ciated, the temperamental interests
will tend to reinforce one another, and the attention of members of
the group will be more completely focused upon the specific objects
and values that correspond to the racial temperament. In this way
racial qualities become the basis for nationalities, a nationalistic
group being merely a cultural and eventually a political society
founded on the basis of racial inheritances. On the other hand, when
racial segregation is broken up and members of a racial group are
dispersed and isolated, the opposite effect will take place. This
explains the phenomena which have frequently been the subject of
comment and observation, that the racial characteristics manifest
themselves in an extraordinary way in large homogeneous gatherings.
The contrast between a mass meeting of one race and a similar meeting
of another is particularly striking. Under such circumstances
characteristic racial and temperamental differences appear that would
otherwise pass entirely unnoticed.

When the physical unity of a group is perpetuated by the succession of
parents and children, the racial temperament, including fundamental
attitudes and values which rest on it, are preserved intact. When
however, society grows and is perpetuated by immigration and
adaptation, there ensues, as a result of miscegenation, a breaking up
of the complex of the biologically inherited qualities which
constitute the temperament of the race. This again initiates changes
in the mores, traditions and eventually in the institutions of the
community. The changes which proceed from modification in the racial
temperament will, however, modify but slightly the external forms of
the social traditions but they will be likely to change profoundly
their content and meaning. Of course, other factors, individual
competition, the formation of classes, and especially the increase of
communication, all cooeperate to complicate the whole situation and to
modify the effects which would be produced by racial factors working
in isolation. All these factors must be eventually taken account of,
however, in any satisfactory scheme of dealing with the problem of
Americanization by education. This is, however, a matter for more
complete analysis and further investigation.

ROBERT E. PARK

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This address was delivered before the American Sociological
Society convened in annual session at Richmond in 1918