Miscegenation

Miscegenation (Latin miscere "to mix" + genus "kind") is the mixing of different ethnicities or races, especially through marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations. Often referred to in the context of black and white people, miscegenation occurs between all races, regardless of skin color. Although it has been controversial and often illegal throughout human history, many nations and peoples have begun to accept - and even promote - miscegenation as a natural result of personal relationships.

Etymological history

"Miscegenation" comes from the Latin miscere, "to mix," and genus, "race." While the etymology of the term is not pejorative, historically, "race mixing" between black and white people was widely taboo; in much of the U.S. South, miscegenation was illegal when the term was introduced in 1863. The term frequently was used in the context of ethnocentric or racist attitudes and in laws against interracial sexual relations and intermarriage. As a result, "miscegenation" is often a loaded word in English-speaking and may sometimes be considered offensive. The comte de Montlosier, who borrowed Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls," was held in exile during the French Revolution. He showed his antipathy toward the Third Estate by calling it "this new people born of slaves [...] mixture of all races and of all times." While the English word has a history of ethnocentrism, the Spanish, Portuguese, and French words - mestizaje, miscigenação and métissage - connote a positive ethno-cultural melting-pot. Interracial marriage or interracial dating may be more common terms in contemporary usage.

Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing races marry. Interracial marriage is a form of exogamy (marrying outside of one's social group) and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation.

When referring to miscegenation, some sources use "interracial" and "interethnic" interchangeably. However, "miscegenation" implies more than just different ethnicities, since ethnicity can differ within the same race (e.g. Italian, Polish, and Irish people belong to the same race) or between religions within the same country. The distinction between endogamy and exogamy relates to the issue of marrying - respectively - inside and outside of one's "group." In this case, "interethnic" would be the more appropriate descriptor for the union.

Miscegenation in the United States

The word miscegenation was used in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet printed in New York City in late 1864, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. The pamphlet claimed to support the "interbreeding" of "whites" and "Blacks" until the races were indistinguishably mixed, claiming that this was the goal of the United States Republican Party. The real authors were David Goodman Croly, managing editor of the New York World, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman, a World reporter. Republican supporters soon exposed the pamphlet as an attempt to discredit the Republicans, the Lincoln administration, and the abolitionist movement by exploiting the fears and racial biases common among white people. Nonetheless, this pamphlet and its variations were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the American Civil War by Republican opponents.

The word miscegenation quickly entered the common language of the day and became a popular buzzword in political and social discourse. For a century, white segregationists often accused abolitionists - and, later, advocates of equal rights for African Americans - of secretly plotting the destruction of the white race through miscegenation.

The promulgation of the one-drop theory, which held that any person with so much as "one drop" of African "blood" must be regarded as completely "black," served as one important strategy intended to discourage miscegenation. The one-drop theory served as a political tool throughout the Antebellum period of the United States because it could classify any person with one black ancestor as a slave. Following the Civil War, the "theory" served as a means of promoting segregation. After World War II, white segregationists commonly accused the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., of being part of a communist plot funded by the Soviet Union to destroy the “white United States” through miscegenation. Late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover spent considerable resources of his fledgling federal agency in attempts to research a link between the civil rights activism of the day and the International Communist Movement.

Anti-miscegenation laws

United States

In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed anti-miscegenation laws, often based on controversial interpretations of the Bible, particularly the story of Phinehas. These laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between people of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies, typically making miscegenation a felony. Sometimes the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself; felony charges of adultery or fornication would be brought against them instead. Vermont was the only state to never introduce such legislation. The 1883 U.S. Supreme Court case Pace v. Alabama upheld the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws. In 1965, Virginia trial court Judge Leon Bazile sent an interracial couple who had married in Washington, D.C., to prison, writing:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

This decision was eventually overturned in 1967, 84 years after Pace v. Alabama, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Loving v. Virginia that

Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival [...] To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, 16 states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Those laws were not completely repealed until November 2000, when Alabama became the last state to repeal its anti-miscegenation law:

[...] after a statewide vote in a special election, Alabama became the last state to overturn a law that was an ugly reminder of America's past, a ban on interracial marriage. The one-time home of George Wallace and Martin Luther King Jr. had held onto the provision for 33 years after the Supreme Court declared anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Yet as the election revealed — 40 percent of Alabamans voted to keep the ban — many people still see the necessity for a law that prohibits blacks and whites from mixing blood.

