A Statistical Octoroon

A Statistical Octoroon

Los Angeles Herald
Volume XXIX, Number 2 (1901-10-03)
page 4, columns 6-7
Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

The Average American Seven Parts White and One Part Colored

The average adult American is a statistical octoroon, says Dr. Henry Gannett In Everybody’s Magazine. If the blood in the veins of all our of people, white and black, were pooled and redistributed, each person would have about seven parts white and one part negro blood. The white strain in him, moreover, is by no means purely American White strains of foreign origin, derived from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, Canada, Great Britain and the countries of southern Europe, are collectively more powerful in his composition than is the negro strain. Thus going back only one generation, we find him to be a composite, the creation of widely differing bloods and nationalities. The peoples of the earth, from the Congo under the equator to the North Cape of Europe, have contributed, either immediately or remotely, to his composition. But with it all we find the Anglo-Saxon strain the dominant one. His political Institutions, his laws, his social conditions and his mental characteristics, his power of Initiative, and his independence of thought and action are Anglo-Saxon, sharpened and intensified by fresh contact with nature under new and untried conditions. It is a strange and a gratifying thing to witness, in connection with this mixture, of blood, the complete dominance of the Anglo-Saxon strain, and it argues well for its strength and vitality, an well as for the welfare of the country which he occupies and governs.

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