An Introduction to Social Psychology
Chapter 15: Race, Nationality, Class
Luther Lee Bernard
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In the preceding chapter those inherited and acquired general traits and sets which characterize the individual as an organism functioning in a psycho-social situation were reviewed and analyzed. In the present chapter the conclusions arrived at in the preceding chapter will be applied to an examination of some of the major and outstanding groupings of mankind. To what extent do races, the sexes, nationalities, and social classes differ in intelligence and to what are the differences due ? The answer to the first of these two questions is best secured by examining the results of the mental tests already introduced in the preceding chapter.
TESTS AND RACE— The attempt has been made to apply the mental tests not only to individuals but also to groups or classes of individuals in order to secure a comparative rating of these groups or classes with reference to each other. This application has been made especially with respect to racial groups, the sexes, and occupational groups. The method as applied to racial groups is that of selecting typical individuals from a race and measuring their intelligence by means of approved tests. Then it is possible to compare the index of one race with that of another. Such method is subject to all the advantages and disadvantages of testing outlined in the preceding chapter. If a sufficiently large number of representative and well distributed individuals is selected from the racial group it may be possible to secure an approximation to the average of intelligence of the group, but the intelligence thus measured is only the acquired intelligence within the limits of inherited capacity and not the inherited capacity itself. The degree to which the actual indices of intelligence measured for a racial group approximate— to the actual inherited capacity will depend on the environmental factors of home training, cultural contacts, motivation, opportunity, etc., available to the members of the group.
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RACE TRAITS — The supposed race traits may be divided into two general groups— the physiological and anatomical, on the one hand, and the psychological and social, on the other haled. If we should attempt to list these traits we should place under the former category such items as color of skin, hair, and eyes, hair texture, the shape and distribution of hair over the body, head shape, and in a minor sense size, form of face, lips, and nose, stature, position of eyes, odor, and possibly certain differences in the endocrines and in the structure of the brain, although this last matter has not been definitely settled. Under the psychological and social characteristics which we ordinarily associate with races we might include various qualities and degrees of such characteristics or attitudes and complexes as education, morals, religion, superstition, scientific appreciation, mysticism, practical outlook, recessive or aggressive disposition, the various temperaments, commercial or philosophic bent, absolutistic or democratic governmental institutions, etc.
As between these two types of characteristics a marked difference is noticeable. Both types vary greatly— in occurrence within any so-called race. Also the latter type changes readily in the individual, while the former type changes only or primarily through selection of the inheritance. The psychological and social traits can be made to conform very readily and within very short periods of time to the psycho-social environment in which the members of the race are placed. This is especially true of the younger members of a race. To transplant them from one culture to another while still in infancy renders it certain that they will assimilate the culture into which they are translated, if they are actually and fully immersed in it. This may also happen in less degree to older persons, whose habits or acquired dispositions are more firmly set. But the anatomical and physiological traits are modified within the same individual only with the greatest difficulty. Possibly the endocrine balance may be altered by changing to a new physico-chemical environment or by the adoption of new habits of living, which is equivalent to changing the social environment Of course disease and conditions of labor, of nutrition, and of climatic pressures may modify the functioning and structure of organs and tissues. And the cortical organization
(226) is always modifiable under proper environmental pressures. Skin color is also subject to modification under the influence of the sun's rays, humidity, etc. Some of the more stable somatic characteristics, such as head shape and stature, appear also to be modified in the second generation under the influence of changed conditions of nutrition and possibly of climate, if we accept the results of Boas' studies.
But in spite of these partial exceptions it appears that the fundamental biological structures in man, with the exception of the cerebral cortical processes, are relatively fixed. The anatomical and physiological traits appear to breed true to type in a very large number of cases, while so far as we know the complex mental, moral and social traits do not breed true to type at all, but are wholly acquired from whatever environment is dominant for that race or group. Accordingly we are accustomed to speak of the former as race traits and of the latter as cultural traits. Sometimes we refer to the one as biological and to the other as social. The fact of race is biological, but the concept of race is sociological. That is, the conceptual organization of the biological traits into a collective racial unity is sociological, not biological.
