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	==In the United States==		==In the United States==
	{{See also\|Race (United States Census)}}		{{See also\|Race (United States Census)}}
	]]]		] and ] is one example of an interracial couple.]]

	===Attitudes Toward Miscegenation===		===Attitudes Toward Miscegenation===

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Miscegenation (Latin miscere “to mix” + genus (“kind”) is a term used to describe the mixing of different ethnicities or "races". It refers to marrying, cohabiting, having sexual relations or having a child with a partner from outside of one's racially or ethnically defined social group. Interracial marriage, interethnic marriage, interracial relationships and interracial dating are more common in contemporary usage. The term miscegenation has been used in the context of ethnocentric or racist attitudes and laws against interracial sexual relations and interracial marriage. As a result, "miscegenation" in English-speaking countries is often a loaded word and generally is considered offensive. Sociologists also use the term exogamy to describe the practice of marrying outside of one's social group, which may be defined by ancestry, religion, ethnicity or race. The practice of marrying within one's social group is called endogamy.

Etymological history

Miscegenation comes from the Latin miscere, "to mix" and genus, "kind". It is a term for the mixing of "races" that was invented by U.S. journalists in 1863. The reference to "genus" was used 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. 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 Spanish word mestizo, for a person of mixed white and Amerindian ancestry, and from the Late Latin mixticius, "mixed". Portguese also uses miscigenação, a direct translation of miscegenation. The English term has a history of ethnocentrism and it has been used to justify racist practices such as the enactment of anti-miscegenation laws. The other words may more positively connote an ethno-cultural melting-pot, 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 the comte de Montlosier, in exile during the French Revolution, borrowed Boulainvilliers' discourse on the "Nordic race" as being the French aristocracy that invaded the plebeian "Gauls", to show 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”.

United States

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. The etymology of the word miscegenation is tied up with conflicts during the American Civil War over the abolition of slavery and over the racial segregation of African-Americans. 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. 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.

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.

Legality of Interracial Marriage

While it is now legal in most countries, certain jurisdictions have had regulations banning or restricting interracial marriage in the past. These included South Africa under apartheid, Germany in the Nazi period, and some states of the United States. While no longer forbidden to marry by law, couples of different races may still face social and cultural obstacles to their marriage in many societies.

Laws banning Miscegenation

In the United States

Attitudes Toward Miscegenation

In the US, black-white marriages still tend to be controversial in the public eye. From a recent poll of 1,314 Americans of all ethnic groups, it was noted that 3 in 10 people are against black-white marriage, but are far more willing to accept white-Hispanic or white-Asian marriages (Ford 2003).

Historically, "race mixing" between black and white people has been taboo in the United States ( see also Racism in the United States) In many U.S. states interracial marriage was already illegal when the term miscegenation was invented in 1863. 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. The first laws banning interracial marriage were introduced in the colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late seventeenth century. Later these laws also spread to colonies and states were slavery did not exist.

The first bans 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. ]

During and after slavery, most American whites regarded interracial marriage between whites and blacks as taboo. However, during slavery many white American men did conceive children with female black slaves. These children also automatically became slaves, although they were sometimes freed from slavery by their slave holding fathers. Most mixed-raced descendants merged into the African-American ethnic group, while over the centuries a minority of mixed-raced Americans passed and became white. Although this is not widely known, genetic research suggests that a considerable minority of white Americans has some distant African-American ancestry.

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 US states, such as Virginia's Racial Integrity Act.

In Social Trends in America and Strategic Approaches to the Negro Problem (1948), Gunnar Myrdal ranked the social areas where restrictions were imposed by Southern whites on the freedom of African-Americans through racial segregation from the least to the most important: jobs, courts and police, politics, basic public facilities, “social equality” including dancing, handshaking, and most important, marriage. This ranking scheme seems to explain the way in which the barriers against desegregation fell. Of less importance was the segregation in basic public facilities, which was abolished with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most tenacious form of legal segregation, the banning of interracial marriage, was not fully lifted until the last anti-miscegenation laws were struck down later in 1967.

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 race eventually" .

