interrogation or two that have a dogmatic drift. But in my own opinion anyone who pretends to infallibility on the subject of the assimilability of immigration is ready to be chloroformed. TABLE IV FOREIGN BORN WHITE POPULATION, TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF Age and Over The potential voters, within the area of the thirteen states that formed the American Union, furnished by foreign born whites, are thus shown to be nearly one-third of the whole voting population. In Rhode Island they are 43.4 per cent. Query: Is it wholesome, granted that naturalization measures assimilation, to stake the future of TABLE V FOREIGN BORN WHITES, 1920, WITHIN THE AREA OF THE THIRTEEN STATES THAT FORMED the United States, so far as the original area of the nation can determine it, on conti... ing a naturalization policy which locates within that area nearly 50 per cent foreign born vote? That query leads to another, based on another table, viz., ť: tribution of northwestern European and southeastern European immigration v. 2,878,840 22.6 II 6,290,023 18.2 e area of the thirteen states that formed the American Union and in the balance of the tion's area. The white foreign born in the southern states are so few that the Bureau of the ensus press announcements lack the naturalization figures of Virginia, North and outh Carolina, and Georgia, whose combined foreign born whites number only 60,471. ut apart from an estimate of the distribution of the naturalized foreign born in these ates as between northwestern and southeastern Europe, all the figures of the following bles are final. TABLE VI WHITE NORTHWESTERN AND SOUTHEASTERN EUROPEANS IN AREA OF ORIGINAL THIRTEEN The foregoing figures clearly show the main source of any possible peril to American institutions in unassimilated immigration. The concentration of white immigration in the area of the thirteen states that formed the American Union is so great that they contained in 1920 nearly half of the nation's whole body of resident white immigration. In little more than 10 per cent of the area of the whole nation 50 per cent of its immigrant white population had their domicile. Assimilation of America's foreign born is clearly impossible until immigration is better distributed. Northwestern European immigration is already reasonably well distributed; the problem and peril is the concentration of southeastern European immigration on the Atlantic seaboard. Nearly 60 per cent of southeastern European white immigration is concentrated on about 10 per cent of the nation's area. Viscount Bryce's address, alluded to at the outset of this paper, should be recalled at this point. He asks whether a Slav, Semitic, Latin blend of 1960 will think, feel, and act like the Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Scandinavian blend of 1880. The question receives special pertinence from the following concluding table. TABLE VII NATURALIZATION OF WHITE FOREIGN BORN, TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF AGE AND OVER, In the foregoing table, in the absence of any reference figures, the 24,670 naturalized foreign born whites of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia are distributed in the same proportions as the computed percentages of the naturalized of the nine states above them in the table, viz., When Tables VI and VII are placed in juxtaposition, the following results appear for the area of the original thirteen states: The naturalized foreign born whites from northwestern Europe, within the area of the thirteen states, exceed the southeastern Europeans by only 350,000, and, as an r immigration group, their death-rate is heavy. Their unnaturalized are less than ,000, but nearly 3,000,000 southeastern Europeans are unnaturalized. Viscount ce says that, compared with the earlier immigration to America, the later has a ser tendency to disorder and a readier ear for demagoguery. Nevertheless he is eful that America will not only absorb but assimilate its later immigration. Are you? If you are not, is it because within the area of the original thirteen states, So will see a population four-fifths descended from races that had only a negligible rt in drafting and defending the nation's constitution? If you are, to what will the pulation of the original thirteen states have been assimilated in 1960-to southeastern urope of 1960, or to the population of the area of the United States that has been added ace 1790? SOME PROBLEMS OF RACE AND CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES Alexander A. Goldenweiser, School of Social Research, New York Race has long been an abused term. Even more so is the term pure race. There re no pure races. Even while the process of racial separation and differentiation was going on, the reverse process of mixture and assimilation had already begun. In eastern and southern Asia the Mongolian has for centuries mixed with peoples of Negro Herivation. In Africa the Negro stock has constantly been subjected to infusions of white blood, not only from modern Europeans but from many widely dispersed resident white groups. And in recent times the Negro and the Mongol have been mixing in South Africa. The white stock, instead of being the purest, is probably the most mixed of all. One after another, gigantic Mongolian invasions have left their traces not only on the culture of Europeans, but on their physical