Disadvantages of Race Mixture

Abstract

IN the modified Unesco statement on the nature of race, issued at the Fourth International Anthropological Congress in Vienna on September 7, we find the incautious affirmation that “there is no evidence that race mixture produces disadvantageous results from a biological point of view”. To cite a single case, there is recent evidence¹ that sickle-cell anæmia, a fatal disease, occurs with much higher frequency in American Negroes having some white ancestry than in African Negroes of pure descent, although the latter show a much higher frequency of the sicklæmia trait, which is without symptoms.