{"id":13823,"date":"2011-05-14T04:45:54","date_gmt":"2011-05-14T04:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13823"},"modified":"2011-05-19T01:25:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T01:25:13","slug":"toward-a-racial-abyss-eugenics-wickliffe-draper-and-the-origins-of-the-pioneer-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13823","title":{"rendered":"Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences<\/a>
\nVolume 38, Issue 3<\/a>, (Summer 2002)
\npages 259\u2013283
\nDOI: 10:1002\/jhbs.10063<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael G. Kenny<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
\nSimon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia<\/em><\/p>\n

The Pioneer Fund<\/a> was created in 1937 \u201cto conduct or aid in conducting study and research into problems of heredity and eugenics.. and problems of race betterment with special reference to the people of the United States.\u201d The Fund was endowed by Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper<\/a>, a New England textile heir, and perpetuates his legacy through an active program of grants, some of the more controversial in aid of research on racial group differences. Those presently associated with the Fund maintain that it has made a substantial contribution to the behavioral and social sciences, but insider accounts of Pioneer\u2019s history oversimplify its past and smooth over its more tendentious elements. This article examines the social context and intellectual background to Pioneer\u2019s origins, with a focus on Col. Draper himself, his concerns about racial degeneration, and his relation to the eugenics<\/a> movement. In conclusion, it evaluates the official history of the fund.<\/p>\n

This article traces the historical roots of The Pioneer Fund, a still extant American charitable endowment founded in 1937 by textile heir Col. Wickliffe Preston Draper (1890\u20131972). The Fund, through its granting program, claims to have had a significant positive influence on the development of the behavioral sciences; but it has also attracted public attention because of its support for research on racial group differences. Pioneer\u2019s beginnings reach back into the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when eugenics emerged as a powerful and cosmopolitan social reform impulse; an exploration of the Fund\u2019s origins sheds light both on that time and on the permutations of the eugenics movement that led to its present notoriety.<\/p>\n

However, knowledge of Pioneer\u2019s beginnings and social context remains fragmentary and dispersed, and here I use the papers of the American Eugenics Society (in the keeping of the American Philosophical Society<\/a>, Philadelphia), and the Harry Laughlin<\/a> papers (Library of Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri) to gain entr\u00e9e into the circumstances surrounding the prehistory and early days of the Fund, particularly the attitudes and role of its founder, Wickliffe Draper.<\/p>\n

Those circumstances have been smoothed over by figures central to the Fund\u2019s current operation and, in conclusion, I will evaluate this revisionist history in light of the archival and supplemental material to be reviewed below…<\/p>\n

…Davenport<\/a> and Grant<\/a>, among others, held that certain racial combinations\u2014say Negro\/White\u2014are inherently \u201cdisharmonious\u201d because the evolutionary histories of their aboriginal populations had gone down widely divergent paths. As Davenport put it, \u201cmiscegenation<\/a> commonly spells disharmony\u2014disharmony of physical, mental and temperamental qualities and this means also disharmony with environment. A hybridized people are a badly put together people and a dissatisfied, restless, ineffective people\u201d (1917, p. 366). Madison Grant feared that, if the American \u201cMelting Pot is allowed to boil without control,\u201d it will sweep the \u201cnation toward a racial abyss\u201d because miscegenation always leads to a evolutionary reversion toward the lower type in the mix. \u201cThe cross between a white man and a negro is a negro… the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew\u201d<\/strong> (1916, p. 228; for more on racial \u201cdisharmony\u201d see Barkan, 1992, p. 165; Baur, Fischer, & Lenz, 1931, p. 692; Glass, 1986, p. 132; Provine, 1973; Stepan, 1985; Tucker, 1994, pp. 64\u201367).<\/p>\n

