Scientists reproduced absurd hybrid-species claims about biracial people

Evidence

A month later, in the same journal, someone anonymously published another purportedly scientific study, “Vital Statistics of Negroes and Mulattoes.” Biracial people had shorter life spans than Whites and “pure Africans,” the census apparently also showed. The writer called for an investigation into “the cause of such momentous effects.” Dr. Josiah C. Nott of Mobile, Alabama, came to the rescue in the American Journal of Medical Science in 1843. In “The Mulatto—A Hybrid,” the distinguished surgeon contended that biracial women were “bad breeders,” because they were the product of “two distinct species,” the same way the mule was “from the horse and the ass.” Nott’s contention was as outrageous as the insanity figures, but scientists reproduced it. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 481

Categorization

• CANDY: The mule comparison — biracial women as bad breeders from two distinct species — is a startlingly absurd historical claim worth sharing.