Ethnic, caste and genetic miscegenation

Abstract

It is both a pleasure and an honour for me to participate in one of the stimulating Symposia arranged by the Eugenics Society. But it was with some diffidence that I agreed to speak on the topic of miscegenation: a topic which is so complex, so illunderstood, so charged with emotion. Yet miscegenation is of obvious interest to all who concern themselves, as members of the Eugenics Society do, with human biology, human society and the future of humanity. It is a topic worthy of study, and a topic which needs to be discussed frankly if myths are to be dispelled, confusion to be reduced, and problems resolved. For miscegenation has been a continuous process since the earliest times: it is nothing new. As my own guru, Professor E. A. Hooton, was fond of saying, ‘When peoples meet they sometimes fight, but they always mate.’