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• 1 media/Thumb 138.png 2024-11-08T14:13:52-05:00 "Variety: On the Evolution of the Black Race" 15 Considering racial theories as applied to Europeans and Africans plain 2024-12-07T15:55:29-05:00 09-10-1890 Translation:La Fraternité being essentially a newspaper of progress, we accept all writings that debate a point on the question noire, even if we do not completely share the views of their author.
  
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  Dr. P. Vernial has just published a brochure entitled The Extinction of the Latin Race (1.) in which he studies, from the social and philosophical point of view, the causes of the constant and progressive decrease of the population of France. he deals with this question from a very elevated point of view. Without going into an analysis of the work, we only cite the key ideas: "It is in the comparative study of natural laws that direct organic Evolution that we will find the causes of the progression or the regression of the different human races." Departing from this fundamental principle that the laws that reign over the development of a people are "natural, immutable and inevitable laws... that the Evolution of all living things, whatever they may be, are submitted to identical laws," the author establishes these two fundamental facts: "The species experiencing rapid evolution, that undergo organic modifications, that give rise, by way of these modifications, to a new fixed species, have a short, transitory existence........ We observe, second, this general fact: Whatever epoch they belong to, every species experiences the following evolution: It appears, develops, differentiates, attains a maximum of variation, then undergoes a retrograde evolution during which the most inferior and the most perfected varieties disappear; only the average races survive."
  
  Then, citing numerous examples drawn from the history of the animal kingdom and of humankind, he arrives at this conclusion: "This natural law—that all species on the path of formation, which is to say, rapid, continual evolution, must inevitable disappear to make room for fixed species—is also true when it comes to human races. The evolution of the Latin race is not finished. This race is thus destined to disappear to make room for a fixed, stable race which thus has all of the elements necessary for the fight for survival. Only two human races are fixed and immutable, the Chinese and Jewish race."
  
  I cannot follow Dr. Vernial into these developments that he gave to this idea that might, on first glance and for minds not well versed in these very interesting sociological studies, seem, if not paradoxical, at least outlandish, nor can I judge if these concepts are true: I can merely make note of them.
  
  But, seeing the argument that shows us that such and such a race is condemned to an ephemeral, transitory existence by "these natural laws that we are unconsciously subject to," I wonder if the same raisons d'être might not exist for a lesser known and lesser studied race, one that is relegated to the lowest rank, and whose evolutive history is nevertheless quite interesting: I want to speak of the Black race.
  
  It is said that the French people, the Latin race, are on the path of rapid decline, and, to explain this alarming fact, many reasons are invoked: When a situation cannot be remedied, we try to explain it. But it is also said, and often repeated, that the Black race is in decline. And in this case, as soon as it is a matter of poor wretches, the reasons are quickly found and accepted without discussion. They flatter, by the way, ethnic self love, and they should not. It is repeated that the Black race is disappearing because from the day they came in contact with the white race, they became the victim of their own intellectual inferiority, that, in the battle for survival, the weak give way to the strong in the physical domain as in the psychical domain. And, to support this hypothesis that flatters those who use it, they do not fail to cite the general name of the Indians of the Americas, a false name, but sanctioned by usage and which, since the arrival of the Whites, of the "Conquistadors," has diminished and will soon be in the state of a historical memory.
  
  But is this a fair comparison? Are the two cases identical?
  
  I would much rather adopt the reasons astutely examined by doctor Vernial, relative to the evolution of the races, generalizing them to all, believing them true for all, as applicable to the Black races as to the Indian, Latin, Chinese or Semitic.
  
  Now, between the Indian races (of the Americas) and the Black, the evolutive characteristics are totally different, and do not support any element of comparison.
  
  Dr. de Gleygnon
  
  (More to follow)
  
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  Notes:
  1. Published by Sauvaitre, Libraire Générale, Paris.  
  
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