Abstract
RACIAL PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES.- The population problem and, in particular, the colour question in the United States, which has produced much dogmatic but unsubstantiated assertion, has had a beneficial effect in leading to an examination of records for exact data which may bear upon the question of mental racial differences. In the Scientific Monthly for March, Dr. Bertha M. Luckey of Cleveland, Ohio, a city which contains a large percentage of foreign-born adults, has analysed the results of tests of school children for intelligence. As the data were obtained from the clinic, the majority of the children were super- or subnormal. Figures are shown for ten nationalities. The highest percentage of subnormal children is shown by the Negro and Polish groups (65 per cent.), and the lowest by the Jewish (29 per cent.), the intermediate order being Slavish, Slovenian, Italian, Hungarian, German, Bohemian, and American (30 per cent.). The largest percentage of bright or unusually bright occurred among the Jewish (24 per cent.), the remaining groups being in the following order: American, German, Bohemian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Slavish, then Polish, and Negro, each i per cent., and Italian, 0.5 per cent. Yet in the class “imbecile” the Jewish and American groups had more than the Negro and Slovenian groups. Another paper in the same issue, by the Rev. J. E. Gregg, compares the academic results of students admitted to the Hamilton Institute over a number of years, beginning in 1901. Seven grades of colour, ranging from black to “no trace of colour,” have been recorded, but the scholastic results show little difference between the colour groups. Of the twenty-one best scholars of the graduating classes in eleven years (1914–24), the percentages are as follows: Dark brown, 28.5; brown, 28.5; light brown, 28.5; light, 14.2. Of the entrants in 1901–10, the three groups dark brown, brown, and light brown formed 82–-3 per cent.
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Research Items. Nature 115, 617–619 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115617a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115617a0