“White negroes

“most scientists took a dim view of the white Negro. They perceived in him or her a variety of challenges to the primacy, status, and security of the white race and, with it, to nascent American scientific culture. This is because the scientific culture of the nineteenth century still relied upon taxonomy, or categorization. . . . It would not do to have categories, schemes, and classifications of people called into question by such unpredicted changes as Negroes who inexplicitly and illogically insisted upon turning white. They could not be explained by theory, so they contracted and threatened the classification scheme and, therefore, the social order” (Washington, 137-38).