Mixed-race offspring directly contradicted the polygenist claim that races are separate species

Evidence

Mixed-race presence offered an obvious challenge to polygeni c presumption. If, as polygenesis presumed, races are species, and species are defined by capacity to reproduce only among species members, the existence of mixed-race (or cross-species) offspring suggests failure to meet a crucial condition of the theory. — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 17

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the polygenesis theory and why hybridity was its fatal empirical test.

Related

• Polygenist hybrid predictions kept failing and were revised until Darwinian theory displaced them (similarity 0.84)
• Hybridity theory presupposes pure races just as nineteenth-century race science did (similarity 0.81)
• Polygenesis fell just as a new race theory rose to replace it. (similarity 0.80)