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[Latin miscēre, to mix + genus, race + –ATION.]
miscegenational mis·ceg'e·na'tion·al adj.Miscegenation is the intermarriage of people of different races. In the United States the term is primarily used to describe the marriage between a black person and a white person. Miscegenation is an American word, and it is difficult to translate into other languages. It is derived from the Latin "miscere" (to mingle) and "genus" (kind or category). Miscegenation plays a larger role in American history than perhaps in any other nation's history. The states, plagued by racial division between blacks and whites, codified the racial divide by prohibiting mingling of the races in marriage with antimiscegenation laws during colonial times. Prohibition of interracial marriage did not exist under the common law or by statute in England when the American colonies were established. Antimiscegenation laws were first drafted in colonial America.
The enactment of antimiscegenation laws can be attributed to a variety of factors, including economic considerations and a desire on the part of some for the maintenance of so-called "racial purity." The first antimiscegenation statute appears to have been enacted in Maryland in 1661, in part for economic reasons. The statute forbidding interracial marriage in effect gave slave owners the ability to increase their number of slaves through birth. The statute deemed any child born of a free mother and slave father to be a slave of the father's master. The statute was designed to deter free white women from marrying black men. Before the statute, the freedom of a child was determined by her or his mother's free or enslaved status. If the mother was a free woman, the children would also be free. The 1661 statute changed this and increased the number of children born into slavery. The effect of the statute, however, was to increase forced interracial marriages because of the economic incentive for slave owners to force indentured white female servants to marry black male slaves to produce more slaves by birth from a slave father. Many other states in both the south and the north followed suit. America's first federal naturalization act, passed in 1790, limited the right to become citizens to "free white persons."
Some states' antimiscegenation laws prohibited marriage between any races, but most laws were more concerned with preserving white racial purity. Many antimiscegenation laws were enacted at a time when slavery and notions of white supremacy had already become fixtures in the epic of American history. The notion of white supremacy and preserving "whiteness" encompassed the idea that marriage between races producing "mixed" children would "muddle" the purity of the white race. The "one drop rule" of classifying a person as black because the person had one drop of black blood exemplified the concern of some in the United States for preserving whiteness. To preserve white racial purity and prevent production of mixed offspring, many American states forbade the marriage between whites and blacks. This view was vindicated in the Supreme Court's opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which Homer A. Plessy, whose only non white ancestor was one of his eight great-grandparents, was determined to be black in the eyes of the law. Other states, such as California in 1909, added people of Japanese descent to the list of those banned from marrying whites.
Antimiscegenation laws remained in effect in many states from colonial days until 1967, when the Supreme Court declared Virginia's antimiscegenation law unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia. The Supreme Court found that Virginia's law, which specifically prohibited and prevented the recognition of marriage between blacks and whites, denied citizens the fundamental right to marry. Soon after Loving v. Virginia was decided, most states repealed their own antimiscegenation statutes. Others kept these now unenforceable laws on their books, and some even kept the prohibition in their constitutions. The people of Alabama voted in November 2000 to remove the section of their constitution that prohibited interracial marriage. South Carolina took a similar step in 1998. While "mixed race" couples and their offspring continued to suffer Discrimination in the twenty-first century, no state is allowed to deny recognition of a marriage between a black person and a white person or between persons of any different races.
Bibliography
Ferber, Abby L. White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998.
Sollors, Werner, ed. Interracialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Williamson, Joel. New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States. New York: Free Press, 1980.
Mixture of races. A term formerly applied to marriage between persons of different races. Statutes prohibiting marriage between persons of different races have been held to be invalid as contrary to the equal protection Clause of the Constitution.
Miscegenation is the marriage of two people of different races.
Miscegenation (Latin miscere “to mix” + genus (“kind”)) is the "mixing" of different "races", that is, marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations and having children with a partner from outside of one's racially or ethnically defined social group.