WHITE AND COLORED— Race comparisons on an academic basis in this country usually make use of the data regarding Negroes and Whites, and sometimes of Indians. There seems to be no question but that the average levels of intelligence shown by Negroes is anywhere from one to three years below that of Whites of the same chronological age. The army tests in the recent war showed very few Negroes in A and B grades, while twelve percent of the typical Whites belonged to these grades. However, in the lowest passing grade (D-) there were seven times as many Negroes as Whites. The statistics as summarized by Gault are as follows :
| Classes | Number of Cases | Percent Making Grade | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D- | D | C- | C | C+ | B | A | ||||||||
| White, Groups I, II, III | 93,973 | 7.0 | 17.1 | 23.8 | 25.0 | 12.0 | 8.0 | 4.1 | ||||||
| Negroes, Group IV | 18,891 | 49.0 | 29.7 | 12.9 | 5.7 | 2.0 | 0.6 | 0.1 | ||||||
(227) The groups of Whites and Negroes were comparable as to composition.
The results of experiments by Dr. Pyle [1] are interesting in this connection. He gave a series of tests to a group of grade school Negro children in Missouri and compared the results with those obtained from the same tests given to white children. The absolute superiority in technique of the Whites over the Negroes indicated by the army tests is clearly confirmed by Dr. Pyle's data, as shown in the following table comparing the relative efficiency of the two races in the several tests made. Columns (4) and (7) also indicate the degree to which the negro children approached the white children in the various tests.
| Boys | Girls | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) |
| Type of test | White score | Negro score | Percent which negro score is of white [2] | White score | Negro score | Percent which negro score is of white [2] |
| Rote memory | 34.8 | 24.6 | 68.5 | 36.1 | 28.3 | 76.6 |
| Substitution | 28.7 | 13.6 | 44.0 | 33.0 | 15.1 | 42.6 |
| Logical Memory | 24.4 | 19.7 | 80.3 | 25.3 | 20.1 | 78.4 |
| Manthanometer [3] | 16.6 | 12.96 | 78.2 | 17.5 | 13.0 | 73.8 |
(228) These results are difficult to explain by a theory of inherited racial inferiority, since the negro children apparently were better relative to white children in the difficult tests than in the simple ones.
In tests given under the direction of Dr. Pyle by Mrs. Lappin to five hundred Indian boys and girls, the average score of Indian boys approaches most nearly to that of white boys in logical memory tests (80.1 percent), next in concrete rote memory tests (72.8 percent), third in substitution tests (6o.9 percent), fourth in abstract rote memory tests (6o.8 percent), fifth in word building tests (44.5 percent), sixth in analogue tests (34.6 percent), and seventh in free association tests (28.8 percent). The order in which the average scores of Indian girls approach those of white girls is, concrete rote memory, (70.2 percent), abstract rote memory (65.9 percent), logical memory (63.5 percent), substitution (57.1 percent), word building (.I2.2 percent), analogues (3o.6 percent), and free association (30.5 percent).
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT IN PACE— The following table compiled from Dr. Pyle's data shows the order of the relative efficiency in the several tests of both negro and white children to be largely similar. The order of efficiency is the same for both boys and girls in each race.
| Negro | White | |
| Rote Memory | Rote Memory | |
| Logical Memory | Substitution | |
| Substitution | Logical Memory | |
| Manthanometer | Manthanometer |
The relative efficiency of negro and Indian children of both sexes in the several tests as compared with the efficiency of white children was shown in the preceding section. In the opinion of the present writer Dr. Pyle's data indicate that negro and Indian boys do least well as compared with the Whites in the more academic test, in which presumably they have least practice, and best in those tests in which their general experience with the adjustment problems of life tends to
(229) count most. Making due allowance for differences in training and traditions of girls as compared with boys, the same statement appears to hold for negro and Indian girls.
Miss Strong's results [4] also appear to justify such a conclusion. She found from a comparison of city white children, mill children (white) and colored children, that the white mill children were more closely related to the negro children than to the city white children in two out of three types of results. Of those children that were more than one year retarded in school work she found only 5.4 percent of the city white children, 18.3 percent of the mill children, and 25.6 percent of the colored children. O f those more than one year above normal, 10.4 percent of the city white children, and of the other two classes none. Of those who were doing normal work, 84.2 percent of the city white children belonged to this class, 81.6 percent of the mill children, and 74.4 percent of the negro children.
