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Chapter 6. Racial Characteristics 145
belief in the innate inferiority of the Negro in mental capacities and moral
traits has naturally been central in the race dogma from the beginning. It
is strategic in the justification of color caste. Obvious culture inferiorities,
existing in the Negro population, made an inference back to innate cultural
capacities not only opportune but also easy and, in fact, to be expected.
When direct attempts were made to study scientifically these psychic
differences and to measure their magnitude, virtually no one—or at least
very few^”’—had any doubts that they really existed as biological traits,
and that they were large. The history of the measurement of the psychic
traits of the American Negro began with attempts to quantify what was
already “known” about him. And usually the scientists found what they
were seeking.
Ferguson, for example, proceeding on his “demonstration” that the
superiority of whites was “indubitable,” even after various environmental
influences were held “constant,” correlated performance with skin color
and found a perfect upward progression from pure Negro, through three-
fourths pure Negro, mulattoes, and quadroons.“^ Ferguson even went so
far as to attempt a quantitative statement of intelligence differences among
the different color groups. “It is probably correct to say that pure Negroes,
Negroes three-fourths pure, mulattoes and quadroons, have, roughly, 60,
70, 80, and 90 per cent, respectively, of white intellectual efficiency.” He
dismissed the possibility that social differences may have caused the differ-
ences in performance: “Among Negroes in general there are no considerable
social distinctions based on color. A colored person is a Colored person,
whether he be mulatto or Negro, and all mingle together as one race.”
Another example may be taken from the report of one of the earliest and
most publicized studies of Negro-white personality differences.^® The
author, who concludes that Negroes are much less able to inhibit their
impulses, significantly begins his paper with the statement: “It is with the
issue here raised that the present study primarily concerns itself. Namely:
what is the psychological explanation of the impulsiveness, improvidence
and iipmorality which the Negro everywhere manifests?”
For a time it seemed as if finally a firm basis was being laid for a science
of psychic racial differences, extending our knowledge, not only by quanti-
fying the apparent differences in innate cultural capacities, but by specifying
the particular respects in which the Negro was inherently inferior to the
white man. When we now look back on this stage of psychological research,
we must remember that there was this common belief of Negro inferiority
and, in addition, that many of the earlier studies had a direct or indirect
connection with practical questions, such as segregation in schools, which
tended to enforce the opportunistic bias.
Independent of any special bias, or of the general bias inherent in the
total cultural situation of American caste society, the scientist of that day
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