Читать книгу The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother - George H. Napheys - Страница 38

Table of Contents

Mankind, say the school geographies, is divided into five races, each distinguished by its own color. They are the white, the black, the red, the yellow, and the brown races. In this country, practically, we have to do with but the white and black races; and the question is constantly asked, Shall we approve of marriages between them? Shall a white woman choose a black man to be her husband?

We are at the more pains to answer this, because recently a writer—and this writer a woman, and this woman one of the most widely known in our land—has written a novel intended to advocate the affirmative of this question. Moreover, it is constantly mooted in certain political circles, and is one of the social problems of the day.

The very fact that it is so much discussed, shows that such a union runs counter to a strong prejudice. Such aversions are often voices of nature, acting as warnings against acts injurious to the species. In this instance it is not of modern origin, created by peculiar institutions. Three centuries ago, Shakspeare, who had probably never seen a score of negroes in his life, with the divination of genius, felt the repugnance which a refined woman would feel to accepting one as her husband. The plot of one of his plays turns on it. He makes Iago say of Desdemona:

'Not to affect many proposed matches

Of her own clime, complexion, and degree;

Whereto, we see, in all things nature tends:

Foh! one may smell in such a will most rank,

Foul disproportions, thoughts unnatural.'

It is, indeed, 'nature erring from itself' which prompts to these marriages. They are not sterile, but the children are sickly and short-lived. Very few mulattoes reach an old age.

Then it is well known that the black race cannot survive a northern climate. Dr. Snow, of Providence, Rhode Island, who has given great attention to the study of statistics, says emphatically that, in New England, the colored population inevitably perish in a few generations, if left to themselves. This debility no woman should wish to give to her children.

A mental inferiority is likewise apparent. Friends of the negro are ready to confess this, but attribute it to his long and recent period of servitude. We deal with facts only. The inferiority is there, whatever be its cause; and she who would willingly curse her offspring with it, manifests indeed 'thoughts unnatural.'

The children born of a union of the black and red race, negroes and Indians, are on the contrary, remarkable for their physical vigor and mental acuteness; though, of course, the latter is limited to the demands of a semi-barbarous life.