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Footnotes 1209
life, the explanation lies in a fracture of the seventh commandment, or in a tinge of
negro blood in the aristocrat as dark as that in his wife.’* (Edward M. East, Heredity
and Human Affairs [1927], p. 100.)
Wirth has examined the scientific and popular literature exhaustively and has never
come across a documented case of a “black baby” being born to a light mulatto and
white person:
“One further aspect of Negro-white miscegenation probably requires some comment
in view of the persistent error of at least the lay mind on this particular point, namely,
the possibility that a white person mating with an individual who passes for white but
has some Negro ancestry may produce a child darker than the mixed blood partner. It
should be pointed out in this connection that while two parties with Negro blood may
very occasionally have an offspring with somewhat more Negroid features than them-
selves, it is not possible for a white person and a person with some Negro ancestry to
have an offspring more Negroid than the partner with Negro blood.” (Wirth and Gold-
hamer, O’p, cit,y manuscript page 1 13.)
There is at least one biologist, however, who takes the opposite view, and says thq
“black baby” can happen, and occasionally does happen. (Huxley and Haddon, of, cit,^
p. 82.)
“In some extreme cases, the offspring of a cross between a white man and a half*
breed coloured woman have been fair and almost black respectively.”
In a recent (December, 1941) statement to the author. Professor Huxley indicated that
he did not wish the above quotation from his book to be taken as final and beyond
question.
The Mendelian mechanism of color inheritance, too, is a subject of debate, so that
it cannot be relied upon to settle this controversy, since the “white” partner may have
had a distant Negro ancestor about whose existence he was completely unaware. The
controversy is not very important practically, since if a dark-skinned baby can be born
to a light mulatto and a white person, this happens so extremely rarely that one is still
justified in branding as a myth the popular belief that it occurs.
Finally, it should be said that it may be that the “black baby” is not given a chance
to appear, since belief in the myth might encourage the use of contraceptives in white-
mulatto relations.
Southern scholars now discredit the theory that the origin of the Southern planter
class was aristocratic, or that it differed much from that of the lower classes. See, for
example: Thomas J. Wertenbaker, The Old South (1942), p. 21; Virginius Dabney,
Below The Potomac (1942), p. 25 Frank Owsley, “The Irrepressible Conflict” in Vll
Take My Stand (1930), p. 69.
Reuter, Race Mixturey pp. 160-161. Compare Reuter, The Mulatto in the United
States^ pp. 396-397, fassim. The cultural and social causes and effects of this selective
mating will be discussed further in Chapter 31. The fact itself is referred to by
numerous authors, and is, indeed, obvious to any observer. (See Miller, of, cit,y p. 57;
Herskovlts, The American NegrOy pp. 63-64; and Donald Young, American Minority
PeofUs [1932], p. 356.)
Reuter, The Mulatto in the United States. It should also be pointed out that
Reuter’s estimate of the proportion of mulattoes in the total population—^which he
uses as a basis for comparison—is much too small in the light of subsequent findings.
In his later books, Reuter retains his conclusion, but reverses himself frequently. “No
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