Other facts which appear to support the hypothesis that so-called racial differences in intelligence are due largely to environmental influences upon opportunity to acquire the mental and manual and sensory skills required by the tests are to be found in the fact that the grading of Italians and Negroes corresponded much more closely than did that of the Negroes and Whites as a whole. The same is true of the Negroes and Indians who seem to vary from each other in relation to their cultural opportunities rather than on a basis of absolute race differences. Also, the northern Negro tests to much better advantage than the southern Negro. Of course it may be urged that in the last two instances there is a selection on the basis of inherited ability— that the Indians of greatest ability are selected for culture and the brighter Negroes go north while the naturally dull ones stay in the south— and to some extent this contention must be true. But it is also interesting to note that 19 percent of the southern Negroes included in the army tests had received no schooling, while only seven percent of the northern Negroes had suffered z like disadvantage.
In regard to the environmental disadvantage of the Negro,
(230) Long, an educated member of the race, makes some pertinent remarks: "One who has first-hand acquaintance with the environment of the average negro child— separated from the culture of the community in which he lives; reared in a home without books, without stimulating conversation, in the most undesirable location; kept in a schoolroom under a teacher who, perchance, has finished the fifth or sixth grade; and plied with religious beliefs that are but one step removed from crass superstition, beliefs shot through with the other worldliness of the Dark Ages— understands, or fancies that he understands, a very potent reason why the army scores for Negroes were not high and could not in the nature of things have been otherwise." [5]
ITALIANS AND NATIVE AMERICANS— Very similar results have been found to hold for a comparison of Italians and native Americans. The conclusions of Miss Margaret Mead who studied children of similar social background in a New Jersey town, serve to illustrate this fact. Her conclusions follow: "The Italians are definitely inferior to the Americans if judged by test showing alone. Therefore, if grading and promotion were to be governed by test results the Italians would be placed clearly at a disadvantage in competing with the American children in these schools.
"The scores of the Italians have been shown to be influenced by the factors of language, as demonstrated by the classification according to language spoken at home; by the length of time the parent has been in this country, this factor being somewhat interwoven with the language factor; and by the social status of the parent.
"This would indicate that"Intelligence-test scores of foreign children, particularly group tests involving the use of language, are subject to vitiation by the above-mentioned factors.
"Classification of foreign children, in schools where they have to compete with American children, on the basis of group intelligence-test findings alone, is riot a just evaluation of the child's innate capacity." [6]
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In these cases language differences appear to have been the chief cause of disparity in test results. The influence of the language difficulty may be further illustrated by the following table drawn from Miss Mead's studies.
| Language Spoken in the Home | Number | Index of Brightness | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Italian | 82 | 65.00 | ||
| Italian and some English | 100 | 70.00 | ||
| English and some Italian | 64 | 73.90 | ||
| English | 23 | 72.93 |
It is not possible now to settle finally the question of relative inherited race superiority and inferiority. And it may be well to note that psychologists and sociologists are inclined to attribute differences in intelligence between the races more to cultural transmission or "social heredity" than to chromosome transmission or biological heredity. However, there may well be minor differences in intelligence due to inheritance. If it can be shown, as some anthropologists believe, that racial differences depend largely on inherited differences in endocrine supply and distribution, this difference in endocrines might conceivably reflect itself in intelligence levels, although we have at present little or no direct evidence to support such a theory. If differences in neural structure could also be established between the members of any two races this fact might lead to the same general conclusion. But endocrine differences might be expected more easily to lead to differences in emotional attitude and expression. Whether the different emotional attitudes of various races can be traced to such a cause or whether they are dependent upon different conditions of living and different customs and traditions we cannot now say. Southern peoples are more expressive of their emotions, are of a more active temperament, gesticulate and exclaim more than northern peoples. But this may he the result of their constant outdoor life which leads to much association and interstimulation and to the constant need for adjustment. Their religion also seems to be less intellectual and more ritualistic, and they also have
(232) more illiteracy. Perhaps their more general habit of submitting to autocratic government in spite of their impulsive dispositions may also go back to the matter of education, or the lack of it.
