Miscegenation

Miscegenation

 Richard Hollerman

We realize that this term is a strange one and that many or even most people can’t pronounce or define! By the way, as a Christian, we don’t agree with much of this, but must present it as an objective observer and writer. We also wonder about the photos above. The one shows two white people and the other shows one white and one black.

Misogyny means (according to the dictionary): “misogyny” means an opposition to the female. Here we don’t refer to “misogyny) but the following term, “miscegenation.” We might well keep this in mind as we proceed.

The related term, Miscegenation (/mɪˌsɛdʒəˈneɪʃən/ mih-SEJ-ə-NAY-shən) is sexual relations or marriage between people who are considered to be members of different races. The term is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere (“to mix”) and genus (“race”). The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation law. (See Wikipedia.)

Although we love all people—for God created all and Jesus died for all—we need to realize that this did and doesn’t give allowance for an “anything goes” mentality and practice. We find the following:

Laws banning “race-mixing” were enforced in certain U.S. states until 1967 (but they were still on the books in some states until 2000). . . . All of these laws primarily banned marriage between persons who were members of different racially or ethnically defined groups, which was termed “amalgamation” or “miscegenation” in the U.S.

In the United States, various state laws prohibited marriages between whites and blacks, and in many states, they also prohibited marriages between whites and Native Americans as well as marriages between whites and 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. Although an “Anti-Miscegenation Amendment” to the United States Constitution was proposed in 1871, in 1912–1913, and again in 1928, no nationwide law against racially mixed marriages was ever 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 With this ruling, these laws were no longer in effect in the remaining 16 states which still had them. One nation even enacted laws against mixed unions  and they could be punished by imprisonment and even death.

The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act in South Africa enacted in 1949, banned intermarriages between members of different racial groups, including intermarriages 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 who was a member of a different race. Both of these laws were repealed in 1985.

We find this occurrence in the United States:

According to the U.S. Census, in 2000 there were 504,119 Asian–white marriages, 287,576 black-white marriages, and 31,271 Asian–black marriages. The black–white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 403,000 in 2006, and 558,000 in 2010, according to Census Bureau figures.

In the United States, rates of interracial cohabitation are significantly higher than those of marriage. [This shows that non-marriage, immoral, relations are wrong.] Although only 7 percent of married African American men have Caucasian American wives, 13% of cohabitating African American men have Caucasian American partners. 25% of married Asian American women have Caucasian spouses, but 45% of cohabitating Asian American women are with Caucasian American men. Of cohabiting Asian men, slightly over 37% of Asian men have white female partners over 10% married White American women. Asian American women and Asian American men who live with a white partner, 40 and 27 percent, respectively (ie, 2006b). In 2008, of new marriages including an Asian man, 80% were to an Asian spouse and 14% to a White spouse; of new marriages involving an Asian woman, 61% were to an Asian spouse and 31% to a White spouse. Almost 30% of Asians and Latinos outmarry, with 86.8 and 90% of these, respectively, being to a white person. According to Karyn Langhorne Folan, “although the most recent census available reported that 70% of African American women are single, African American women have the greatest resistance to marrying ‘out’ of the race.”

One survey revealed that 19% of black males had engaged in sexual activity with white women. A Gallup poll on interracial dating in June 2006 found 75% of Americans approving of a white man dating a black woman, and 71% approving of a black man dating a white woman. Among people between the ages of 18 and 29, the poll found that 95% approved of blacks and whites dating, and about 60% said they had dated someone of a different race. 69% of Hispanics, 52% of blacks, and 45% of whites said they have dated someone of another race or ethnic group. In 1980, just 17% of all respondents said they had dated someone from a different racial background.

NAACP President Ben Jealous is the son of a white father and a black mother. (By the way, we know that the NAACP is a wicked and wrong organization.)

However, according to a study from the University of California at Berkeley, using data from over 1 million profiles of singles from online dating websites, whites were far more reluctant to date outside their race than non-whites. The study found that over 80% of whites, including whites who stated no racial preference, contacted other whites, whereas about 3% of whites contacted blacks, a result that held for younger and older participants. Only 5% of whites responded to inquiries from blacks. Black participants were ten times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks, however black participants sent inquiries to other blacks more often than otherwise.

