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.

Mulatto

Halle Berry, American film star, is half Black and White

A mulatto (also mulato) is a person of mixed ancestry with an African and a European parent (half black and half white), the offspring of two mulatto parents, or a person with a mixture of African/European ancestry

In the past the term originally referred to the children of one European and one African parent, or the children of two mulatto parents.^{[citation needed]} Then a myriad of other terms, both in Latin America and the United States, were in use to denote other individuals of African/European ancestry.

The origin of the term is often said to derive from mulo, the Spanish and Portuguese word for mule^{[citation needed]}, once a generic designation name for any hybrid. This is believed to be the reason it is considered offensive by some English-speakers^{[citation needed]} where it is not so considered by Spanish-speakers or Portuguese-speakers. The former might prefer terms like "biracial" or "mixed" instead.

Etymology

The origin of the term given by most dictionaries is mule, from the Latin mulus.

Colin Powell, the 65th United States Secretary, American mulatto

Muwallad referred to the offspring of Arab men and African women. Some of these mixed children succeeded their fathers as caliphs. According to professor Labrado muwallad is the etymological origin of mulato. Another theory maintains that mulato would not have been directly derived from muwallad but from muladi which was in turn derived from muwallad.

The term mulato is documented in the data bank of the Real Academia Española for the first time in 1549, while muladi does not appear until the half of the 18th century. The question raised is, how could muladí be coined three to four hundred years after the Arab period in Spain? ^{[citation needed]} Common usage could not pull an Arabic word out of thin air to serve as model. The explanation for the late occurrence of muladí in Spanish dictionaries is not hard to find. Both muladí and mulato would have originated not in Christian Spain, but among Christians living under Islamic rule - the Mozarabs (practicing Christians and Arabic-speaking Christians), and later the muladíes (Christians converted to Islam).

There are several problems with this interpretation, however. Muladí was used predominantly in Spanish, but the definition indicates those that converted to Islam and lived among Arabs. The definition did not indicate phenotype.

The phonetic similarity is not as strong orally. There is a strong need to focus on the accent as it identifies how the word was pronounced and how it could evolve. The term was Moo-lah-DEE with the stress on the i. This contrasts with mulato pronounced Moo-LAH-toh. That stress difference is obvious in the plural writing too. Muladíes, Moo-lah-DEE-es. Considering the fact that mulato and muladí were contemporaneous in use there is still the question of how would the division in spelling and pronunciation have occurred.

The claim is addressed by the Royal Academy of Spain: "The term MULATO is documented in our diachronic data bank in 1549, whereas MULADÍ (From Mullawadí) does not appear until the half of the XVIII century, according to Corominas (in our data bank CORDE there are no examples until 1902). Therefore, it is not possible to derive MULATO from MULADí. On the other hand, the suffix -ato is found in the DRAE with several meanings, among them the one of 'animal young': fawn cervato, wild boar jabato, and Mule mulato. The term would have been used by comparison of the hybrid generation of the mulato with the one of the mule.

Even if muladí was coined at an earlier date outside Spain prior to the recordings in the DRAE, the existence of mulato, used in context of a small mule and the lack of the existence of muladí in Spain would obviate any causational correlation between the two.

The word mulato together with mestizo can be found for the first time in a document dated from 1549 -1603. Mulatos, the plural form occurs for the first time in a document dated 1560 by Francisco Cervantes de Salazar also alongside mestizos. The etymological origin of the term as given by many dictionaries is from the Spanish word mulo. However dictionaries who mention mulo as etymology for mulato also express doubt about the suffix -ato whose origin is obscure to them.

According to the Real Academia Espagnola, mulo has two meanings in Spanish. The first meaning is "mule" from Latin mulus. There is no proof of whether the term has once been a generic designation name for any hybrid species, but this is why it may be considered offensive by some English-speakers who might prefer terms like "biracial" or "mixed race," instead. The second meaning of mulo in Spanish according to the Real Academia Española is "a person characterized by strength and vigour".

Another etymology which can also be found in some dictionaries and scholarly works traces its origins to the Arabic term muwallad, which means "a person of mixed ancestry". Muwallad literally means, "born, begotten, produced, generated; brought up, raised; born and raised among Arabs (but not of pure Arab blood). Muwallad is derived from the root word WaLaD (Arabic spelling: waw, lam, dal). Walad means, "descendant, offspring, scion; child; son; boy; young animal, young one." Muwallad referred to the offspring of Arab men and foreign, non-Arab women. The term muwalladin is used in Arabic up to this day to describe the children between Arab fathers and foreign mothers. According to Julio Izquierdo Labrado [1] as well as Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas and others as well as different Arab sources [2] muwallad is the etymological origin of mulato. In this context mulato would have been derived DIRECTLY from muwallad and NOT through muladi, a term which applied to Spanish Christians who had converted to Islam during the Arab domination of Spain. Rather do the two words share the analogous etymology of muwallad. The Arab origin of mulatto would not be surprising given the importance of Arabic at a time when Latin was rejected in favour of Arabic. Arabic is the seventh on the list of languages that has contributed to the English vocabulary.

