on Race Mixture. In a "liberal" fashion he rejected the discourse of
superiority and pointed out that the variation between races was less than the
variation within a race. However, a close scrutiny shows that despite his good
intentions he was not fundamentally overcoming the problematization of
hybridity. This was evident when he argued that "to recognize the
importance of race mixture in the modern world does not unfortunately provide
us with the solutions to problems which it raises" (p. 50).
Shapiro's language was ambivalent: "Race mixture has
had a field day in Hawaii. Polynesians, all kinds and degrees of Europeans and
Americans, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos … have
met here and produced a bewildering array of hybrids" (pp. 46-47). He
talked about mixed progeny and "disabilities they suffer anyway as
half-castes" (p. 52), whereby it was not clear what was meant by the term
disabilities. Certainly, Shapiro rejected Gobineau's emphasis on race in order
to understand history, but he wrote that we can "scarcely hope to
understand the populations, of such countries as Mexico or Brazil …
without a knowledge of the history of miscegenation that has produced
them" (p. 50).
Shapiro's savior was science, believing that it would
overcome prejudice and racism - not realizing that it was science that was
responsible for systematic racist constructions by the best-trained and most
esteemed scientists. His rejection of racism was based on the interpretation of
data which led him to conclude for hybridity that "it depends who is
crossing with whom" (p. 52). Shapiro, chairman of the department of
anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, participated in a
discourse that challenged the context of justification but neglected the
context of discovery. This type of discourse led to a disregard and a critique
of the liberal institutions and enlightened writings in the 1980s and 1990s in
various forms of postmodernism and post-colonialism. Postcolonial writers point
to the eurocentric nature of science including the enlightened one (see
Harding, 1998).
In psychology one can observe a slow "paradigm
shift" from understanding hybridity as a problem to understanding and
identifying the problems that multiracial individuals encounter in a given
socio-cultural context such as North America. One of the main problems that
hybrids encounter in society was and is that they were construed as a problem.
This shift was inaugurated by multiracial academics themselves who switched the
focus from being objects of research to subjects, in the sense that multiracial
subjectivity must be central in the discourse on hybridity. Two significant
books in the 1990s signify this paradigm shift: Racially Mixed People in
America (Root, 1992) and The
Multiracial Experience (Root, 1996).
In addition, the political discourse shifted and now
emphasizes the contribution of mixed race populations to history. For example,
the Canadian citizenship booklet (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 1999)
mentions the contribution of Metis in the establishment of Canada, who are
recognized as an aboriginal people in Canada. In the United States (see Root,
1996) the situation changed with the Civil Rights Movement and in 1967 the
Supreme Court ("Loving v. Virginia") overturned the remaining state
laws against interracial marriages. In 1988 the Association of Multiethnic
Americans was founded which lobbied on legal issues as well as on challenging
the premise of a single racial identity.
A cultural shift may also be seen in the context of the US
presidential elections of 2000, which forced Bob Jones University, which had disallowed interracial dating, to change
its policies. Multiraciality has not lost its connection with sexuality. This
can also be understood in the depiction of interracial sex, which remains a
category for many sex sites on the Internet. However, the public is also
fascinated by hybridity as a general topic; for example, the Canadian
newsmagazine MacLean's had a
cover story in its August 27, 2001, issue: Black + White ... equals
black, says author Lawrence Hill in an excerpt form his provocative new book and Mixed race Canadians chronicle their
search for identity. The magazine reported
the voices of multiracial people in Canada without providing problematizations.
The epistemological problem in the field of hybridity is not
the hybrid but an ideologically motivated category mistake that conceptualizes
hybridity as a natural kind (see Tate & Audette, 2001). However, hybridity
is of a social, historical, and cultural kind. When multiracial persons discuss
hybridity they should do so in this sense and address historical injustices and
problems they encounter. I say should as
of course multiracial people are part of the same socio-cultural mainstream and
thus may reproduce the same category mistake. It makes no scientific sense to
use hybridity as a natural kind variable in psychological research. A similar
argument can be applied to the concept of race itself, but the concept of race
seems so self-evident that it will take some more time for its public deconstruction.
I hope that the concept of hybridity contributes to the deconstruction of the
concept of race, by pointing out that a biracial person, for example, is not
black or white, but both, black and white (see Teo, 1994).
Academic discourses on hybridity
must be analyzed in terms of their ideological function. It is clear that many
discourses, for which examples were given in this argument, served oppression
and, from the perspective of multiracial persons, they were part of discursive
violence. Indeed, it is necessary to label research on hybridity as an
historical example of epistemic violence (see Spivak, 1999). The human sciences
and psychology were important players and had an enormous impact on the lives
of millions of people. They contributed to the degradation, subjugation, and
humiliation of multiracial people, in some cases to their sterilization, and
death. Knowledge produced in these discourses in which hybrids were viewed as
objects and not as subjects of research is violent knowledge.
