Citation

Frazier EF. Am. J. Sociol. 1933; 39(1): 12-29.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1933, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/216312

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although the belief in the hereditary inferiority of the mulatto has been slowly dissipated by the accumulation of scientific knowledge, it is still echoed occasionally in scientific studies. In order to determine how far this belief is substantiated or refuted by census data, the writer has analyzed the 1910 and 1920 statistics for children in over 13,000 Negro families for each enumeration in three cities and three rural counties in the South. On the whole, the mulattoes have a smaller proportion of families without children and there is on the average a larger number of children in the mulatto families. Further analysis of the 1910 statistics for the number of children born and living in 10,921 families showed: (1) mulattoes and blacks had about the same proportion of families in which no children were born; (2) on the whole, the mulattoes and blacks in the same community has the same average number of children born; (3) for the entire group a larger proportion of black families had one or more children dead; (4) the blacks had lost on the average a larger number of children; (5) the mulattoes had about 7 per cent more of all their children living than the blacks. Differences in the socioeconomic status of these two groups as reflected in literacy and home-ownership seemed to point to cultural rather than biological causes for the differences between them.