Author Meets Reader: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that the intellectual superiority of the mulatto over the negro affords no sufficient ground for advocating the amalgamation of the negro and white races. If the mulatto has a better mind than the negro, he is apparently inferior to him in physique and is inferior in every way to the whites. Any system of cross breeding which means the substitution of mulatto for white children cannot be viewed as anything but a serious menace. It is to be condemned, not only from the biological standpoint, but because it would lead to social and moral deterioration. To say that negro-white crosses are undesirable on biological grounds, however, is not to assert that race crossing is bad per se. If races are on the same level of inherent physical and intellectual endowment their fusion may produce a very desirable combination of qualities and might give rise to a diversity of traits which would be socially valuable. We have insufficient grounds for condemning crosses of races or peoples per se but only those crosses which substitute an intermediate product for the most highly endowed stock. It is the very best inheritance that should be conserved at all costs. Out of it come the rare minds that rise like mountain peaks above the general level of humanity. And it is to these minds, small in number, but incalculably great in influence, that advancement in civilization and culture is largely due.

Samuel J. Holmes, The Trend of the Race: A Study of Present Tendencies in the Biological Development of Civilized Mankind (New York: Hourcourt, Brace and Company, 1921), 264-265.

Author Meets Reader: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

Author Meets Reader: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

University of California, Irvine
School of Law
401 E. Peltason Drive
Irvine, California
Room 3500
Monday, 2015-11-02, 18:30 PST (Local Time)

Sponsored by the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and the Center on Law, Equality and Race’s Perspectives, this special Author Meets Reader event will feature author Dorothy Roberts speaking about her book…

For more information, click here.

Tags: Dorothy E. Roberts, Dorothy Roberts

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Mixed Race Studies

Author Meets Reader: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

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