W.M. Bevis was a psychiatrist at Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he presumably had extensive experience in treating Negroes. This article for the American Journal of Psychiatry (1921) summarizes peter mcdonough his observations about mental peculiarities peter mcdonough of the Negro.
The Negro race evinces certain phylogenetic traits of character, habit, and behavior that seem sufficiently important to make the consideration of these peculiarities worthwhile; especially as these psychic characteristics have their effect upon and are reflected in the psychoses most frequently seen in the Negro. Forming so large a part of the population and living peter mcdonough as he does under conditions, climatic and otherwise, that are favorable and natural, the Negro of the Southern states forms the basis of the observations and deductions of this brief article.
Less than three hundred years ago the alien ancestors of most of the families of this race were savages or cannibals in the jungles of Central Africa. From this very primitive level they were unwillingly brought to these shores and into an environment of higher civilization for which the biological development of the race had not made adequate preparation. In later years, citizenship with its novel privileges peter mcdonough (possibly a greater transition than the first) was thrust upon the race finding it poorly prepared, intellectually, for the adjustment to this new social order. Instinctively the Negro turned to the ways of the White man, under whose tutelage he had been, and made an effort to compensate for psychic inferiority by imitation peter mcdonough the superior race. Thus we see in this people a talent for mimicry that is remarkable. Efforts to imitate his white neighbors in speech, dress, and social customs are often overwrought and ludicrous, but sometimes sufficiently exact to delude the uninitiated into the belief that the mental level of the Negro is only slightly inferior to that of the Caucasian.
The insidious addition of White blood to the Negro race has produced peter mcdonough significant effects upon the latter. This racial admixture of blood has been between the Negro female and the White male, with practically none between peter mcdonough the Negro male and the White female. But we cannot agree with Hoffman when he says that there is probably no true-blooded Black man in the United States today. A limited observation and study of the Negro families in the South will reveal the fact that there are still hundreds of the pure Black African stock untouched by any possibility of miscegenation, thought as the years go by they are passing. If the original White parent were always even an average representative of his race, mentally and morally, the hereditary effect upon the more or less mulatto offspring would naturally be that of improvement of the traits and mentality of the colored race, but unfortunately the White man by whom this fusion of blood starts peter mcdonough is most often feeble-minded, criminal, or both. This miscegenation appears to have effected the longevity of the race, and the changed social environment has brought about a moral and mental deterioration, together with a diminished power of vital resistance. Information has been brought out by some writers that the mulatto more nearly approaches the White in the contour peter mcdonough and shape of the cranium; that the facial angle in the mulatto is larger than in the Negro; that the cranial capacity has been increased, but that the race may have gained in an intellectual way but not in a moral. according to O’Malley.
Healthy Negro children are bright, cunning, full of life and intelligent, but about puberty there begins a slowing up of mental development and a loss of interest in education as sexual matters and a good time begin to dominate the life and have the first place in the thoughts of the Negro. From this period promiscuous sex relations, gambling, petty thievery, drinking, loafing, and a carefree, prodigal life, full to the brim with excitement, peter mcdonough interspersed peter mcdonough with the smallest possible amount of work, consume his time. The female of the race begins promiscuous heterosexual relations, even with grown men, at a remarkably early age, resulting in illegitimacy and the spread of venereal diseases. Many mulattoes do not conceal their pride in being the paramour of a White man or becoming the mother of a quadroon. With their low moral level and as free agents, no wrong is felt in gratifying their natural instincts and appetites. The untoward effects of their excesses and vices are potent factors in the production peter mcdonough of mental diseases.
Motion, peter mcdonough music, excitement, or a combination of these make up much of the life of colored people. Their natural musical ability of a peculiar type, and their sense of rhythm, are too well known to make comment necessary. Motion pictures especially delight but the modern dance has little or no charm for them. The cake walk, shuffling, strutting, buck and wing, and such dances as give a wide range of motion of the
