In sharp contrast to this usage the term “Negro” in Africa has been more and more restricted until some scientists, late in the last century, declared that the great mass of the black and brown people of Africa were not Negroes at all, and that the “real” Negro dwells in a small space between the Niger and the Senegal.  Ratzel says, “If we ask what justifies so narrow a limitation, we find that the hideous Negro type, which the fancy of observers once saw all over Africa, but which, as Livingstone says, is really to be seen only as a sign in front of tobacco shops, has on closer inspection evaporated from all parts of Africa, to settle no one knows how in just this region.  If we understand that an extreme case may have been taken for the genuine and pure form, even so we do not comprehend the ground of its geographical limitation and location; for wherever dark, woolly-haired men dwell, this ugly type also crops up.  We are here in the presence of a refinement of science which to an unprejudiced eye will hardly hold water."[67]

In this restricted sense the Negro has no history, culture, or ability, for the simple fact that such human beings as have history and evidence culture and ability are not Negroes!  Between these two extreme definitions, with unconscious adroitness, the most extraordinary and contradictory conclusions have been reached.

Let it therefore be said, once for all, that racial inferiority is not the cause of anti-Negro prejudice.  Boaz, the anthropologist, says, “An unbiased estimate of the anthropological evidence so far brought forward does not permit us to countenance the belief in a racial inferiority which would unfit an individual of the Negro race to take his part in modern civilization.  We do not know of any demand made on the human body or mind in modern life that anatomical or ethnological evidence would prove to be beyond the powers of the Negro."[68]

“We have every reason to suppose that all races are capable, under proper guidance, of being fitted into the complex scheme of our modern civilization, and the policy of artificially excluding them from its benefits is as unjustifiable scientifically as it is ethically abhorrent."[69] What is, then, this so-called “instinctive” modern prejudice against black folk?

Lord Bryce says of the intermingling of blacks and whites in South America, “The ease with which the Spaniards have intermingled by marriage with the Indian tribes—­and the Portuguese have done the like, not only with the Indians, but with the more physically dissimilar Negroes—­shows that race repugnance is no such constant and permanent factor in human affairs as members of the Teutonic peoples are apt to assume.  Instead of being, as we Teutons suppose, the rule in the matter, we are rather the exception, for in the ancient world there seems to have been little race repulsion.”