Social Selection in a Mixed Population

Abstract

Attempts to segregate social mechanisms of selection in human populations have not been successful. In the AmericanNegro population, however, skin color furnishes a means of selection, and when the comparative color of husbands and wives is tabulated, it is found that the husband is darker in 56.5% of the cases, the wife darker in 29.0%, while the couples are of the same color in 14.5% of the total. These percentages are based on the Harlem, N. Y., population, but coincide strikingly with those for the parents of the Howard University students. Comparison of skin color of unmarried Negroes shows that pigmentation is not a sex-linked character, and therefore these percentages must be the result of a social selection of light women by darker men. The result, if the process continues, will be to make the American Negro somewhat more Negroid on the whole, since the daughters of light women will be darker than they, and will be selected by still darker men. However, the American Negroes have too much White and American Indian ancestry for the process to result in a population identical in physical form with that of the pure African.