University of Nevada, Reno Spring 2023
On the startling announcement by Franz Boas that the environment was responsible for remarkable and measurable changes in immigrants to America in 1910, anti-Boas anthropologists rushed to defend purity of the races. One such article was printed on the same page as Boas' theory in the San Francisco Examiner (09 January 1910, page 9):
Theories and Predictions Which Are Upset by the New Facts.
While the investigations of the United States Immigration Commission have really only begun, yet it would seem that enough progress has already been made in this new field of research to upset many theories and to discredit the predictions as to the supposed inevitable results upon American history of the great tide of mixed immigration that is flowing into this country.
It has been predicted that we should become a race of mongrels, that our old Anglo-Saxon civilization would be swamped, and that the civilization of the newcomers would be lost in the conflict of widely different races.
Only last Summer Professor William Z. Ripley, of Harvard University, one of the best-known of American anthropologists, advanced the startling theory that owing to the sudden mixture of widely different racial types the American of the future would revert to a primitive type, according to the scientific law of re-version in breeding from widely different types.
In other words the professor argued that the future American would be something like a prehistoric man, a low-browed creature with jutting eyebrows, no tophead to speak of and a terrible prognathous jaw like a gorilla's. The American would revert, as Professor Ripley expressed it, to "an ancestral type running back to a time before the separation of European varieties of man began."
He based his argument on the well-known law of reversion among animals, which he explained as follows:
"Many of us are familiar with the evidence: Such as the reversion among sheep to the primary dark type, and the emergence of the old wild blue rock pigeon from blending of the fantails and pouter or other varieties. The same law is borne out in the vegetable world, the facts being well known to fruit growers and horticulturists. The more recently acquired characteristics, especially those which are less fundamentally useful, are sloughed off. and the ancestral features common to all varieties emerge from dormancy into prominence."
The primitive type to which the American would revert, according to Professor Ripley, would be older even than the European cave man, and would go back to the time before mankind divided into races of different color. Such reversions occur sometimes in plants, when highly hybridized species suddenly revert to forms which are only found in fossils.
But now we know that this cannot happen here, for the children of foreigners begin evolving towards a common American standard from the very first, and the progress is invariable regardless of all mixtures. Evidently human beings are not invariably subject to the same laws as animals and plants.
Then there is the theory that the extraordinary mixture of races in this country will lead to the creation of a mongrel type, without any of the good qualities of the original races from which it is developed.
This theory has been set forth in a very entertaining book, "Race or Mongrel" (L. C. Page & Co., Boston), by Alfred P. Schultz, whose chief interest is in the German race, from which he springs.
Mr. Schultz fears that the German-Americans are losing the splendid qualities of the German race. He points out that the lists of American statesmen do not contain any German names, with a few unimportant exceptions.
In war he finds that the German-Americans have been equally undistinguished. Neither on land nor sea, neither on the Northern nor on the Southern side in the civil war, does one German-American distinguished leader appear, according to this author. The Germans always had military genius in abundance, but in America it has been Americanized out of them.
The Germans always were fond of the sea. They had their Hansa times, and as soon as the empire was found Hansa times reappeared. In America the Hansa spirit has been Americanized out of them.
The Germans are, as we know, not devoid of literary ability. Have the traditions of German literary life been maintained by the Americans of German descent? Literary ability has been Americanized out of them.
German influences have made American music. Almost all American composers have studied in Germany. The prominent teachers that have come from Europe have been Germans or musicians trained in the German school. It is estimated that of Germans at least fifty per cent understand music. No other race brings so large a volume of intelligent appreciation to the art. It is among Germans that music attains its noblest heights. The Germans are a musical nation—the musical nation. Have the Germans in America retained their musical ability?
In a list of foreign-born musicians in America the Germans greatly preponderate, but in a list of native composers those of German ancestry are quite negligible. In music, as in other arts, the inferiority of the German-American to the Anglo-Saxon American and the native German is phenomenal.
Among the great American inventors there is not one German-American. The inventive genius is evidently Americanized out of the American descendants of the German.
Where are the names of the German-American artists? They do not exist. Is the Holbein, Rembrandt, Rubens and Durer spirit dead in the Germans of today? No; the fact is that some of the work of contemporary German painters ranks with the best that the world has ever produced. In the art of painting the German-American is as inferior to the German as he is to the Anglo-Saxon American.
In architecture Germany does some of the best work that is being done to-day. Where is the architecture of a German-American?
Professor Karl Knortz, of Germany, has just been over here studying German-Americans, and Mr, Schultz quotes him in support of his arguments. Professor Knortz is very severe upon the tone of the German-American organizations:
"Horrifying are the so-called literary clubs. I feel cold shivers when I think of what that name has to stand for. It serves as a plausible excuse for every gossipy tea party, drinking bout or card party. Wherever Germans congregate beer is on tap. According to the Greek philosopher, Thales, water was the origin of all things: the origin of the property belonging to German-Amertcan churches, musical societies, and turnvereine is mostly the sale of beer. Many of these organizations should adopt a beer-cask as a coat of arms, with the words, 'In hoc signo vinces,' as a motto."
Mr. Schultz's remedy would be to prohibit immigration and to induce German-Arnerican to marry only among their own race fur some generations to come, in order to preserve its characteristics.
But the newly discovered facts show us that such plans would be useless, for the American of foreign ancestry begins to develop American characteristics to the first generation, even without any mixture, and it would therefore be impossible to preserve his racial characteristics.
Why is it that America produces the most exquisite types of womanly beauty in the world? Simply because of the extraordinary diversity of races that go to make up the American girl's ancestors.
Take the Duchess of Marlborough as an example. Her father, W. K. Vanderbilt, was an American of Dutch origin. Her mother, the present Mrs. Belmont, was the daughter of a Southerner, Murray Smith. of mixed Scotch and English ancestry. and his wife was of Spanish Creole descent. The Duchess' grandfather, William H. Vanderbilt, married Maria Louise Kissam, who was of Dutch origin, and his father. the original Commodore Vanderbilt, married Sophia Johnson, who was of English ancestry.
Out of this extraordinary mixture of races we find not a reversion to a primitive type, not a reversion to any European ancestor, but a typical American in physical and mental characteristics, a beautiful, graceful woman, with an intelligence superior to that of way of her European ancestors.
Reference:
Alfred P. Schultz, Race or Mongrel, Race Or Mongrel - Google Books
James L'Angelle English Undergraduate Department
No comments:
Post a Comment