MENTAL DEFECT AND RACE— Certainly we find more mental defect in the so-called inferior races. Odum found in Philadelphia that Negroes showed 6.3 percent feeble-mindedness among school children as against 3.9 percent for the Whites. Of course feeble-mindedness is an individual trait and not in any sense a race trait as such. For that matter, perhaps none of the traits which we call racial are anything but individual traits which we assimilate or impute variously to the several so-called races because of their more frequent occurrence among some peoples than among others. That is why earlier in this chapter it was pointed out that the so-called race traits are biological, but the so-called races are sociological concepts rather than biological facts. We group together, conceptually, those individual traits which by prepossession or from observed juxtaposition we feel properly belong together and call them in this collective conceptual synthesis a race. Feeble-mindedness is found more frequently correlated with dark skins and kinky hair and other "Negro" characteristics than with the ""'bite" characteristics. But we know of no inherent biological affinity of feeble-mindedness for the one set of traits as against the other. Yet this inherited affinity would have to exist if feeble-mindedness was a part of the race heredity of the Negro, instead of being merely a matter of statistical distribution on the basis of social selection.
The reasons for the more frequent occurrence of feeblemindedness among the inferior races seem to be primarily social. Isolated rural environments and standards of living and achievement generally do not readily eliminate feeble-mindedness. Even among the Whites there is twice as high a rate of feeble-mindedness in the less intellectually competitive rural districts as in the cities. Negroes lived in a rural environment before coming to America and they have continued to du so since their arrival here. And the larger part of the negro population now living in cities was born and brought up in rural communities, while the white population has a much longer
( 233) urban history. Negroes also undergo more physical stress before and after birth. Infections are more numerous, malnutrition and undernutrition, toxins, drug addictions, bad housing conditions, sanitation, and the opportunity for the practice of normal hygiene, all show up less favorably for the Negroes than for the Whites and tell upon their general biological organization and predispose them towards retardation and acquired feeble-mindedness. If we add to these more physiological influences of environment the fact that the Negroes have less cultural opportunity it is not surprising that they show up to a disadvantage in intelligence tests, regardless of the question of biological race differences as such.
VARIATIONS WITH AGE— It was also observed by Odum that negro children of the earlier ages showed a closer correspondence to white levels in intellectual tests than (lid the older negro children. Some writers attribute this increasing disparity with increasing age to organic changes occurring in the Negro due to inheritance. There may possibly be some such changes, of which we do not know, but it seems safer to attribute this relative lowering of intelligence with the approach of maturity, where it exists, to acquired general changes of an organic and mental sort. The older children among Negroes are taken from school and put to work earlier than white children, they are less regular in school attendance, their recreation is less well supervised and therefore less normal, they form bad physiological and mental habits, they develop inferiority complexes and therefore feel less motivation to study, with the result, possibly, that they even develop pseudo feeble-mindedness in the more extreme cases. Their opportunities for study at home and for restful sleep are also poorer than for white children, and their nutrition and hygiene are inferior. Such handicaps may be even more important than those of inheritance, racial or individual, in lowering the intellectual levels of negro children by comparison with Whites.
Dr. Pyle's results in the matter o f the relative intelligence showing for Negroes and Whites at different age periods arc interesting. His tests were performed upon school children. This eliminates the selective factor working adversely with reference to negro children in age period comparisons for the
(
234) population as a whole due to the circumstance that negro children are more frequently
forced out of school by economic or other circumstances not necessarily connected with their
learning capacity. On the other hand it selects somewhat in favor of the brighter negro children of
more advanced age groups in mixed schools, where those of lowest intelligence would be
eliminated in the lower grades, in comparative tests with the white children. But Dr. Pyle's tests
were made upon children in segregated schools. Hence this comparative elimination in favor of
the average intelligence of the negro children of the upper ages would obtain but slightly if at all.
His figures, showing the average relative percentage scores of negro school children in
comparison with white school children (taken as 100 percent efficient), are as follows:
| Ages | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Negro boys | 59 | 52 | 65 | 69 | 74 | 80 | ||||||
| Negro girls | 63 | 65 | 68 | 71 | 73 | 76 |
Apparently bringing the negro child out of the home environment into the school environment improves his intelligence showing more rapidly than the same transition improves the intelligence showing of the white child. If other things were equal this would tend to indicate that the white child is of inferior natural ability. But other things are not equal. The explanation of this better relative showing of the negro child is apparently to be found in an environmental situation— the fact that the superiority of the Negro's school environment over his home environment is more marked than that of the white child's school environment over his home environment. Certainly we should scarcely be justified in predicating feeblemindedness as a racial trait of a group which apparently shows a relative acceleration of learning in the years up to fifteen, although as an individual trait defective mentality, neuroses, and other personality distortions probably occur more frequently among Negroes and other depressed races than among Whites.
