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However, before any large conclusions are drawn from that, another fact must be considered: on the average, the skull capacity of modern whites is some 150 cc. smaller than that of Neanderthal man, who lived 50,000 years ago. Some anthropologists go so far as to say that the Negro's attributes, coupled with the ordeal of slavery, have produced in him a physically superior race—a theory that gains strength from the Negro's extraordinary ability in athletics. The strongest African blacks were selected as the best slave material; only the hardiest of these survived ocean transport in slave ships; only the sturdiest of back and spirit endured slavery's arduous, degrading yoke.
Bitter Division
It is on the issue of racial superiority, physical and mental, that all of mankind bitterly divides. Such value judgments are largely subjective and lack any solid scientific foundation, but that has never stopped men from making them. The Negro, who reached the U.S. in bonds, has ever since been classified in some quarters as a member of an intellectually inferior race. The attitude is not without historical precedent. Segregationists of the U.S. South often quote the Book of Genesis 9:25, which relates that Canaan, the son of Ham—whose skin was believed to be black—is ac cursed throughout time: "A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." The 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume suspected "Negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites." Several U.S. Presidents, among them Jefferson and Lincoln, shared the same opinion, at least for a while. As long as the two races lived together, said Lincoln in 1858, "there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." Washington unreflectively accepted slavery as an institution simply because it was there, but before dying he drew up a will emancipating his slaves. The late Albert Schweitzer, who devoted his life and medical skill to African Negroes, went to his grave believing that "the Negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority."
The theory of racial inferiority lurks at the edges of current anthropological thought. In his book The Origin of Races, Anthropologist Carleton S. Coon suggests that Homo sapiens—modern man—evolved not once but five times, in five different places. The last to attain the fully human estate, says Coon, was the Negro—a conjecture that, if accepted, explains why Negro cultures in Africa lag behind the West's and why the Negro is not yet the white man's intellectual peer. According to Coon, he simply has not had enough time. Approaching the subject from closer range, University of Chicago Physiologist Dwight Ingle writes: "America is trying to build the Great Society by applying only palliative methods for the correction of cultural handicaps and ignoring possible biological bases of incompetence, indolence and irresponsibilty."
Open Possibility