Heredity, race, and society.

  • Leslie Clarence Dunn
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Heredity, race, and society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    genes which an individual carries. It stands to reason then that an individual with a white skin can not pos sibly harbor these genes in a latent condition, regardless of whether or not he has some remote Negro ancestry. Of course, this works both ways: an individual with a black skin can not carry latent genes for white skin (excepting albinism), and, therefore, a white child can not be born to Negro parents. The occurrence of white and Negro children in mulatto families in no way con tradicts this. Summary In this chapter we have tried to let the reader look behind the external features of animals, plants and men and get a glimpse of the exact mechanism which gov erns heredity. Heredity consists not of blood but of genes which come in packages just as discrete and real as atoms or molecules. We receive them from our par ents and pass them on to our children according to the simple regular laws which Mendel discovered. The ex istence of many kinds of genes and the operation of the laws by which they are dealt out to the children account for the almost infinite variety of persons in the world. But the importance of genes is not limited to explaining differences between individuals. Groups of persons look alike because they have some of their genes in common. Groups which differ biologically tend to differ in some of their genes. Most genes stand for useful qualities of good physique, good health and a good mind; but some stand for bad qualities and diseases. The variety which is characteristic of all human groups is due to gene mutation and to recombination, as these processes have occurred in the long history of human evolution, and as they are occurring today. The outcome of such processes is discussed in the next chapter.
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