Madison Grant Quotes


The intelligence and ability of a colored person are in pretty direct proportion to the amount of white blood he has, and ... most of the positions of leadership, influence, and prominence in the Negro race are held not by real Negroes but by Mulattoes, many of whom have very little Negro blood... .


Citations

Madison Grant, 1865-1937, Anthropologist, Eugenics Advocate & Racialist, The Conquest of a Continent

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There was a huge amount of racial interbreeding during the early slavery times of America. Some was consensual as people will be people, but much was the rape of Black slaves my white masters—a concept that was never considered rape by law as one cannot commit a crime against one’s own property. The result after time was every possible combination of white/black mixture. There were names for many of the combinations: Quadroons were one fourth Negro. Octaroons, one-eighth. During and after reconstruction, for purposes of discriminatory law, who was a Negro? The Louisiana “one drop rule” said that if there was ANY trace of Negro ancestry, that person was a Negro and would be discriminated against. Of course, what would happen was that many mixed race children were light skinned and looked white and many were black and all shades in between. It was relatively easy for the lighter skinned “one drop” Negroes to pass as white especially if the left the state. But if anyone accused them of being Negro, they would have been guilty of committing crimes. Some in modern times have little comprehension of how the white plantation slave owners and other whitrd could condemn their own children to a second class life of vicious discrimination, but that is exactly what they did. The great irony here lies with the modern KKK, Nazi, and other White Supremacy Groups. They still hold to the “one drip rule for their viciousness. However, under the one drop rule, almost all of them would be Negroes if they went back far enough, and ALL ARE BLACK under the one drop rule as with modern DNA and genetic analysis, we now know that every human alive today emanated from a Black woman in Africa.


The logic train from mixed blood to why lynching should not be prohibited is obscure but in filibusters Senators tended to just repeat all of their stump speeches or anything else because they had to keep talking.


This quotation and the so called “facts” therein have been quoted by many to demonstrate general racial inferiority of Blacks as compared to whites in the first half of the 20th century. There are two difficulties with their arguments. First it has been scientifically demonstrated that amongst many animals including humans brain size has nothing to do with intelligence. For example, the primitive Neanderthal man had a bigger skull and brain than modern man. Second, it is not the case that Negro brains are smaller than whites. Stephen J. Gould has demonstrated the fallacy of these early studies showing the difference. It is a classic scientific example that researchers looking for a particular solution will often find it whether or not it is real.


Lawrence was one of the very advanced scientists of his time presaging Darwin on a few issues. But he erroneously believed that character and intellect were heretical capabilities. Intellect has been shown to be an inheritable trait to some extent (50-60 percent), but it is not racial per se. And character as we now know is not inherited.


The ANC is the African National Congress, the majority political party of South Africa. The Communists of the 20th century espoused the cause of Blacks throughout the world and their struggle for equal rights as a method of recruiting people to their cause. Racists, then as a political ploy, began to refer to all those advocating Black equality as communists. This carried over even after apartheid had ended in South Africa. The same technique was used by American, racist, segregationists to label all those who advocated desegregation as communists, because the Communist Party advocated an end to segregation.


Charleston was in the Southern part of the state where most people supported slavery. Douglas made an unequivocal pitch for the racist vote {600060} and forced Lincoln to take a stand. Like many politicians today, Lincoln decided to give the audience what they wanted to hear. It is not clear whether or not he ever believed this statement or was just pandering in a political campaign. He had never said this in the Northern part of the state of before. Lincoln’s views on race changed and matured over the years, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln lost the Senate seat to Douglas.


Rowan was primarily referring to the miscegenation that took place since Negro slavery in the Americas. Rape of slaves by white “masters” and their male relatives was common. In addition there have been interracial romantic relationships from the time Blacks were first in America. These have increased dramatically in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, he was slightly in error as he did not consider the origin of man, where science has traced the DNA of EVERY human on Earth back to a Black African female. Hence 100 percent of humans have “Negroid” blood in the sense that there has been inter-racial breeding in the past.


Madison Grant
Madison Grant
  • Born: November 19, 1865
  • Died: May 30, 1937
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Lawyer, Writer, Zoologist

Madison Grant was an American lawyer, writer, and zoologist known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist, an advocate of scientific racism and as one of the leading thinkers and activists of the Progressive Era.