Definition of Negro 1910-1911

Definition of Negro 1910-1911

Excerpts Compiled

By Baffour Amankwatia II [Asa G. Hilliard III]

(22 August 1933-13 August 2007)

2006

"Negro (from Lat, niger, black), in anthropology, the designation of the distinctly dark-skinned, as opposed to the fair, yellow, brown variations of mankind.  In its widest sense it embraces the dark races, whose original home is the intertropical and sub-tropical regions of the eastern hemisphere, stretching roughly from Senegambia, West Africa, to the Fijian Islands in the Pacific, between the extreme parallels of the Philippines and Tasmania.  It is most convenient, however, to refer to the dark-skinned inhabitants of this zone by the collective term of Negroids, and to reserve the world Negro for the tribes which are considered to exhibit in the highest degree the characteristics taken as typical of the variety. . . .

"The colour of the skin, which is also distinguished by a velvety surface and a characteristic odour, is due not to the presence of any special pigment, but to the greater abundance of the colouring matter in the Malpighian mucous membrane between the inner or true skin and the epidermis or sacrf skin.  This colouring matter is not distributed equally over the body, and does not reach its fullest development until some weeks after birth; so that new-born babies are a reddish chocolate or copper colour.  But excess of pigmentation is not confined to the skin; spots of pigment are often found in some of the internal organs, such as the liver, spleen, &c.  Other characteristics appear to be a hypertrophy of the organs of excretion, a more developed venous system, and a less voluminous brain, as compared with the white races. …

"In certain of the characteristics mentioned above the negro would appear to stand on a lower evolutionary plane than the white man, and to be more closely related to the highest anthropoids.  The characteristics are length of arm, prognathism, a heavy massive cranium with large zygomatic arches, flat nose depressed at base, &c.  But in one important respect, the character of the hair, the white man stands in closer relation to the higher apes than does the Negro. . . .

"Mentally the negro is inferior to the white.  The remark of F. Manetta, made after a long study of the negro in America, may be taken as generally true of the whole race: the negro children were sharp, intelligent and full of vivacity, but on approaching the adult period a gradual change set in.  The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence.  We must necessarily suppose that the development of the negro and white proceeds on different lines.  While with the latter the volume of the brain grows with the expansion of the brainpan, in the former the growth of the brain is on the contrary arrested by the premature closing of the cranial sutures and lateral pressure of the frontal bone'. 

"This explanation is reasonable and even probable as a contributing cause; but evidence is lacking on the subject and the arrest or even deterioration in mental development is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro's life and thoughts.  At the same time his environment has not been such as would tend to produce in him the restless energy which has led to the progress of the white race; and the easy conditions of tropical life and the fertility of the soil have reduced the struggle for existence to a minimum.  But though the mental inferiority of the negro to the white or yellow races is a fact, it has often been exaggerated; the negro is largely the creature of his environment. . . . "

Source: The Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1910-1911