cial equality--wherever the white[129] and black races have
long been in contact during recent history; and to see whether this
discrimination appears to be justified by eugenics.

J. M. Mecklin[130] summarizes society's logic as follows:

"When society permits the free social intercourse of two young persons
of similar training and interests, it tacitly gives its consent to the
possible legitimate results of such relations, namely, marriage. But
marriage is not a matter that concerns the contracting parties alone; it
is social in its origin and from society come its sanctions. It is
society's legitimatised method for the perpetuation of the race in the
larger and inclusive sense of a continuous racial type which shall be
the bearer of a continuous and progressive civilization. There are,
however, within the community, two racial groups of such widely
divergent physical and psychic characteristics that the blending of the
two destroys the purity of the type of both and introduces
confusion--the result of the blend is a mongrel. The preservation of the
unbroken, self-conscious existence of the white or dominant ethnic group
is synonymous with the preservation of all that has meaning and
inspiration in its past and hope for its future. It forbids by law,
therefore, or by the equally effective social taboo, anything that would
tend to contaminate the purity of its stock or jeopardize the integrity
of its social heritage."

It is needless to say that the "social mind" does not consciously go
through any such process of reasoning, before it draws a color line. The
social mind rarely even attempts to justify its conclusions. It merely
holds a general attitude of superiority, which in many cases appears to
be nothing more than a feeling that another race is _different_.

In what way different?

The difference between the white race and the black (or any other race)
might consist of two elements: (1) differences in heredity--biological
differences; (2) differences in traditions, environment, customs--social
differences, in short. A critical inquirer would want to know which kind
of difference was greater, for he would at once see that the second kind
might be removed by education and other social forces, while the first
kind would be substantially permanent.

It is not difficult to find persons of prominence who will assert that
all the differences between white and Negro are differences of a social
nature, that the diffe