Future Studies of the Biological Past of the Black

Extract

The First article in this issue sketched out what has been done in the recent past on various biological aspects of the history of the black in Africa and in the Americas. The articles that followed revealed in splendid fashion the quality and sophistication of studies underway today. In concluding the issue, I could not resist the temptation to discuss briefly what sorts of themes and issues I hope will be pursued tomorrow.

Central to future bio-studies of the black will be the growing realization that after stripping away those husks of scholarly posturing and platitudes that in the past have pronounced Afro-Americans and Africans a “biological elite,” the kernel of truth remaining is that they were indeed such an elite, but not necessarily for the reasons offered. Those reasons generally have focused on the shock of capture, the long and deadly march to the sea, the squalor of the baracoons on the coast, the horrors of the middle passage, and the numbing, debilitating “seasoning” procedures on the plantations of the Americas. While there is no question that the whole of this represents a selection process of sorts, it was much too random to create an instant elite, as a bomb dropped on a city does not make an elite of the survivors.