In the United States, segregationists and Christian identity groups have claimed that several verses in the Bible, for example the story of Phineas and the so-called "curse of Ham" should be understood as referring to miscegenation and that these verses expressly forbid it. Since the Bible was written long before the emergence of the concept of race, most theologians read these verses as forbidding inter-religious marriage, rather than inter-racial marriage.

Interracial marriage statistics

In 1967, the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia struck down the last of the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, widening the available marriage choices. The number of interracial marriages in the United States has been on the rise: from 310,000 in 1970, to 651,000 in 1980, and 1,161,000 in 1992, according to the US Census of 1993. Interracial marriages represented 0.7% of all marriages in 1970, rising to 1.3% in 1980 and 2.2% in 1992. With the introduction of the mixed-race category, the 2000 census revealed interracial marriage to be somewhat more widespread, with 2,669,558 interracial marriages recorded, or 4.9% of all marriages (census 2000 PHC-T-19). (Here, marriages between two mixed-race persons, or where they are the same race but one is Hispanic and the other not, are not counted as interracial.) In 2005 it is believed that 7% of married couples in the US are interracial.

Asian and American Indian

Historically, Filipino Americans have frequently married American Indian and Alaskan Native people. In the 17th century, Filipinos were under Spanish rule. The Spanish colonists ordered the Filipinos to trade between the Philippines and the Americas. When Mexico revolted against the Spanish, Filipinos escaped into Mexico, then traveled to Louisiana, where the exclusively male Filipinos married American Indian women. In the 1920's, Filipino American communities grew in Alaska, and Filipino American men married Alaskan Native women. On the west coast, Filipino Americans married American Indian women in Bainbridge Island Washington.

Asian and White

Marriages between whites and Asians are becoming increasingly common (Lange, 2005). Currently, as a whole, heterosexual Asian American females were 3.0 times more likely to marry a White American than their male counterparts. However, according to the 2000 US Census, heterosexual Asian American females of the 1.5 generation were 76% more likely to be married to a white person, as compared to their Asian American male counterparts; but, the percentage of 1.5 generation Asian American women is 56% more than Asian American men.

Black and White

Although mixed-race partnering has increased, the United States still shows huge disparities between African American male and African American female endogamy statistics. The 1990 census reports that 17.6% of African American marriages occur with White Americans. Yet, African American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to white women than African American women to white men. In the 2000 census, 239,477 African American male to white female and 95,831 white male to African American female marriages were recorded, again showing the 2.5-1 ratio. Either way, most black American men do marry black American women, and most white American men do marry white American women.

Asian and Black

With African Americans and Asian Americans, the ratios are even further imbalanced, with 598% more Asian female/Black male couples than Asian male/Black female couples, according to the 2000 US Census. For the six largest Asian American ethnic groups, the absolute numbers of Asian American women are 51% more for Asian American women as opposed to Asian American men among the six largest Asian ethnic groups. Asian Americans of the 1.5 generation and of the five largest Asian American ethnic groups had Black male/Asian female marriages 272% more than Asian male/Black Female relationships. Even though the disparity between Black and Asian interracial marriages by gender is high according to the 2000 US Census, the total numbers of Asian/Black interracial marriages are low, numbering only 2.2% percent for Asian male marriages and 10.2% percent of Asian female marriages.

A Filipino bride and Nigerian groom walk down the aisle.

Chinese American men historically married African American women in high proportions to their total marriage numbers due to few Chinese American women being in the United States. After the Emancipation Proclamation, many Chinese people immigrated to the American South, particularly Arkansas, to work on plantations. The tenth US Census of Louisiana counted 57% of interracial marriages between these Chinese Americans to be with African Americans and 43% to be with White American women. After the Chinese Exclusion Act, Chinese American men had fewer potential Chinese American wives, so they increasingly married African American women on the west coast.

