Chicago Tribune
INTERMARRIAGE OF RACES IS
URGED BY SOCIOLOGIST.
———
Prof. William I. Thomas Predicts the Disappearance of Color Line in Prejudices
of Civilized Peoples.
———
Disappearances of the racial "color lines" was predicted yesterday by Prof. William I. Thomas of the University of Chicago in a lecture in Kent theater on "Race Prejudice."
"Race prejudice will grow less as race relationships become closer and as we travel more," he said. "Already whites and Japs intermarry. There is no reason why intermarriage of races should not continue along these and other lines. The reason we marry Japs is that they are on a level with us — in many ways, at least. Their civilization and culture and ours are much alike.
"The questions of the future are not to be bound up in the tint of the skin by by the degree of development of the different races and occupations. The differences to be found in fair Scandinavians and dark Italians are duplicated in the case of whites and blacks.
"What we call the white race is the most mixed race of all. It has negro blood in it. The infusion of Indian blood into Americans has resulted in one of the finest strains possible.
"The signs of race prejudice are to be found in their extreme degree in our attitudes toward negroes. But, disagreeable as some of their traits are to us, our manners and features are even more shocking to negroes in Africa. They despise white people because our skins recall such things as ghosts, death, disease, and white mice. The time is coming when we shall not be separated as we now are by color."