Demography

Latin America

Mulattos represent a significant portion of various countries in Latin America: Cuba (approx. 51%), Brazil (approx. 38%), Colombia, Venezuela, Panama (approx. 14%), Costa Rica (approx. 5%), Honduras, and Nicaragua.

The roughly 200,000 Africans brought to Mexico were for the most part absorbed by the mestizo populations of mixed European and Amerindian descent. The state of Guerrero once had a large population of African slaves. Other Mexican states inhabited by people with some African ancestry, along with other ancestries, include Oaxaca, Veracruz, and Yucatan.

When slavery was abolished ^{[citation needed]}, the African and Mulatto populations were even more absorbed. Culturally the blending of native American, European and African elements over four and a half centuries produced new cultures reflective of the mixing of these peoples.

Mulattos also constitute a significant portion of the population of Puerto Rico, a United States associated commonwealth territory. However, recent genetic research indicates that, in relation to matrilineal ancestry as revealed by mtDNA, 61% have inherited mitochondrial DNA from an Amerind female ancestor, 27% have inherited mitochondrial DNA from a female African ancestor and 12% showed to have inherited mitochondrial DNA from a female European ancestor. Conversely, patrilineal input as indicated by the Y chromosome, showed that 70% of all Puerto Rican males have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male European ancestor, 20% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from a male African ancestor and less than 10% have inherited Y chromosome DNA from male Amerindian ancestor. As these tests measure only the DNA along the matrilineal line and patrilineal lines of inheritance, each test only measures the one individual out of thousands, perhaps millions of ancestors; they cannot tell exactly what percentage of Puerto Ricans have African Ancestry.

In Haiti (formerly Saint-Domingue), mulattos represented a smaller proportion of the population than in many other Latin American countries. Today they constitute about 10% of the population. They made up a class of their own. Often they were highly educated and wealthy. Many Haitian mulattos were also slaveholders and as such actively participated in the suppression of the black majority. However, some also actively fought for the abolition of slavery. Distinguished mulattos such as Nicolas Suard and others were prime examples of mulattoes who devoted their time, energy and financial means to this cause. Some were also members of the Les Amis des Noirs in Paris, an association that fought for the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, many mulattos were slaughtered by African Haitians during the wars of independence in order to secure African political power over the island. Earlier some African volunteers had already aligned themselves with the French against the mulattos during the first and second mulatto rebellion. In Haiti, mulattos initially possessed legal equality with the unmixed French population. This provided them with many benefits, including inheritance. In the 18th century, however, Europeans fearful of slave revolts had restricted their rights, but they were successfully reclaimed in 1791.

Jamaica

Bob Marley had a black mother and a white father

Mulattos were treated as inferior by blacks in the past in Jamaica, though this has changed since the fame of Bob Marley.

United States

In the United States, the term was in the beginning also used as a term for those of mixed white and Native American ancestry. Mulatto was an official census category until 1930. In the south of the country mulattos inherited slave status if the mother was a slave, although in French-influenced areas of the South prior to the Civil War (particularly New Orleans, Louisiana) a number of mulattos were also free and slave-owning

Footnotes

1. In the Dominican Republic, the mulatto population has also absorbed the small number of Taíno Amerindians once present in that country.
2. Based on a 1960 census that included color categories such as white, Black, yellow, and mulatto. Since then, any racial components have been dropped from the Dominican census.

Sources

• Julio Izquierdo Labrado (1993): La esclavitud en Huelva y Palos (1570-1587) [3]
• Leopoldo Eguilaz y Yanguas (1886): Glosario de las palabras españolas (castellanas, catalanas, gallegas, mallorquinas, protugueses, valencianas y bascongadas), de orígen oriental (árabe, hebreo, malayo, persa y turco). Granada, La Lealtad, 1886.
• SyriaToday Mulatto not derived from Latin but an Arabic loan-word
• Yemen Reviews Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750s-1960s. Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia, vol. 57. Leiden: Brill, 1997. x, 392 pp. ISBN 90-04 10771 1 LC# JV8750.5.H33 1997 Engseng Ho, an anthropologist, discusses the role of the muwallad in the region. The term muwallad, used primarily in reference to those of 'mixed blood,' is brilliantly analyzed through ethnographic and textual information.
• The British-Yemeni Society, Hadhrami migration in the 19th and 20th centuries
• Yemen Articles Interwiev: Hamid Al-Gadri
• Dictionary.com by the Lexico Publishing Group: mulatto Definition 1.
• Merriam-Webster Dictionary: mulatto Definition 2.
• Cambridge Dictionary of American English: mulatto Definition 3.
• 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

• An article on the mulatto depictions in fiction
• Mulatto.org
• 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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