

In Spanish, Portuguese, and French, the words used to describe the mixing of races are mestizaje, mestiçagem and métissage. The term remains in use among scholars when referring to past practices concerning multiraciality, such as anti-miscegenation laws that banned interracial marriages. 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. 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. 5 Demographics of ethnoracial admixture.4 History of ethnoracial admixture and attitudes towards miscegenation.Less loaded terms for multiethnic relationships, such as interracial or interethnic marriages and mixed-race or multiethnic children, are more common in contemporary usage.
#Prum samba meaning plus#
Īlthough the term "miscegenation" was formed from the Latin miscere "to mix" plus genus "race" or "kind", 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 and purity. Although the notion that racial mixing is undesirable has arisen at different points in history, it gained particular prominence among white communities in America during the colonial period.

Opposition to miscegenation, framed as preserving so-called racial purity, is a typical theme of racial supremacist movements. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. The word first appeared in " Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro", a pretended anti-Abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 U.S.

The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere ("to mix") and genus ("race") from the Hellenic γένος. Miscegenation ( / m ɪ ˌ s ɛ dʒ ə ˈ n eɪ ʃ ən/) is the interbreeding of people who are considered members of different races.
