Breeding out of half-castes: Doctor’s plea [24 March 1934]

Breeding out of half-castes

Doctor’s plea

Perth, March 23.

In evidence given before the Royal Commissioner on Aborigines (Mr. H. D. Moseley) to-day, Dr. Cyril Bryan urged the scientific breeding-out of black blood from half-castes by marrying them to people with a greater proportion of white blood.

“The half-caste is scorned by both white and black,” said Dr. Bryan, “and by every artifice of which he is capable he tries to pass himself off as a full-blooded white. I ask that steps be taken to breed out the half- caste in a few generations by the application of science, goodwill, and common sense. The mating of the half-caste with the half-caste or black only perpetuates or increases the coloured strain, and we must do all in our power to displace this strain by infiltration of white blood or whiter blood.”

The Australian black would not die out, he added, but would increase and multiply, and the white population would not tolerate the deliberate rearing up of a large black population in its midst, with all the complications that were bound to ensue, and which more likely than not would eventuate in the mingling of black and white Australians.

Source:
The Courier-Mail (Brisbane), Saturday 24 March 1934, page 15