The term "miscegenation" has been used to refer to interracial marriage and interracial sex, and more generally to the global process of racial admixture that has taken place since the Age of Discoveries, particularly through the European colonization of the Americas and the Atlantic slave trade. Historically the term has been used in the context of ethnocentric or racist attitudes and practices, such as the enactment of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, so-called anti-miscegenation laws. It is therefore a loaded word and is considered offensive by many.
Today, the word "miscegenation" is still used when referring to past ethnocentric and racist attitudes and practices
concerning multiraciality. It is also still in use by some as a general term encompassing
the different social and demographic aspects of "race-mixing". However, because of its controversial history, other terms such as
"interracial" or "interethnic" are more common in
contemporary usage. In genetics, the term "admixture" is used for the interbreeding of
people of different ethnicities or races. Sociologists also use the terms
"outmarriage" or
In Spanish, Portuguese and French, the words used to describe the mixing of "races" are mestizaje, mestiçagem and métissage. These words, much older than the term miscegenation, are derived from the Late Latin mixticius for "mixed" and from the Spanish word mestizo. Portuguese also uses miscigenação, a direct translation of miscegenation. These non-English terms for "race-mixing" are not considered as offensive as "miscegenation", although they have historically been tied to the caste system (Casta) that was established in Latin America during the colonial era.
The concept of miscegenation is tied to concepts of racial difference. As the different connotations and etymologies of miscegenation and mestizaje suggest, definitions of race, "race mixing" and multiraciality have diverged globally as well as historically, depending on changing social circumstances and cultural perceptions. Thus, mestizo are people of mixed white and indigenous, usually Amerindian ancestry who do not self-identify as indigenous peoples or Native Americans. In Canada however, the Métis, who also have partly Amerindian and parly white, often French-Canadian, ancestry, are a constitutionally recognized aboriginal people.
The differences between related terms and words that encompass aspects of "racial" admixture show the impact of different historical and cultural factors leading to changing social interpretations of race and ethnicity. Thus the Comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution, equated class difference in eighteenth century France with "racial" difference. Borrowing Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls", he showed his contempt for the lowest social class, the Third Estate, calling it "this new people born of slaves ... mixture of all races and of all times".
Miscegenation comes from the Latin miscere, "to mix" and genus, "kind". The word was coined in the U.S. in 1863, and the etymology of the word is tied up with political conflicts during the American Civil War over the abolition of slavery and over the racial segregation of African-Americans. The reference to "genus" was made to emphasize the supposedly distinct biological differences between whites and non-whites. In fact, all humans belong to the same genus, Homo, to the same species, Homo sapiens and to the same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.
The word was coined in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet printed in New York City in December 1863, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.[1] The pamphlet, which was a hoax, purported to be in favor of promoting the intermarriage of whites and blacks until these "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.
The anonymous pamphlet was later exposed as an attempt by Democrats (the so-called Copperheads) to discredit the Republicans, the Lincoln administration, and the abolitionist movement by exploiting the racist fears common among whites. The pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the American Civil War by opponents of Republicans. Only in November 1864 did it become known that the pamphlet was a hoax. By then, the word miscegenation had entered the common language of the day as a popular buzzword in political and social discourse. The issue of miscegenation, raised by the opponents of Lincoln, featured prominently in the election campaign of 1864.
In the United States, the concept of miscegenation has been used to focus primarily on the intermarriage of white people and non-whites, and especially black people. Before the publication of Miscegenation, the word amalgamation, borrowed from metallurgy, had been in use as a general term for ethnoracial intermixing. A contemporary usage of this metaphor was Ralph Waldo Emerson's private vision in 1845 of America as an ethnoracial smelting-pot, a variation on the concept of the melting pot. Attitudes in the U.S toward the desirability of such intermixing, including that between white Protestants and Irish Catholic immigrants, were divided. The term miscegenation was coined to refer specifically to the intermarriage of blacks and whites, and with the intention of stirring up debate over this at the time controversial issue.[2]
Laws banning "race-mixing" were enforced in Nazi Germany, in South Africa during the Apartheid era and in individual U.S. states from the Colonial era until 1967. All these laws primarily banned marriage between spouses of different racially or ethnically defined groups, which was termed "amalgamation" or "miscegenation" in the U.S. The laws in Nazi-Germany and South Africa under Apartheid, and many of the U.S. state laws, also targeted sexual relations between such individuals.
