One is that before the Civil War, as was very natural under the
circumstances, mulattoes became free much faster than pure Negroes;
thus the census of 1850 showed that 581 of every 1000 free Negroes
were mulattoes and only 83 of every 1000 slaves. Since the Civil War,
moreover, the mulatto element has rapidly increased, advancing from 11.2
per cent of the Negro population in 1850 to 20.9 per cent in 1910, or
from 126 to 264 per 1000. On the whole question of the function of this
mixed element the elaborate study, that of Reuter, is immediately thrown
out of court by its lack of accuracy. The fundamental facts on which
it rests its case are not always true, and if premises are false
conclusions are worthless. No work on the Negro that calls Toussaint
L'Ouverture and Sojourner Truth mulattoes and that will not give the
race credit for several well-known pure Negroes of the present day,
can long command the attention of scholars. This whole argument on the
mulatto goes back to the fallacy of degrading human beings by slavery
for two hundred years and then arguing that they have not the capacity
or the inclination to rise. In a country predominantly white the
quadroon has frequently been given some advantage that his black friend
did not have, from the time that one was a house-servant and the other a
field-hand; but no scientific test has ever demonstrated that the black
boy is intellectually inferior to the fair one. In America, however, it
is the fashion to place upon the Negro any blame or deficiency and
to claim for the white race any merit that an individual may show.
Furthermore--and this is a point not often remarked in discussions of
the problem--the element of genius that distinguishes the Negro artist
of mixed blood is most frequently one characteristically Negro rather
than Anglo-Saxon. Much has been made of the fact that within the society
of the race itself there have been lines of cleavage, a comparatively
few people, very fair in color, sometimes drawing off to themselves.
This is a fact, and it is simply one more heritage from slavery, most
tenacious in some conservative cities along the coast. Even there,
however, old lines are vanishing and the fusion of different groups
within the race rapidly going forward. Undoubtedly there has been some
snobbery, as there always is, and a few quadroons and octoroons have
crossed the color line and been lost to the race; but these cases are
after all comparatively few in