…but it is clear from the foregoing generalizations that concepts of racial purity are largely invalid and that the psychic homogeneity of the human species is much greater than is commonly supposed. |
It is impossible to do more by way of an introduction to a study of race mixture, but it is clear from the foregoing generalizations that concepts of racial purity are largely invalid and that the psychic homogeneity of the human species is much greater than is commonly supposed. It is also evident that differences in language and culture are by no means coincident with differences in physical traits. A rational approach to the question is needed-one which dispenses with what can only be the dead-weight of national ideologies and which acknowledges that an excessive degree af miscegenation must have taken place over thousands of years to account for the present day distribution of physical traits and the variability about a norm which obtains in even the most race-conscious of societies. Given the psychological abhorrence of race mixture which persists as a corollary of untenable theories of racial purity, we must endeavour to assess in quantitative and qualitative terms the indisputable fact of race mixture as it exists in the world to-day.
A. Dickinson, “Race mixture: a social or a biological problem?” The Eugenics Review, Volume 41, Number 2 (July 1949): 81.
Tags: A. Dickinson