Miscegenation

Miscegenation is the process or result of producing human offspring between and among members of, most commonly, different races or ethnicities and, less frequently, of different religions. As such, historically, it often has involved controversial assumptions about race and sexuality.

Related Topics:
Races - Ethnicities - Religion

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The term is not inherently pejorative, being a combination of the Latin miscere, meaning "to mix", and genus, or "race." However, when it was first introduced in the United States in 1864,http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/wh_000101_publicationd.htm so-called "race mixing" between blacks and whites was illegal in much of the South and a taboo, generally, nationwide. The term frequently was used in the context of racist attitudes and laws against interracial sexual intimacy and black-white intermarriage. As a result, "miscegenation" may connote racism; however with time, the term increasingly has come to be used in a value-neutral context.

Related Topics:
Blacks - Whites - South - Interracial sexual intimacy - Intermarriage

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 settlement. Thus, settlers often released African slaves to become their wives. Some of the children were guaranteed full Portuguese citizenship, possibly based on lighter skin color, but not race. Some former Portuguese colonies have large mixed-race populations, for instance, Brazil, Cape Verde, 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 1970s.

Related Topics:
Portuguese - Race - Mixed-race - Brazil - Cape Verde - São Tomé e Príncipe - Mixed marriages - Africa

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Particularly in the Portuguese colonies, miscegenation played a critical social and political role in preserving a status quo of white privilege and black deprivation. It was encouraged in significant part because it created a population of mixed identity with divided loyalties, thus creating a buffer between ruling whites and subjugated blacks. Even in racially polarized societies where miscegenation has been officially frowned upon, mixed-race populations traditionally have played such a role, often working ultimately to uphold the power and privilege of the ruling classes.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To the present day, Angolan, Brazilian, and Cape Verdian societies are defined by lighter skin (not race). In Cape Verde, the population is often differentiated by lighter and darker skin (known as pele de chocolate, or "chocolate skin"). Because of white supremacist institutions and the values they inculcated among the populace, many such miscegenated societies were and remain to this day heavily stratified by color, with darker-skinned citizens assigned the lowest economic and social status.

Related Topics:
Angolan - White supremacist

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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 purported to be in favor of "interbreeding" of "whites" and African Americans 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. The pamphlet soon was exposed as an attempt to discredit the Republicans, the Abraham Lincoln administration, and the abolitionist movement by exploiting the fears and racial biases common among whites of the period. Nonetheless, this pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the American Civil War by Republican opponents.

Related Topics:
New York City - 1864 - African American - United States Republican Party - New York World - Democratic Party - Abraham Lincoln - Abolitionist movement - American Civil War

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The word miscegenation quickly entered the common language of the day and became a popular buzzword in political and social discourse. For a century, 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.

Related Topics:
Segregationists - Abolitionists - White race

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One important strategy intended to discourage the practice 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 "black." After World War II, many white southerners accused the US Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., of being part of a communist plot funded by the Soviet Union to destroy the United States through miscegenation. This notion was regarded seriously in some quarters. The late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover spent considerable resources of that federal agency in futile attempts to establish a linkage between the civil rights activism of the day and communism.

Related Topics:
One-drop theory - World War II - US Civil Rights Movement - Martin Luther King - Communist - Soviet Union - J. Edgar Hoover

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~