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RACE AN ABSTRACTION, NOT A CONCRETE OBJECTIVE FACT — What has been said by way of comparison of Negroes and Whites might be affirmed, with suitable modifications according to the circumstances, of any two races. These two races have been utilized for illustration of the general principles regarding race differences because there are more data available regarding them. We should be very careful about speaking of inherited racial differences, especially in the mental sphere. There is more justification for speaking of inherited race differences in connection with purely biological traits. But even here it is a question as to whether we are dealing with individual or racial traits. Race is, after all, primarily an abstract synthetic concept, a class term, used to symbolize a conceptual synthesis of a great many characteristics which we more or less arbitrarily agree to call collectively by some specific race name. Its unity is merely an abstraction existing as a statistical mean or average in our own minds, without concrete objective reality. There is no one person in a so-called race who is wholly typical of our abstract and synthetic concept of that race. Nor do we find any conclusive unity or identity of traits in the various members of a so-called race. Always the extremes of traits within a race show greater differences than do the means of any two races. Also there are large numbers of a people whom it is impossible to classify definitely— and scientifically within one race as against another, except on arbitrary grounds. Thus we classify in this country as Negro any person known to have traces of Negro "blood," even though only a small proportion of his inheritance may have come from Negro ancestry. Race is therefore primarily an abstract statistical concept, based on averages of certain isolable traits, and not a concrete biological and psychological fact. It is a collective or social concept. But it is not wholly divorced from concrete biological traits. In fact the statistical average is built up around a synthesis of concrete biological traits. These constitute the basis of race distinctions. Recognized as such, race is an effective social symbol by means of which %%c control human relationships' and compel collective adjustments on a wide scale. As an abstract or conceptual social phenomenon race is very real. So also is race prejudice, which is a psycho-social phenomenon growing out of
(236) our abstract synthetic concept of race and reënforced by it. Not all realities are biological and concrete. Some are abstract and social. And the latter may be as powerful for control purposes as the former. But we should not confuse an abstract conceptual social fact with a concrete biological one in our thinking.
URBAN AND RURAL CHILDREN COMPARED— The retardation in the development of rural children is shown by the experiments by Dr. P. E. Collings under Dr. Pyle's direction. The table gives the efficiency of rural as compared with urban children according to the substitution test.
| Age | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Ave. | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boys | 60 | 65 | 68 | 81 | 82 | 98 | 85 | 78 | ||||||||
| Girls | 56 | 61 | 76 | 80 | 97 | 97 | 100 | 81 |
Dr. Pyle summarizes his conclusions as follows
"One interesting fact which the table shows is that at age eight the rural children are but little over half as efficient as are city children and that as they grow older they approach nearer and nearer to the efficiency of city children. . . .
"It seems to me that the legitimate explanation for the facts is as follows: ( 1 ) The country children show up more poorly partly because they really have poorer learning capacity than do city children and partly because of poorer training. The young rural children get very little attention in school. When given an experiment, they do not so readily understand what is expected of them, and do not know so well how to take hold of tasks given them, because they have not had much practice that would prepare them for such things.
"(2) In the later years, the rural children come nearer to the city children partly because they have gained somewhat, relatively, by training, and partly because in rural communities more dull children drop out of school than is the case in the city."
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Pressey and Thomas obtained similar results: "A group of unselected country children rate about a year and a half in mental age below city children." But they also found that "the children in a good farming district average above children in a poor farming district. Like Collings and Pyle, they find the evidence from such tests less trustworthy for country than for urban children. They urge "that the usual type of intelligence tests does not give adequate measures of the ability of country children; performance tests and materials more relative to their environment are needed."