In the United States, the various state laws prohibited the marriage of whites and blacks, and in many states also the intermarriage of whites with Native Americans and/or Asians. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws.[3] Although an "Anti-Miscegenation Amendment" was repeately proposed in United States Congress, in 1871, in 1912-1913 and in 1928,[4] [5] a nation-wide law against racially mixed marriages was never enacted. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states that at the time still enforced them.
The laws in Nazi Germany, South Africa and in U.S. states all based themselves on concepts of racial purity and white supremacy. The Nazi ban on interracial marriage and interracial sex, part of the Nuremberg laws, classified Jews as a race and based itself on the racist concept of the superiority of Germans as members of the "Aryan race".
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 (The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour) 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 (usually followed by the deportation to a concentration camp) and even by death.
The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in South Africa, enacted under Apartheid in 1949, banned intermarriage between whites and non-whites. The Immorality Act, enacted in 1950, also made it a criminal offense for a white person to have any sexual relations with a person of a different race. Both laws were repealed in 1985.
Historically, "race mixing" between black and white people was taboo in the United States (see also Racism in the United States). Especially white-black marriages were taboo. Today, a majority of Americans are not against black-white marriages. In a recent poll of 1,314 Americans of all ethnic groups, 3 in 10 people were opposed to white-black marriage,[citation needed] and a smaller proportion were opposed to white-Hispanic or white-Asian marriages.
The taboo among American whites surrounding white-black intermarriage can be seen as a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation of African-Americans.[6][7] In many U.S. states interracial marriage was already illegal when the term miscegenation was invented in 1863. The first laws banning interracial marriage were introduced in the late seventeenth century in the slave-holding colonies of Virginia (1691) and Maryland (1692). Later these laws also spread to colonies and states were slavery did not exist.
It has also been argued that the first laws banning interracial marriage were a response by the planter elite to the problems they were facing due to the socio-economic dynamics of the plantation system in the Southern colonies. The bans in Virginia and Maryland were established at a time when slavery was not yet fully institutionalized. At the time, most forced laborers on the plantations were indentured servants, and they were mostly white. Some historians have suggested that the at-the-time unprecedented laws banning interracial marriage were originally invented by planters as a divide and rule tactic after the uprising of servants in Bacon's Rebellion. According to this theory, the ban on interracial marriage was issued to split up the racially mixed, increasingly mixed-race labour force into whites, who were given their freedom, and blacks, who were later treated as slaves rather than as indentured servants. By forbidding interracial marriage, it became possible to keep these two new groups separated and prevent a new rebellion.[8]
During and after
After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, the intermarriage of white and black Americans continued to be taboo, especially but not only in the former slave states. The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, also known as Hays Code, explicitly stated that the depiction of “miscegenation... is forbidden.” One important strategy intended to discourage the marriage of white Americans and Americans of partly African descent was 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”. This definition of blackness was encoded in the anti-miscegenation laws of various U.S. states, such as Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
For a century after the Civil War, it was common for white segregationists to accuse abolitionists, and, later, advocates of equal rights for African Americans, of secretly plotting the destruction of "the white race" through miscegenation. 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. In 1957, segregationists used the anti-semitic hoax "A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century in an attempt to "prove" these bogus claims. In 1958, the Christian fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, at the time a defender of the Jim Crow segregation of African-Americans, in a sermon railed against racial integration, warning that it would lead to miscegenation, which would "destroy our [white] race eventually."[9]
In the United States, segregationists and Christian identity groups have claimed that several verses in the Bible[10], for example
the story of
According to Gilberto Freyre, a Brazilian historian, miscegenation was commonplace in the Portuguese colonies, and was even supported by the court as a way to boost low populations and guarantee a successful and cohesive settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. The children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, provided the parents were married. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race populations, for instance, Brazil, Cape Verde, Timor Leste, Macau and São Tomé e Príncipe. Mixed marriages between Portuguese and locals in former colonies were very common in all Portuguese colonies. Miscegenation was still common in Africa until the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in the mid-1970s.