The investigation of race mixing from a Mendelian point of vieww as pioneered by German anthropologist Eugen Fischer, who\u2014armed with Davenport\u2019s early studies of human heredity\u2014undertook an innovative field study of \u201cdie Rehobother Bastards<\/a>,\u201d a Boer<\/a>\/Hottentot<\/a> mixed-race population in the then German colony of South-West Africa (Fischer, 1913; see Massin, 1996). Fischer\u2019s general aim was to decouple the effects of heredity and environment through detailed biometric and genealogical studies of a discrete and nowrelatively endogamous population of mixed race origins (Massin, 1996, pp. 122\u2013123). The \u201cBastards\u201d had the advantage of being an isolated group with well known family ties, unlike the situation in the United States, in which persons of mixed-race ancestry had been \u201csubsumed in a lower, completely undefinable mixed-race proletariat\u201d (1913, p. 21). As late as 1939, Fischer\u2019s monograph was still regarded as the \u201cclassic study of race mixture\u201d (Hooton, 1939, p. 156)…<\/p>\n

…By definition a \u201cwhite\u201d person could have no known trace of nonwhite blood (including Asian), whereas a nonwhite person was anyone who did\u2014except when it came to those who were one-sixteenth native Indian or less, and were therefore defined as equivalent to whites in legal terms. This logic was based on a perception of just who most of the contemporary \u201cIndians\u201d of Virginia<\/a> actually were. Plecker<\/a> believed that, because of long standing miscegenation between the two communities, most of those who identified themselves as \u201cIndian\u201d were in effect negroes attempting to pass as white (Plecker, 1924).<\/p>\n

Though not arising out of any particular love for Indians, the one-sixteenth rule had an interesting motivation: so as to not exclude from the white race the many proud descendants of Pocahontas<\/a> and John Rolfe<\/a>. Disputes about racial identity, legitimacy, and validity of marriage generated by such legislation have provided considerable subsequent diversion for legal historians (Avins 1966; Pascoe 1996; Saks 1988; Wallenstein 1998).<\/p>\n

Plecker had already corresponded with Charles Davenport<\/a> about the quality of white\/Indian\/black mixed-race populations, and was included among those whom Wickliffe Draper should meet. Plecker and Cox accordingly traveled north in June to visit with Draper in New York; they also stopped by to see Madison Grant, and were feted by the Laughlins at Cold Spring Harbor<\/a>. Cox gave a talk at the Museum of Natural History<\/a> on the topic of repatriation, and there was further discussion of a possible Virginia-based endowment to advance the cause of eugenics (Plecker to Laughlin, 8 June 1936; see Smith, 1993, pp. 80\u201381).<\/p>\n

What Draper envisioned was nothing less than the establishment of an Institute of National Eugenics (or perhaps \u201cInstitute of Applied Eugenics\u201d) at the University of Virginia, aimed at \u201cconservation of the best racial stocks in the country\u201d and \u201cpreventing increase of certain of the lower stocks and unassimilable races.\u201d Laughlin observed that the University \u201chas a tradition of American aristocracy which the nation treasures very highly.\u201d It therefore seemed a promising venue, as did the South in general\u2014\u201cbecause of its historical background and traditional racial attitude\u201d\u2014ready to assume leadership in defense of the American racial stock (Laughlin to Draper, draft letter; 18 March 1936). In his survey of the American racial makeup, Madison Grant found that \u201cwith Virginia one reaches the region where the old native American holds his ground\u201d (Grant, 1934, p. 226)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toward a Racial Abyss: Eugenics, Wickliffe Draper, and the Origins of the Pioneer Fund Journal of History of the Behavioral Sciences Volume 38, Issue 3, (Summer 2002) pages 259\u2013283 DOI: 10:1002\/jhbs.10063 Michael G. Kenny, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia The Pioneer Fund was created in 1937 \u201cto conduct or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,2039,8,26,4481,20],"tags":[4348,4350,4349,6345,6378,2369,6340,6344,6343,6342,6341],"class_list":["post-13823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-social-work","category-usa","tag-charles-b-davenport","tag-charles-benedict-davenport","tag-charles-davenport","tag-journal-of-history-of-the-behavioral-sciences","tag-madison-grant","tag-michael-g-kenny","tag-michael-kenny","tag-pioneer-fund","tag-wickliffe-draper","tag-wickliffe-p-draper","tag-wickliffe-preston-draper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}