SCIENCE
A glance tells that many Americans who are classified as Negro have plenty of European “blood”; white people with Negro blood are harder to distinguish. Their African genes may not affect their appearance and they usually do not know that some of their ancestors “passed.” In the Ohio Journal of Science, Sociologist Robert P. Stuckert of Ohio State University attempts to estimate how many white Americans have some African ancestry.
Using a complicated mathematical method, Dr. Stuckert constructs a “genetic probability table” that shows the changing composition of the population since 1750. To do this he assumes that “the probability of persons classified as white mating with persons classified as Negro is one-twentieth of what would be expected if mating were random.” In a population with 90% white and 10% Negro, for example, the probability of mixed matings works out at 9 per 1,000. Dr. Stuckert admits that this figure cannot be exact, but he says it agrees with many sociological studies. His other figures (e.g., immigration and natural increase of Negroes and whites) are much firmer.
When Dr. Stuckert has constructed his table for each census year, he reaches the conclusion that of 135 million Americans classified as white in 1950, about 28 million (21%) had some African ancestry. Of the 15 million classified as Negro, slightly more than 4,000,000 (27%) were of pure African descent. During 1941-50, he estimates, about 155,000 Negroes moved into the white category.
Dr. Stuckert’s estimates can be attacked in detail, but sociology offers little comfort to white Americans who try to maintain that a single African ancestor, however remote, makes a man Negro. About 60 generations have passed since the heyday of the Roman Empire; so an American of European ancestry is descended from 2 60 (1,152,921,504,606,846,976) ancestors at the time of the Emperor Hadrian. This immense figure is not to be taken literally, but it surely means that people with ancestors who lived in the Roman Empire, including England and part of Germany, are descended from a broad cut of the empire’s population.
The Roman Empire had no color line, and streams of people moved through it for centuries in every direction. Africans, including those with Negro ancestry, fought in the legions, traveled as merchants or seamen. Everywhere they went they left their immortal genes; so few white Americans can claim to have none of them, and none can prove it.
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