ABSTRACT
At the end of an essay entitled “The Problem of the American Negro,” published in 1921, Boas states, in what must be read as being both a description and a prescription: “Thus it would seem that man being what he is, the Negro problem will not disappear in America until the Negro blood has been so much diluted that it will no longer be recognized, just as anti-Semitism will not disappear until the last vestiges of the Jew as a Jew has disappeared.”1
