similation.

Our principal interest in amalgamation is its effect on the negro race.
The census statisticians discontinued after 1890 the inquiry into the
number of mulattoes, but the census of 1890 showed that mulattoes were
15 per cent of the total negro population. This was a slightly larger
proportion than that of preceding years. The mulatto element of the
negro race is almost a race of itself. Its members on the average differ
but little if at all from those of the white race in their capacity for
advancement, and it is the tragedy of race antagonism that they with
their longings should suffer the fate of the more contented and
thoughtless blacks.[133] In their veins runs the blood of white
aristocracy, and it is a curious psychology of the Anglo-Saxon that
assigns to the inferior race those equally entitled to a place among the
superior. But sociology offers compensation for the injustice to
physiology. The mulatto is the natural leader, instructor, and spokesman
of the black. Prevented from withdrawing himself above the fortunes of
his fellows, he devotes himself to their elevation. This fact becomes
clear in proportion as the need of practical education becomes clear.
The effective work of the whites through missionary schools and colleges
has not been the elevation of the black, but the elevation of mulattoes
to teach the blacks. A new era for the blacks is beginning when the
mulatto sees his own future in theirs.

Apart from the negro we have very little knowledge of the amalgamation
of races in America. We only know that for the most part they have
blended into a united people with harmonious ideals, and the English,
the German, the Scotch-Irish, the Dutch, and the Huguenot have become
the American.

We speak of superior and inferior races, and this is well enough, but
care should be taken to distinguish between inferiority and
backwardness--between that superiority which is the original endowment
of race and that which results from the education and training which we
call civilization. While there are superior and inferior races, there
are primitive, mediaeval, and modern civilizations, and there are certain
mental qualities required for and produced by these different grades of
civilization. A superior race may have a primitive or mediaeval
civilization, and therefore its individuals may never have exhibited the
superior mental qualities with which they are actually endowed, and
which a modern civilizat