Marriage squeeze

A new term has arisen to describe the social phenomenon of the so-called "marriage squeeze" for African American females. The marriage squeeze refers to the belief that the most eligible and desirable African American men are marrying non-African American women, leaving those African American women who wish to marry African American men with fewer partnering options. According to Newsweek, 43% of black women between the ages of 30-34 have never been married. Explanation of this phenomenon is threefold. In part it may be due to relatively fewer European American men being willing to marry African American women, as a result of the lingering effects of social ostracism to which past white American men, who have historically pursued relationships with African American women, were heavily subjected, although today one in five white Americans would seriously consider marrying across the color line nonetheless. It may also be the result of a desire among African American women to marry African American men due to lingering concepts such as racial loyalty, black solidarity, and the internalized stereotypical belief that non-African American men would not find them attractive. In addition, many African American women are socialized to believe that non-African American men are unattractive. There is also the lingering remembrance of the brutal rape and sexual abuse relationships that white men had with black women during and after slavery. Lastly, there is a desire among educated women of all races to "marry up", although rising income for women has lessened this factor. Another confounding factor for African American women may be the disproportionate mortality rate between men and women in the black community: there are only approximately 85 males for every 100 females by the time they reach their child-bearing years.

White and American Indian

The interracial disparity for American Indians is low. According to the 1990 US Census (which only counts indigenous people with US-government-recognized tribal affiliation), American Indian women intermarried White Americans 2% more than American Indian men married White women.

Education and interracial marriage

Using PUMS data from both the 1980 and 1990 US Census to determine trends within interracial marriage among White Americans, African Americans, Hispanic or Latinos, and Asian Americans, it may be seen that endogamy (marrying within race) was more prevalent for African American men at lower education levels.

In 1980, the numbers were as follows: African American males without a high-school diploma participated in endogamy at 96.5%; for those who received a high-school diploma, 95.6%; for those with a college degree and above, the percentage of endogamy dropped to 94.0%. However, the rates for African American women changed very little with different educational levels. For the African American woman who had not received a high school diploma the rate was 98.7%, high school diploma was 98.6%, with some college it was 98.2%, and college degree or higher, 98.5%. During this time there was a significant increase in marriages between whites and African Americans, maintaining that African Americans are most likely to marry whites over other groups.

The 1990 results show that rates of endogamy dropped for both males and females, albeit more for the African American male. In 1990, an African American male with a college degree and more was participating in endogamy at 90.4%; for an African American female with the same educational level, 96.4%. The results for the propensity of individuals at higher educational attainment levels to participate less in endogamy over the 10-year period were similar across races, including whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans.

Immigrants and interracial marriage

File:First-dance.jpg

An Iranian groom and a Mexican-American bride enjoy their first dance as a married couple.

It is found that racial endogamy is much stronger for immigrants as compared to natives; it is 4.9 times more likely for immigrants of African descent than for African Americans. Additionally, immigrants of African descent have the highest rates of endogamy of immigrants. Also, African immigrants are much more likely to marry other same-race immigrants and African Americans, than to out-marry racially. Native-born White Americans are also 1.6 times more likely to marry a native-born African American than an immigrant of African descent. Female immigrants of African descent are generally more likely to marry native-born whites than their male counterparts.

Cohabitation and interracial marriage

Black American men are 2.5 times more likely to be married to a white spouse and 3.3 times more likely to be cohabiting with a White American, as compared to their Black American female counterparts. Research yields that 7% of married Black American men are with white wives and 15% of African American men cohabit with white women.

In the United Kingdom

Interracial marriage disparities for certain groups

A similar trend can be seen in the UK. According to the UK 2001 census , Black British males were around 50% more likely than black females to marry outside their race, whereas British Chinese women were twice as likely as their male counterparts to marry someone from a different ethnic group. Among British Asians (South Asians, not including Chinese), Pakistani and Bangladeshi males were twice as likely to to have an inter-ethnic marriage than their female counterparts, while Indian and "Other Asian" males were more likely to have an inter-ethnic marriage than their female counterparts by a smaller percentage.

In Portuguese Colonies

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-1970's.

In Brazil

Brazil has a high level of miscegenation on its population. 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 and Amerindian ancestry.

In Australia

Disparities in child-producing unions

Interracial and inter-ethnic partnering disparities are evident in birth statistics, with Australian women more likely to form partnerships and families with foreign men than Australian men with foreign women.