OCCUPATIONAL DIFFERENCES— The tests reveal differences in mental efficiency according to occupational classes. Dr. Hornell Hart has summarized these data as follows. "In the three cities in which are located the Universities of Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin, studies have severally been made by psychologists from those universities to determine the comparative abilities of the children of men of different occupational levels. In each of the three studies the children of professional men average by far the highest in mental-test ability, the children of business men next highest, skilled workmen's children next and the children of unskilled laborers lower than any of the above three occupational groups." [7] His tabular data follow:
| Occupation | Indiana Study | Columbus Study | Madison Study | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Professional | 83 | 1.42 | 114 | |||
| Business | 66 | 1.26 | 104 | |||
| Skilled Trades | 47 | 1.22 | 97 | |||
| Unskilled Labor | 39 | .83 | 94 | |||
| Farming | 27 | — | 94 | |||
| Number tested | 1,206 | 228 | 2,782 |
For purposes of comparison, the following table showing the "distribution of intelligence of school children by occupation of parents in the Isle of Wight" ' is cited.[8]
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CONCLUSIONS REGARDING GEOGRAPHIC AND OCCUPATIONAL DIFFERENCES— The results of tests here cited are fairly typical of a large body of data now available. They show clearly that rural children test below urban children and the children of manual laborers (to which class farmers in the main belong) below those of professional and business men. The explanations are still lamely matters of inference. But the are probably safe in saying that the more strenuous competition of professional and business life selects a higher grade of native ability than do the manual occupations. But there are undoubt-
(239) -edly other factors also, one of which is difference in language facility. After making due allowance for selective elimination Dr. Collings' data show that, as in the case of negro children, the shift from the home environment to that of the school greatly improves their relative rating. The school tends to equalize environments which previously were very dissimilar with regard to language facility, cultural contacts and interests, and even in the matter of general morale and habits of mental and physical accuracy, hygiene, etc.[9] Similar contrasts in home environments exist with respect to laboring and business and professional classes in the city.
SEX DIFFERENCES— The data used by Dr. Pyle also show differences in efficiency between the sexes, as is indicated in the comparative tables above. In most forms of learning the girls showed most improvement in the years before eleven or twelve, and the boys after that age period. This variation was attributed to differences in physiological maturity. It may also have had something to do with differences in interests sanctioned by the community and by tradition for the two sexes. The boys were generally behind the girls until after puberty, when the boys appeared to catch up and forge ahead. In this connection the important environmental fact should be remembered, that, according to custom and economic circumstances, the intellectually competitive career of most girls ends at the close of puberty and the close of their school days, while that of boys begins at this period. Girls compete with boys and with one another for intellectual and social standing mainly in their earlier years. Boys are often impatient of their school work in anticipation of the real "battle of life" which is to come later. The statement that the "superiority of girls is greater in mechanical, motor forms of learning than in the forms of learning involving reasoning" is to be expected in the light of the training and problems encountered by the two sexes. Dr. Helen P. Thompson (Wooley) found in her laboratory experiments that women had better memories and were more rapid in associative thinking, while men were more ingenious. Men
( 240) were also more socially minded and women more interested in religious matters. She concluded that the original mental differences between the sexes were slight. Others have pointed out that men are more interested in events and things and women in persons and emotions, also that women appear to have a bent for domesticity and children. while men seem to prefer business and professional contacts and to do better in them. Few would claim that these variations are due directly to heredity, but the differences in physiology and anatomy of the two sexes doubtless coöperate with differences in tradition and custom in determining the two sexes in the acquisition of their interests and skills. There appears to be no clear evidence that the native intellectual capacity of the two sexes differs materially.
NATIONALITY — Nationality would scarcely be regarded as a biological fact, although there are biological elements included in it. It is primarily a social category. The members of a nationality are not necessarily all of the same race, although there is some tendency in this direction, since consciousness of race similarity is one of the strongest subjective bonds binding a people together. They do not need to be of the same region geographically, although a nationality originates in a particular geographic region. The Jews afford an example of a nationality which has remained strongly unified spiritually although the members are scattered throughout the world. Some writers, among them Jews, are doubtful whether the Jewish people can be characterized as of a single race. Yet they think of themselves as a single people closely bound together by unbreakable ties, especially of religion and culture.
