Science: The Vanishing Negro

The American Negro, says Zoologist Curt Stern of the University of California in Scientific American, is doomed to disappear through racial diffusion. As a group of mankind, American Negroes are relatively new. They have existed for only 300 years, and are already notably mixed. Dr. Stern figures from their blood-group makeup that about two-thirds of their genetic material (heredity) comes from Africa, about one-third from Europe. More than 78% of American Negroes have some non-African genes; by 1980 there will be hardly a single U.S. Negro of pure African descent.

There will still be plenty of dark-skinned Negroes, but skin color, Dr. Stern points out, is a superficial characteristic rather than a dependable indicator of racial origin. The workings of heredity produce many dark-skinned Negroes with thin lips and many light-skinned ones with thick lips. One type is as mixed as the other, though the white population, which judges chiefly by skin color, usually considers the dark type more authentically Negro. A light-skinned Negro can “pass” as white, although in other respects than skin color he may be strongly Negro.

Over the generations, Dr. Stern predicts, more light-skinned Negroes will be born, and they will tend, even at the present rate of interracial mating, to diffuse into the white population. The loss by “passing” of light-skinned individuals may leave the rest of the Negroes darker, on the average, than they are at present. On the other hand, an inflow of European genes may balance the loss and further dilute the Negro population.

After centuries, says Dr. Stern, most of the original African genes will be widely dispersed in the numerically dominant white population. Their incorporation will make no change except a slight darkening of the national skin. Eventually, there will be a few thousand black people in each generation, and they will probably have straight hair, thin lips and thin noses. “If some person now living,” says Dr. Stern, “could return at that distant time, he would ask in wonder: ‘What became of the Negro?’ “