In 2005 there were 255,481 live births in Australia. 71.5% of these infants were born to Australian-born fathers, and 75.9% were born to Australian-born mothers.

In unions between Australian and non-Australian born people that produce children, the Australian-born partner is more likely to be male when the female was born in North Asia, Southeast Asia, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada or Zimbabwe. Australian-born women rather than men are more likely to produce children with partners born elsewhere.

However the disparity is generally only marginal when the foreign-born partner is from Western Europe, New Zealand or the Americas. At an extreme there are 3.6 times more births to Australian-born men/Chinese-born women than to Australian-born women/Chinese-born men, while there are 2.7 times more births to Pakistani-born men/Australian-born women than to Pakistani-born women/Australian-born men.

In Africa

Interracial marriage disparities

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

In Israel

Notes and references

“The Miscegenation Hoax”. Museum of Hoaxes
Hollinger, David. “Amalgamation and Hypodescent: The Question of Ethnoracial Mixture in the History of the United States”. The History Cooperative
Yancey, George (Spring 2007). "Experiencing Racism: Differences in the Experiences of Whites Married to Blacks and Non-Black Racial Minorities". Journal of Comparative Family Studies. 38 (2): 197–213.
Fredrickson, George (March 2005). "Mulattoes andmétis. Attitudes toward miscegenation in the United States and France since the seventeenth century". International Social Science Journal. 57 (183): 103–112.
Nave's Topical Bible "Miscegenation" bibletools.org
Wesley Webster "Does the Bible Forbid Interracial Dating and Marriage?" biblestudy.org
Portillo, Eli (2006-07-20). "Social integration in the U.S., including cohabiting and marriage, is surging". McClatchy Newspapers. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Interracial-Marriage.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Color Q World. Asian and Native Intermarriage in the US. September 1, 2006.
^ C. N. Le, "Interracial Dating & Marriage", Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America (May 30, 2007).Retrieved May 25, 2007.
Color Q World. September 1, 2006.Chinese Blacks in the United States.
Crowder, Kyle D, and Stewart E. Tolnay. "A New Marriage Squeeze for Black Women: The Role of Racial Intermarriage by Black Men." 2000. August 14, 2006.
Razib. Gene Expression. The Black Gender Gap. 2003. November 5, 2006.
^ Miller, Candace. Interracial Voice. Sauce for the Goose. 2001. August 14, 2006.
Melendez, Michele M. The San Diego Union-Tribune. Education is changing the face of wedded life. 2004. August 14, 2006.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Almost two thirds of Native American marriages are interracial.Race of Wife by Race of Husband. 1998. July 29, 2006.
National Statistics. Inter-ethnic Marriage. 2001. August 14, 2005. Inter-Ethnic Marriage: 2% of all marriages are inter-ethnic.
National Statistics. Inter-ethnic Marriage. 2001. August 14, 2005. Inter-Ethnic Marriage: 2% of all marriages are inter-ethnic.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. Births, Australia. 3301.0. 2005. Chapter 8. Tables 8.14 and 8.15 "Country of Birth of Father" and "Country of Birth of Mother"
Color Q World. Jotawa: Afro-Asians in East Africa. September 1, 2006.
Susser, Susan, M. “Love and Marriage in Israel” Jewish Currents 2004
Barkat, Amiram. “Not Jewish enough to marry a Cohen” Haaretz
PDF file The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists 1997
Yuval Azoulay. “Justice Ministry drafts civil marriage law for ‘refuseniks’” Haaretz

External Links

Explore Famous Interracial Couples and Other Race Relations Issues on the About.com Website.

Other references

Kaplan, Sidney. The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Jul. 1949, pp. 274-434.

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.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Lemire, Elise (2002). "Miscegenation": Making Race in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-812-23664-5.

Sollors, Werner, ed. (2000). Inter-racialism: Black-White Intermarriage in American History, Literature, and Law. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-12856-7. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Rosenthal, Debra J. (2004). Race Mixture in Nineteenth-Century U.S and Spanish-American Fiction. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-807-85564-2.

Croly, David Goodman (1864). Miscegenation, The theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the American White Man and Negro. New York: H. Dexter, Hamilton & Co.

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