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Dr. Boas sees no harm for the U. S. in assimilating alien populations. He believes it would help make a more homogeneous nation and abate race prejudice if there were more unions between white men and Negro women. He thinks the eugenists might as well call off their dream of breeding toward an ideal man until there is some agreement as to what the ideal is. He reminds eugenists that the exclusion of imbeciles among immigrants to the U. S. has not prevented imbecility from cropping up among their children.
"If we were to select," says Franz Boas, "the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be represented."
War. Well aware is Franz Boas that his anthropologist's view of war may seem naive to historians, politicians, economists, soldiers. In substance it is this:
Early men were grouped into small hordes which had their own hunting grounds and, for self-preservation, intense feelings of solidarity. Members of other hordes were alarmingly different in customs, speech, appearance. In addition, these outsiders might poach on the hunting ground, steal roots and fruits. Hence it was an act of merit to kill them. As the art of hunting improved and methods were found of storing food, famines diminished and the hordes grew larger. Small, weak hordes were exterminated. The increase in size and decrease in number of the groups continued. Today the groups are nations. But the primitive feeling of simple hostility to the stranger survives. If we understand this, and believe that nations are not the largest possible social units, we are "face to face with those forces that will ultimately abolish warfare."
Five years ago Britain's Anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith declared that Nature keeps her human orchard healthy by pruning, that war is her pruning hook.
Dr. Boas took vigorous exception: "War eliminates the physically strong; war increases all the devastating scourges of mankind such as tuberculosis and genital diseases; war weakens the growing generation."
Said Sir Arthur: "Race antipathy and race prejudice are implanted by Nature for her own end, the improvement of mankind through racial differentiation."
Retorted Dr. Boas: "I challenge him to prove that race antipathy is implanted by Nature and is not the effect of social causes which are active in every closed social group."
Dr. Boas argues that if common race prejudice had "instinctive" antipathy for its source, it would show itself in the most intimate of all contacts, the sexual relation. But throughout history slave-owners have bedded with female slaves of different race, whites have mated with Indians and Negroes. Southern children show no aversion whatever to black nurses, must be taught by their elders not to accept blacks as equals. The strongest antipathies are those between social castes like those of India and ancient Egypt — between people of the same race.