Vol. XVII, Extra No. 12
Shall America Remain White? *
By W. A. Plecker, M. D.
From the Booklet:
THE NEW FAMILY AND RACE IMPROVEMENT
Fifth of NEW FAMILY SERIES
Issued by
Bureau of Vital Statistics
State Board of Health
Richmond, VA
1925
* Read before Section on Public Health, Southern Medical Association,
Eighteenth Annual Meeting,
New Orleans, La., Nov. 24-17, 1924.
The
negro as a laborer is valuable, and if it were possible to preserve the
race in purity with him in our midst, he would be a great asset.
Because this cannot be done, and because the mixed breeds are a menace
and not an asset,we have them as the greatest problem and most
destructive force which confronts the white race and American
civilization.
Both remote and recent history of many
nations shows that in none of them have white and colored races lived
together without ultimate amalgamation, and without the final
deterioration or complete destruction of the white or higher
civilization.
We behold with awe the evidences which we now find
in Egypt of the wonderful civilization of the past, when that country
was white. The Pharaohs extended their conquest south and brought back
as captives large numbers of negro men and women. Intermixture of the
races began and progressed to such a point that one of the Pharaohs took
as wife a negro woman whose son succeeded to the throne. This was about
the time when Jeremiah the Prophet warned Israel to break with Egypt
and affiliate with Babylon. His warning was disregarded, Egypt was as a
broken staff upon which to lean. The fall of Jerusalem and the
Babylonian captivity resulted.
Egypt, then a mongrel nation,
soon went down before Assyria and is today a feeble and helpless nation
of brown-skinned people devoid of initiative and dependent upon white
leadership and protection.
Four thousand years ago, India was
ruled by Aryan conquerors, who instituted an elaborate caste system to
prevent intermixture of the races. This system failed and the few
survivors who might be called white are now looked upon as curiosities.
South America and Mexico were subdued by Spanish and Portuguese adventurers, who began at once to raise up a mixed breed.
Indians would not make docile slaves, and negroes in large numbers were brought in.
Much
of South America and Mexico is today inhabited by a mongrel race of
white-black-red mixture, one of the most undesirable racial
intermixtures known, as I can testify from my own observation of similar
groups in Virginia.
Professor A. E. Jenks, of the University of
Minnesota, and his assistant,made a house-to-house study of families
the result of mixed marriages, the marriage records not even showing the
color of the man and woman. These people have in Minneapolis an
organization known as the Manassas Society, membership in which is
dependent upon the intermarriage of a negro man and white woman. Already
200 such families are included in this society, with probable
omissions.
Similar conditions exist in many parts of the North
and West. That condition alone, if unchecked, will in a few centuries
legally mongrelize that portion of our country.
If we turn our
eyes southward, we find a different but even more serious situation.
None of our Southern States permits the intermarriage of whites and pure
blacks, but all except Virginia and perhaps two others allow the
intermarriage of whites with those of one-sixteenth or one-eighth negro
blood.
This serious situation calls for the speedy enactment of
laws based upon that of Virginia, which defines a white person as one
with no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian and forbids
the intermarriage of whites with those with the slightest trace of negro
blood.
Clerks who issue marriage licenses are required to
assure themselves that both parties are white, according to the new
definition, when that fact is claimed and are instructed to withhold the
license, when in doubt, until satisfactory proof is submitted to them.
The
enforcement of the law naturally falls upon the Bureau of Vital
Statistics, to which are reported the births, deaths, marriages and
divorces of the State, all of which require a statement as to color.
Our office has accepted this task and has undertaken seriously, as far
as possible, to secure from all sources the truth as to this point.
Circular
letters have been sent to all clerks physicians, local registrars,
undertakers and midwives, with copies of the law, urging them to use all
possible care to furnish us with correct statements.
School
authorities have been reached through their journal, and the public is
being instructed by newspaper articles and lectures.
Much interest has been aroused and many cases of mixture are being called to our attention.
When
this condition is found on the birth certificate if the mother has
other children, we refer back to previous births to the same parents and
make the certificates agree. We have thus caught a number of families
in the act of passing over from the colored to the white class, some of
their children being already recorded as white and some as colored.
Our
custom is to notify the head of the family that this situation cannot
be allowed and that if one of his children is colored, they are all
colored.
The case is different, however, when the process of
intermixture has so far advanced that communities of mixed breeds have
been formed, particularly if they have or claim to have some
intermixture of Indian blood.
Discussion (by other doctors)
From the booklet:
THE NEW FAMILY AND RACE IMPROVEMENT
Fifth of NEW FAMILY SERIES
Issued by
Bureau of Vital Statistics
State Board of Health
Richmond, VA
1925
Dr.
A. T. McCormack, Louisville, Ky. - I had the opportunity of going to
Panama, where every race had contributed something, and the negroid
influence was predominant, and where degeneration of all races had been
more rapidly brought about by that element. I think it of extreme
importance to white civilization to prevent the contamination.
Dr.
W. A. Evans, Chicago, Ill. --Dr. Plecker calls attention to the fact
that, independent of the strength or weakness of the strain, when
strains are crossed there is begotten a something which fails to have
the characteristics of either parent stock. That is well recognized in
animal breeding.
The health officer, whether working in
epidemiology or not, who does not recognize racial hygiene and racial
peculiarities, the advantages and disadvantages of mixing these stocks,
is failing in the responsibility that rests upon his shoulders.
Dr.Geo.
Dempsey, New Orleans, La. - No mixture of Japanese, Chinese, negro,
etc., has ever attained the high pinnacle for which the white race is
known.
Dr Carl F. Raver, Charleston, W. Va. -- During
slave days it no doubt was advantageous, from a commercial standpoint,
to produce as many offspring of negro parentage as possible and many
slave owners must have encouraged the mixing of the races.
This produced the mulatto.
Now it is this mulatto, or his offspring, thatis causing all the trouble.
They do not wish to be classed as negroes and, if light enough in
color, try to pass as white and marry into white families. Every
possible means should be used to prevent this. The strongest weapon is
public opinion. Public opinion allowed the mulatto to become started as
an institution. It condoned the situation.
Note: It is a peculiarity of American racism that as much or even more hatred is directed to those of mixed race as to those who are "pure" black. Or "pure" American Indian for that matter, Hollywood westerns once regularly featuring the perfidious halfbreed, rightly shunned by whites and Indians alike. Yet in reality millions upon millions of Americans have mixed white, black and/or Indian ancestry to one degree or another.