Interracial marriage is still relatively uncommon, despite the increasing rate. In 2010, 15% of new marriages were interracial, and of those only 9% of Whites married outside of their race. However, this takes into account inter ethnic marriages, this meaning it counts white Hispanics marrying non-Hispanic whites as interracial marriages, despite both bride and groom being racially white. Of the 275,000 new interracial marriages in 2010, 43% were white-Hispanic, 14.4% were white-Asian, 11.9% were white-black and the rest were other combinations. However, interracial marriage has become more common over the past decades due to increasing racial diversity, and liberalizing attitudes toward the practice. The number of interracial marriages in the U.S. increased by 65% between 1990 and 2000, and by 20% between 2000 and 2010. “A record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another. … Rates more than doubled among whites and nearly tripled among blacks between 1980 and 2008. But for both Hispanics and Asians, rates were nearly identical in 2008 and 1980”, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to studies by Jenifer L. Bratter and Rosalind B. King made publicly available on the Education Resources Information Center, White female-Black male and White female-Asian male marriages are more prone to divorce than White-White pairings. Conversely, unions between White males and non-White females (and between Hispanics and non-Hispanic persons) have similar or lower risks of divorce than White-White marriages, unions between white male-black female last longer than white-white pairings or white-Asian pairings.

(See the entire article in the liberal source, “Wickipedia.”)

We know that this is a long, long series of quotations but hopefully it serves a useful purpose. And the purpose: That is gaining some information on black-white and white-black relationships. Further, as for other ethnicities, we know that Asians, American Indians, etc., continue to grow.

What does the Word of God say about this? We know that God says in Acts 17:24-28 and elsewhere that God has set apart people and nations, according to His will. And because of this, we know that He generally has arranged for people to live in certain localities and marry certain ethnicities.

However, we also find additional information from Scripture to inform us. Let’s not forget that in Genesis, the early Jews married people from different nations and cultures. Moses also married a woman from another nation. And in the NT we read that other people became Christians and these saved people were even placed in positions in the early body of Christ (Acts). This all leads us to refrain from being too dogmatic regarding “race” and related matters. In fact, we learn that in the beginning, at creation, there was only one “race” in the world.

And the same truth is found at the time of the Noaic worldwide flood (Genesis 6-9). At this time, there was one single ethnicity, or one single “race” and not 500 or 1,000 of them. Today, we know that there are people from many different nations and these all may be from different countries, different colors, and different backgrounds. (By the way, there are now over 5,000 different languages!) All of this must be accounted for in our search for meaning on this topic.

We grant you and all that there could be huge problems between blacks and whites intermarrying. (But this would be different than saying that this would be unbiblical.) (Perhaps we find this in the statistics, for we discover that as the inter-racial marriages increase, so do the divorces.) We also must realize that the statistics above are not at all limited to marriages, especially legitimate marriages, but to “relations” between males and females. Nor does it deal with the sodomite or homosexual relations that are so common today.

Thus, we know that there could be huge problems regarding relationships (or marriages) between those of different ethnicities. But this doesn’t overlook the fact that at least certain people in Scripture seemed to have some intermarriage between the “races” (or ethnicities).

Further, where do we “draw the line” regarding these relations? We know that most of the “blacks” (as they have come to be called) came from Africa (especially Ghana and other West African countries). But what about non-blacks? What about the dozens of different Europeans who intermarry? What about those who are not from European ancestry (such as British, French, German, Italian, Norwegians, Swedes, etc.?

Let us expand this. What about Russians, Middle-Easterners, Asians, and those from Pacific islands? What about Canadians, those from the United States, Mexicans, those from Central America, those from the Caribbean, and those from the couple dozen South American countries? It seems that America has become a “melting pot” (as has been said). We don’t just refer to the dozens of countries who have immigrated in the past 400, 300, 200, or 100 years. And we don’t merely refer to the dozens of countries who have “illegally” immigrated to America from at least 100 different nations, but we refer to the numerous ones who have entered America from other nations, have intermarried, and have settled down to become naturalized “citizens” themselves.

Thus, we think that those who advocate keeping the various nationalities separate are doing what Scripture doesn’t require. In fact, it seems that this would be an “impossible” task! We know that the states (in the United States) who advocated this would be wrong. The “Supreme Court” said that it was wrong in 1967 (and continued until perhaps 2000)  . (We are not at all saying that the United States “Supreme Court” was and is always right, but we must keep this in mind in the present case.)

With this in mind, we urge you, our readers, to consider all of this information, in light of God’s Word, and make an informed decision regarding “Miscegenation.”