Miscegenation is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere and genus. The word first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, a hoax anti-abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 presidential election in the United States. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. These laws were overruled federally in 1967, and by the year 2000, all states including Alabama had removed them from their laws. In the 21st century, newer scientific data shows that human populations are actually genetically quite similar. Studies show that races are more of an arbitrary social construct, and do not actually have a major genetic delineation.
Hoax pamphlet "Miscegenation" that coined the term miscegenation
Former US President Barack Obama is the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.
Robert De Niro and his wife Grace Hightower. Census data showed 117,000 black wife–white husband couples in 2006.
Steve Jobs was born to an Arab Syrian father and a European Swiss mother.
Race (human categorization)
Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society. The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.
The "three great races" according to Meyers Konversations-Lexikon of 1885–90. The subtypes are: Mongoloid race, shown in yellow and orange tones Caucasoid race, in light and medium grayish spring green-cyan tones Negroid race, in brown tones Dravidians and Sinhalese, in olive green and their classification is described as uncertain The Mongoloid race sees the widest geographic distribution, including all of the Americas, North Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the entire inhabited
"Races humaines" according to Pierre Foncins La deuxième année de géographie of 1888. White race, shown in rose, Yellow (Mongoloid) race, shown in yellow, Negroid race, shown in brown, "Secondary races" (Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australian aboriginals, Samoyedic peoples, Hungarians, Malayans and others) are shown in orange
Portrait "Redenção de Cam" (1895), showing a Brazilian family becoming "whiter" each generation