Some human scientists argue that knowledge is knowledge
regardless of the context of discovery and that science should not be
restricted by political concerns (see Furedy, 1997; Rushton, 1999). What these
scientists label "political" considerations are in fact ethical ones.
But in the name of ethical knowledge, human scientists do not send individuals
to concentration camps anymore in order to perform objective medical
experiments that may or may not benefit others, and contemporary researchers do
not inject individuals with diseases without their knowledge in order to gain
objective longitudinal data on the trajectory of a sickness. There is an
ethical consensus, a rational ethical
consensus, that studies that exploit and abuse groups of people should be part
of the human sciences' past. I am hopeful that there is reason in human history.
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Endnotes
[1]
The terms "race," "race mixture," "hybridity,"
and other words in this context should only be used in quotation marks because
their scientific value is questionable. However, as these terms are used and
referred to on a recurring basis, I do not always use quotation marks.
[2]
I prefer the term hybridity to biraciality and multiraciality. Although the term "hybrid" was already
used by Prichard (1813) in the context of answering the question of whether
human races constitute one species or not, and although the term has been used
in pejorative terms, it seems that in some of the more recent postcolonial
discourses it has been used in positive ways (see Young, 1995).
[3]
Academic problematization is understood as the process in which groups or
individuals are made into a problem. Historically women, various
"races," gays and lesbians, mentally ill persons, etc. have been transformed
into problems in the human sciences.
[4]
The term "liberal" does not refer to any contemporary sense of
justice. For example, the code suggested that a slave, who strikes his master
or his master's children, so that they bleed, should be punished with death.
[5]
In 16th century Spain a racial theory developed along with the concept of
purity of blood (see Netanyahu,1995).
[6]
My translation.
[7]
This metaphor (of problematization) was not the best example as oil and vinegar
work well together in culinary contexts.
[8]
A mule is the infertile offspring of mare and male ass (or of she-ass and
stallion). Fertility and infertility were core issues in the physical discourse
on mixed race.
[9]
Harmony and disharmony may be considered aesthetic categories, but in the
context of biology and anthropology they become metaphysical concepts.
Davenport never clarified in a precise way what constituted physical, mental,
temperamental, and environmental disharmony.
[10]
This idea goes back to Darwin (1871).
[11]
The English word mulatto was derived from the Spanish "mulato,"
meaning young mule (mulo).
[12]
Quotations from Fischer's book are my translations.
[13]
The publisher of the 1961 edition, printed in Graz (Austria), justified the
postwar edition with the supposed scientific foundational character of the
book. According to him, the book has nothing to do with politics.
[14]
I suggest that, for example, testing the hypothesis whether mulattos are
unhappy and a nuisance to others (see Davenport section) is not neutral but an
act that contributes to making mulattos a problem.
[15] For a detailed analysis of the change in biological
Zeitgeist see Provine (1973) who showed that there was a move of arguments in
biology from condemnation of race crossing to agnosticism in the 1930s and that
after WWII mainstream biology agreed that race-crossing was not detrimental.
However, from a perspective of problematization, already answering the question
of whether race mixture was good or bad contributed to the problematization of
hybridity.
[16]
The book contains previously published journal articles from 1917 to 1930.
[17] The literature on the marginal man is extensive and contains many postwar articles (e.g., Antonovsky, 1956).
[18]
This was a dominant view from the 1850s to
the 1930s (see, Young, 1995).
[19] Darwin (1871) recommended
in his Descent of Man to consult
Broca's work on hybridity, who is labeled a "philosophical observer"
(p. 221). Darwin himself suggested that "no doubt both animal and
vegetable hybrids, when produced from extremely distinct species, are liable to
premature death; but the parents of mulattoes cannot be put under the category
of extremely distinct species"(p. 221). He argued that from an offspring
no rules could be derived on whether the parents form a species or a variety
(p. 223).
[20]
Cryptic comments on hybridity can also be found in Galton (1869/1962, pp.
418-419).
[21] Also the German psychologist-anthropologist Theodor
Waitz (1863) discussed hybridity in a non-racist fashion. For the attitude of
more contemporary psychologists see Tucker, in this book.
[22]
I believe that these studies were performed partly because of the easy access
to samples.
[23] Garth (1931) listed more than 100 empirical studies
on race for the beginnings of psychology. For a detailed analysis of Garth's
position see Richards (1998).