THE ELEMENTS OF NATIONALITY— The essential and indispensable elements of nationality therefore are social. The chief of these elements are a common language, a common culture, including a common history through at least part of their career, common traditions, customs, conventions, religion, etc. And over and above all this there should be a collective consciousness of their similarities iii the respects mentioned. That is, each one should be vividly aware that other members of his national group are like himself and that they have experiences and interests in common with him. Without this conscious-
(241) -ness of kind, the psycho-social elements in the nationality may themselves dissolve and disappear under the influence of conflicting pressures from other psycho-social and institutional environments, if these are not regulated or controlled. Each nationality has its own forms of characteristic institutions, its own religion or version of a common religion, its legends, beliefs, rites and rituals, its mores and folkways, its own customs and traditions. These may vary in details in different parts of the world, if the nationality lacks geographic unity, but they retain their identity or similarity in their larger and more fundamental aspects.
THE UNITY OF NATIONALITY — This unity of nationality comes through the integration of the same or similar behavior patterns in the cerebral cortexes of all the members of the nationality. These common cortical behavior patterns are induced through the psycho-social pressures of communication and the common access of all members to the stored symbols and meaning complexes of the common psycho-social environment. Those very elements mentioned above, which are the visible signs of a common nationality, are also in large part the psycho-social environmental factors which produce the cortical and conscious, or subconscious, similarity and awareness of similarity which constitute the content of their nationality. Of course this cortical basis of national unity is organic, but it is superinduced by the environment and is highly flexible and not inherited. Race similarity, where it exists, is the only hereditary basis of national unity. But consciousness of race, with its usual correlate of race prejudice, may be a very strong factor in maintaining a nationality and the common feeling of support for it.
CLASSES— What has been said about the behavior of nationalities holds very largely also with respect to classes. Classes are ordinarily smaller groups, usually possessing some degree of self-consciousness, within larger social groupings such as nationalities, states, or other larger classes. Classes are usually integrated objectively around some one interest car aim, or consciousness of similarity of purpose, or defensive interest which seems very important to those allying themselves with the class behavior and partaking of the collective or class con-
( 242) -sciousness. Nationalities which are integrated on a defensive basis or because of the recognition of common interests are also classes. We also speak of classes in a purely objective sense, where group self-consciousness or consciousness of collective interests can scarcely be said to exist, as when for example we distinguish laboring classes in general from clerical classes.
BASES OF CLASS INTEGRATION— In our modern society this common interest is very likely to be basically economic, although it may appear, when viewed more superficially, to be primarily political, cultural, religious, esthetic, feministic, or otherwise. Similarity of race and of nationality is not necessary to class unity, but it is very helpful because of the strength of this appeal. Nor is it necessary that the members of the same class shall have the same psycho-social and institutional consciousness and alliances, such as membership in the same religious organizations, lodges, political parties, or adherence to the same customs and rituals, or credence in like beliefs and traditions. But unity in all of these matters is helpful as a secondary factor in welding classes together. Thus it is evident that the necessary organic and psychic bases of class integration are even more flexible and more fully acquired than are those of nationality or race.
The more fundamental factors integrating individuals into class groups are primarily environmental, although some are biological or organic. The environmental pressures have their extensions into the subjective response mechanisms of the organism. The integration of a class, whatever the environmental pressures involved is mediated through the cerebral cortical processes. Class alignments may easily change or disintegrate under appropriate environmental stimuli, whereupon the cortical behavior patterns which constitute their subjective aspect also disintegrate or are transformed into other patterns which function to integrate the collective overt behavior of other classes. Examples of these environmental integrating factors are raw materials for Production which predispose towards certain types of occupations in certain regions, the physico-social environments of machines and technology, and the psycho-social and institutional environments which predis-
( 243) -pose or mold people into certain class affiliations and alignments. There are also sometimes rather general correlations of the structural organization of the organisms of the members of classes, such as similarities of physique and of muscular development in some laboring classes, or of hands or other organs in artistic classes, and of sex traits when people divide into classes along sex lines, or of race traits when the division is made in this direction. But such correlations are very uncertain and incomplete and fluctuating and ordinarily of secondary importance. The exceptions almost or quite invalidate the rule in most cases.