make-up as well. The Arabs, having swept through northern Africa and having absorbed considerable Negro blood, brought it with them to Spain. And this Negro blood has also entered into the make-up of the European. Cultural conditions and emotional prejudice apart, this universal tendency toward racial mixture and amalgamation need not cause any alarm. While it will not result in a general improvement of the human stock, neither will it bring deterioration.' A set of problems, partly distinct from those of race mixture are presented by the mixture of cultures. From most primitive times on, local cultures have influenced each other. There is a tendency in modern ethnology to exaggerate the significance of the historic spread and diffusion of culture, and Professor Teggart may be wrong in stressing unduly the factor of cultural contact and amalgamation in his attempt to explain how modern man—and the modern state in particular-have come to be what they are. However that may be, the significance of intertribal or international contacts has ever been tremendous, and no historian can any longer dispense, as did the evolutionist, with the factor of diffusion of culture in any reconstruction of the past. If foreign culture comes to a group unaccompanied by race, that is, if the number of foreigners is negligible, certain problems arise. If, on the contrary, the outsider comes in large numbers and brings his culture with him, the problems that arise are in part The claim that the other races are inferior, both actually and potentially, to the white, cannot be substantiated at the hand of scientific evidence. different. In instances of the first type, assimilation and absorption of cultural elements largely depends on the cultural state of the recipient group. Also, different elements of culture have their specific ways of behaving under these conditions. Social and political organizations, religion, art, material, object, do not function in the same way in the situation of cultural contact. In the second type of cases, when foreign culture is accompanied by race, a number of different factors arise. Either the immigrant or the resident group may assume a position of a social superior. This is realized in an extreme form when one of the groups figures as the ruling class while the other occupies the position of slaves. Then again, the cultures of the two groups may be on a relatively similar level, or either one of the two cultures may be vastly superior to the other. Under these varying conditions the phenomena of cultural exchange, influence, or amalgamation, assume very different aspects. Speaking generally, the conditions favorable to cultural assimilation, granting the presence in numbers of both groups, involve the absence of extreme physical differences, sufficient linguistic similarity to allow for the establishment of immediate contacts, standards of living that are not violently apart, religious beliefs and practices which, while not necessarily identical or even similar, are at least not mutually exclusive, and last but not least, a general attitude of respect between the two groups and a recognition of the mutual value of co-operation. When all of these conditions are satisfied, cultural amalgamation proceeds at great speed. When some are at fault, difficulties and delays arise. And when all the conditions are negative, the ensuing problems tend to become difficult or even impossible of solution. The racio-cultural situation in the United States naturally falls into two categories. The first category embraces what may be called the major racio-cultural problems, those of the Negro, the Oriental (in particular the Japanese), and more recently, the Jew. The second category comprises the minor racio-cultural problems which arise out of the immigration into the United States of various European national and cultural groups, such as Italians, Greeks, Bohemians, and Slavs (the immigrant English, French, Germans, and Scandinavians take care of themselves so well that their presence in this country cannot be said to constitute a problem.) First then, the major racio-cultural problems, with which this Conference deals only remotely. Of these, the Negro situation is by far the most important, in fact, ominous one. What must be realized here is that the problem may not be shelved and also that it will not solve itself. The element of prejudice is here so violent that it is useless to attack it directly. Again, while blood mixture is constantly going on, the social recognition of such mixture is entirely beyond any proximate future possibilities. But what can be and must be our goal is the complete legal equalization of the Negro, our efforts in this direction to be flanked by an educational propaganda intended to impart to both groups a fairer appreciation of the abilities of the other and to make clear their common interest in a general social and cultural co-operation. That this goal will be achieved soon cannot be expected. That it will ultimately be achieved, we may not doubt. The oriental problem, while second in importance to that of the Negro, has within recent years rapidly moved to the forefront. Important economic factors as well as racial misunderstandings and antipathies are involved here. It is generally understood that the relatively low standard of living of the Oriental makes his presence intolerable |