the burden of wrong home conditions lies too heavily upon him."14
As the writer does not define what she means by "succeed," one is obliged to guess at what she means: Her anthropology is apparently similar to that of Franz Boas of Columbia University, who has said that, "No proof can be given of any material inferiority of the Negro race;—without doubt the bulk of the individuals composing the race are equal in mental aptitude to the bulk of our own people."
If such a statement is wholly true, the color line can hardly be justified, but must be regarded, as it is now the case sometimes, as merely the expression of prejudice and ignorance. If the only differences between white and black, which can not be removed by education, are of no real significance,—a chocolate hue of skin, a certain kinkiness of hair, and so on,—then logically the white race should remove the handicaps which lack of education and bad environment have placed on the Negro, and receive him on terms of perfect equality, in business, in politics, and in marriage.
The proposition needs only to be stated in this frank form, to arouse an instinctive protest on the part of most Americans. Yet it has been urged in an almost equally frank form by many writers, from the days of the abolitionists to the present, and it seems to be the logical consequence of the position adopted by such anthropologists as Professor Boas, and by the educators and others who proclaim that there are no significant differences between the Negro and the white, except such as are due to social conditions and which, therefore, can be removed.
But what are these social differences, which it is the custom to dismiss in such a light-hearted way? Are they not based on fundamental