INHERITED AND ACQUIRED FACTORS IN CLASS— Such general structural traits may or may not be acquired. There may also be some tendency for classes to segregate along lines of inherited capacity and acquired intelligence skills, as was indicated above with reference to occupational groups. The test ratings of the members of various manual laboring classes is inferior to that of business and professional classes. The so-called intellectual classes show a decidedly higher test level of intelligence than the other classes. But we should be careful about attributing the whole of such record differences of intelligence among classes to inheritance. Undoubtedly some of it is due to the character of the tests applied and perhaps more of it to differences in the environments and opportunities to which people are subjected. Some of these environments stimulate the development of intellectual skills more than others. The biological inheritance theory of class differences on the intellectual side can point logically only to a theory of caste organization of society.
SPECIAL CLASSES — We should, perhaps, include in this chapter some mention of certain maladjusted classes which have primarily an objective existence, and whose members possess little consciousness of common interests or awareness of similarity to each other. [10] Therefore the subjective organization of such classes is very meager. This is especially true of the various classes of mental defectives. Whatever class integration they have is forced upon them as a result of the
( 244) attitudes of the remainder of the population who recognize their defect, and as a result of whatever primitive means or mechanisms of cooperation they develop when herded together by the pressures of their environment. Their defects prevent them from developing a high degree of class consciousness and corresponding neural organization of patterns of collective behavior as a subjective basis of class integration.
On the other hand the members of dependent and delinquent classes, and other maladjusted classes relatively normal mentally, have more awareness of their similarity and are to some degree conscious of a community of interests. As a consequence they develop certain cortical behavior mechanisms which constitute an organic and psychic basis of class unity. They may even organize themselves cooperatively for purposes of mutual aid or for mutual defense and the protection of common interests. Criminal classes are more likely to take aggressive class measures of this sort than are dependent classes, although they are usually greatly handicapped by the necessity of working under cover.
ORGANIC BASIS OF MALADJUSTED CLASSES OR GROUPS— It may be said of all of these special classes or groups here mentioned that their members are likely to have a large organic or structural basis for their class integration of which they have little or no adequate awareness. This common structural basis, which is more or less typical for each class, consists of their defects, intellectual, emotional, physiological, and anatomical, both inherited and acquired. Even if the members of a class do not recognize these traits as the basis of classification, other people do. The fact of their existence imposes upon their possessors more or less common types of responses which render the members functionally as well as organically similar along many lines.
ACQUIRED AND ABSTRACT CHARACTER OF THESE WIDER GROUPINGS— It must be evident from the preceding discussion that the characteristics of social units or collectivities, such as have keen analyzed here, are primarily acquired, although they have individual inherited bases. These characteristics are of course always based on the behavior patterns of individuals. But a collectivity may also be said to have abstract or concep-
( 245) -tual characteristics of its own, as distinguished (but not separate) from the more concrete ones of its members. This is particularly true where the members are able to analyze their behavior elements and to relate them up symbolically and abstractly into synthetic concepts. The unity of races, nationalities, classes, and other non-face-to-face groups, is conceptual as it relates to consciousness. And it is abstract and general rather than concrete and specific in the totality of its relationships, although it is made up of concrete specific relationship and behavior patterns. This aspect of the subject will be further developed in Part IV.
MATERIALS FOR SUPPLEMENTARY READING
- Boas, F., The Mind of Primitive Man
- Bushee, F. A., Principles of Sociology, Ch. XVI
- Case, C. DI., Outlines of Introductory Sociology, Ch. V
- Dunlap, K., Social Psychology, Ch. II
- Edman, I., Human Traits and Their Significance, Ch. IX
- Ellwood, C. A., The Psychology of Human Society, pp. 45-50
- Finot, J., Race Prejudice
- Fishberg, At., The Jews
- Gault, R. H., Social Psychology, Chs. V, X
- Ginsberg, M., The Psychology of Society, Ch. VI
- Goldenweiser, A. A., Early Civilization, Pt. III
- Miller, K., Race Adjustment
- Odum, H. w., Social and Mental Traits of the Negro
- Park and Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, pp. 616-617
- Pillsbury, w. B., The Psychology of Nationalism and Internationalism, Chs. I, II
- Pyle, w. H., Nature and Development of Learning Capacity
- Reuter, E. B., The Mulatto in the United States
- Thomas, W. I., and Znanieki, F., The Polish Peasant
- Thompson, H. B., The Mental Traits of Sex
