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Miscegenation ( mih-SEJ-ə-NAY-shən) is marriage or admixture between people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere ('to mix') and genus ('race' or 'kind'). 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. Although the term "miscegenation" was formed from the Latin for "mixing races/kinds", and it could therefore be perceived as being value-neutral, it is almost always a pejorative term which is used by people who believe in racial superiority or purity, and possibly intended to be negative in the erroneous belief that it derives from the prefix mis-. Less loaded terms for multiethnic relationships, such as interethnic or interracial marriage, and mixed-race, multiethnic, or multiracial people, are more common in contemporary usage. Usage In the present day, the use of the word miscegenation is avoided by many scholars because the term suggests that race is a concrete biological phenomenon, rather than a categorization which is imposed on certain relationships. The term's historical usage in contexts which typically implied disapproval is also a reason why more unambiguously neutral terms such as interracial, interethnic or cross-cultural are more common in contemporary usage. The term remains in use among scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages. 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", which is also the root of the Spanish word mestizo. (Portuguese also uses miscigenação, derived from the same Latin root as the English word.) 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 during the colonial era in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Today, the mixes among races and ethnicities are diverse, so it is considered preferable to use the term "mixed-race" or simply "mixed" (mezcla). In Portuguese-speaking Latin America (i.e., Brazil), a milder form of caste system existed, although it also provided for legal and social discrimination among individuals belonging to different races, since slavery for black people existed until the late 19th century. Intermarriage occurred significantly from the very first settlements to the present day, affording mixed people upward mobility in Brazil for Black Brazilians, a phenomenon known as the "mulatto escape hatch". To this day, there are controversies regarding whether the Brazilian class system would be drawn mostly around socioeconomic lines, not racial ones (in a manner similar to other former Portuguese colonies). Conversely, people classified in censuses as black, brown ("pardo") or indigenous have disadvantaged social indicators in comparison to the white population. 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. 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 partly white, often French Canadian, ancestry, have identified as an ethnic group and are a constitutionally recognized aboriginal people. Interracial marriages are often disparaged in racial minority communities as well. Data from the Pew Research Center has shown that African Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to believe that interracial marriage "is a bad thing". There is a considerable amount of scientific literature that demonstrates similar patterns. The differences between related terms and words which 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 18th-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 person born of slaves ... a mixture of all races and of all times". Etymological history Miscegenation comes from the Latin miscere, 'to mix' and genus, 'kind'. The word was coined in an anonymous propaganda pamphlet published in New York City in December 1863, during the American Civil War. The pamphlet was entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro. It purported to advocate the intermarriage of whites and blacks until they were indistinguishably mixed, as desirable, and further asserted that this was a goal of the Republican Party. The pamphlet was a hoax, concocted by Democrats to discredit the Republicans by imputing to them what were then radical views that would offend the vast majority of whites, even those who opposed slavery. The issue of miscegenation, raised by the opponents of Abraham Lincoln, featured prominently in the election campaign of 1864. In his fourth debate with Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln took great care to emphasise that he supported the law of Illinois which forbade "the marrying of white people with negroes". The pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in both the North and South by Democrats and Confederates. Only in November 1864, after Lincoln had won the election, was the pamphlet exposed in the United States as a hoax. It was written by David Goodman Croly, managing editor of the New York World, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman, a World reporter. By then, the word miscegenation had entered the common language of the day as a popular buzz.... 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