The modern State of Israel was established as a nation-state for the Jewish people. The Jewish identity contains elements of religion (Judaism), ethnicity, and a sense of a common lineage; not to be confused with "race". One may be of the same lineage or ancestry as another person of a different "race", as with siblings, one produced from a same-race relationship, the other from an interracial one, both fathered or mothered by a common parent.
In this sense, Jewish miscegenation could be viewed on two levels; one based on belonging to the Jewish ethnic group or Jewish people, and the other based on the race of a given Jew. Jewish miscegenation based on Jewishness (belonging to the Jewish ethnic group or Jewish people) would be defined on whether one parent is not Jewish, independent of whether either the Jewish or non-Jewish parent are of the same or different races. Racial miscegenation would be defined as the union between a Jewish person of a given race with a person of a different race, be the other person a Jew or not. Two Jewish people may still be considered "interracial" if those two Jews are of different races, although it would not be considered exogamous in the context of Jewish ethnicity, as both are still Jews.
In Israel, all marriages must be approved by religious celebrants, and civil marriages are not legally recognized. Rules governing marriage are based on strict religious guidelines of each religion. By Israeli law, authority over all issues related to Judaism in Israel, including marriage, falls under the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Orthodox Judaism is the only form of Judaism recognized by the state, and marriages performed in Israel by non-Orthodox Rabbis are not recognized.
The Rabbinate prohibits marriage in Israel of halakhic Jews (i.e. people born to a Jewish mother or Jewish by conversion), whether they are Orthodox Jews or not, to partners who are non-Jewish or who are of Jewish descent that runs through the paternal line (i.e. not Jewish according to halakha). As a result, in the state of Israel, people of differing religious traditions cannot legally marry someone in another religion[12] and multi-faith couples must leave the country to get married,[13][14] most often to Cyprus.
The only other option in Israel for the marriage of a halakhic Jew (Orthodox or not) to a non-Jew, or for that matter, a Christian to a non-Christian or Muslim to a non-Muslim, is for one partner to formally convert to the other's religion, be it to Judaism (Orthodox only), a Christian denomination (such as Eastern Orthodox or Maronite) or a denomination of Islam (such as Sunni or Shia). As for persons with patrilineal Jewish descent (i.e. not recognized as Jewish according to halakha) who wish to marry a halakhic Jew (i.e. born to a Jewish mother or is Jewish by Orthodox conversion) who is Orthodox or otherwise, is also required to formally convert to Judaism (Orthodox only) or they cannot legally marry.
According to a Haaretz article “Justice Ministry drafts civil marriage law for ‘refuseniks’”[15] 300,000 people, or 150,000 couples, are affected by marriage restrictions based on the partners' disparate religious traditions or non-halakhic Jewish status.
Israeli law concerns itself with miscegenation based on Jewish ethnicity, not miscegenation based on race. Therefore, there are no restrictions on interracial marriages between Jews of different Jewish ethnic divisions, or between other co-religionists of different races, although social stigma may still exist.
According to the U.S. Census, in 2000 there were 31,271 Asian-black marriages, 40,317 Asian-Hispanic Origin[16] marriages, 504,119 Asian-white marriages; 97,822 Hispanic Origin-black marriages, 287,576 black-white marriages; 1,432,908 Hispanic Origin-white marriages.[17]
Multiracial Brazilians make up 38.5% of Brazil's population, about 68 million people, and they live in all regions of Brazil. Multiracial Brazilians are mainly people of mixed European, African (Afro-Brazilian) and Amerindian ancestry.
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - raceblanding
Nederlands (Dutch)
rassenvermenging, gemengd huwen
Français (French)
n. - métissage
Deutsch (German)
n. - Rassenmischung
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - επιμιξία
Italiano (Italian)
incrocio di razze
Português (Portuguese)
n. - miscigenação (f)
Русский (Russian)
смешение, смешанные браки между белыми и неграми
Español (Spanish)
n. - cruce de razas, mestizaje
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - rasblandning