The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also known as Hays Code, explicitly forbid the depiction of miscegenation.

South Africa

South Africa's Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, passed in 1949 under Apartheid, forbade interracial marriages. The next year, the Immorality Act was passed, which made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both Acts were repealed in 1985. Two decades later, the intermarriage rates between the two races remains lower than in Europe and North America.

Germany

In Germany, an anti-miscegenation law was enacted by the National Socialist government in September 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws. The Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre (Protection of German Blood and German Honor Act) forbade marriage and extra-marital sexual relations between persons of Jewish origin and persons of "German or related blood." Such intercourse was marked as Rassenschande (lit. race-disgrace) and could be punished by imprisonment or even by death.

Israel

Under current Israeli law, Jews and non-Jews cannot marry. Authority over all issues related to marriage fall under the Orthodox Rabbinate which prohibits civil unions and marriage through non-Orthodox Rabbis. The Justice Ministry is proposing a bill to allow civil unions of Jews and non-Jews, to allow them the same rights afforded to married Jews. According to a Haaretz article, "Justice Ministry drafts civil marriage law for 'refuseniks,'" 300,000 people are affected. Given the existing difficulties in defining a "Jew" as opposed to a "non-Jew," controversies of interpretation have undoubtedly ensued.

Promoting miscegenation

Miscegenation was commonplace in the Portuguese colonies; courts even supported the practice as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful and cohesive settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. Similarly, as exemplified in Goa, Portuguese soldiers were encouraged to marry native women to ensure their conversion to Catholic Christianity. Some of the children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, possibly based on lighter skin color, but not necessarily race. Mixed marriages between Portuguese and locals in former colonies were very common. Miscegenation remained common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the mid-1970s. Some former Portuguese colonies such as Brazil, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe continue to have large mixed-race populations.

Asian Indian men, longtime traders in East Africa, have married many African women. The British Empire brought workers into East Africa to build the Uganda Railway, and Indians eventually populated South Africa, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Rhodesia, and Zaire. These interracial unions continue to be mostly unilateral marriages between Asian Indian men and East African women.

The number of interracial marriages in the United States has been on the rise: 310,000 in 1970, 651,000 in 1980, and 1,161,000 in 1992 according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census 1993. Mixed marriages represented 0.7% of all marriages in 1970, 1.3% in 1980, and 2.2% in 1992. However, black-white marriages still tend to be the most controversial in the public eye. Marriage between white people and Asians, particularly light-skinned North East Asians such as Chinese, is often looked upon as being the non-controversial interracial pairing in the United States and is becoming somewhat common. People cite the similarity in skin color and low instances of racial strife between white people and Asians in the U.S. since World War II as reasons for the widespread acceptability of such unions.

Bibliography

• Hodes, Martha, ed. "Miscegenation" (1998). Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History. New York, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-395-67173-6. 

External links

• Asian-Nation: Interracial Marriage Among Asian Americans by C.N. Le, Ph.D.
• Addicted to Race: a podcast about America's obsession with race, with a specific emphasis on mixed race identity and interracial relationships. Hosted by Jen Chau and Carmen Van Kerckhove
• The "Miscegenation" pamphlet
• Pocahontas and Miscegenation
• Interracial marriage — is it Biblical? (from a creationist site, answering "yes", thus opposing "anti-miscegenation" ideas)
• Interracial Voice (web magazine about multiracial individuals and interracial relationships) archive of articles
• INTERracialWeb.com Magazine
• Loving Day. June 12. Commemorating the day in 1967 when Interethnic couples were legalized
• The Multiracial Activist - News: Interracial and Intercultural Families
• Interracial Dating Guide Interracial dating and relationship education for today's society

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