Skin Deep

A Mixed Bag – defining miscegenation

 

The wisdom of the masses is not always wise.

You could have put anti-miscegenation to a vote, and it would have passed handily.

Jon Stewart, satirist [1962-present]

Miscere, derived from Latin, means ‘to mix.’ Genus denotes ‘race.’ Miscegenation then is the ‘mixing of races.’  It’s an ill-fitting, mishmash of a word, first coined in a paper published during the Christmas season that followed the turning point of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg. The seemingly anonymous publication Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, boldly advocates that black and white alike should actively partake in generations of interracial intermarriage until the colors become perfectly blended. After pithily quoting King Lear, “The elements were so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘this is a man,’” the mysterious penman introduces his invention ‘miscegenation,’ with the intent it replace the then commonly used term ‘amalgamation.’ The tricky treatise ends its seventy-two-page diatribe concerning ‘the road to racial harmony’ by urging President Lincoln to add a policy of miscegenation to the Republican ticket for the 1864 election. And voila, the corrupt politics of the feature becomes abundantly clear. This badly disguised polemic is a scare tactic aimed at stopping voters from reelecting the horrific abolitionist, ‘mixed marriage loving’ Abraham to a second term.

As hoped for by the publishers, the article’s release leads to a furor across the country. Democratic Congressmen, the likes of Samuel Sullivan Cox of Ohio, leap up from their House seats to slam Republican abolitionists, the likes of Lucretia Mott and the Grimke sisters, for advocating the foul abomination of mixed marriage.

It is only following Lincoln’s successful reelection that Miscegenation becomes exposed for the tabloid trash that it is,the world’s first ‘fake news.’ The anonymous ‘author’ turns out to be two penmen, reporter George Wakeman, and managing editor David Goodman Croly, journalists for the sensational New York World, the very rag Joseph Pulitzer will transform into the tarnished poster child of yellow journalism. Upon the unraveling of its deceitful deception, the newspaper is shut down for four days as Lincoln, with his usual aplomb, nails the pulp fiction, “How can it be said that I am promoting mixed marriages when the majority of mulatto children are born in the Confederate States?” However, as is the case in many cases of political subterfuge, though the entire premise is an utter fabrication, the freshly minted ‘miscegenation’ has become a buzzword throughout the States of the Union, and the Confederacy. Sadly, anti-miscegenation, the opposition to mixed marriages, is here to stay.

In the history of the world, only three societies have codified anti-miscegenation laws banning interracial marriage as core to their fabric: apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, and the United States of America.

In the annus mirabilis of our story, the year of our Lord 1947, 94% of Americans, as polled by Gallup, believe ‘race-mixing’ is immoral and should be illegal.

This is two decades on from the Virginia General Assembly’s passage of an unfortunate slab of legislation, fiercely promoted by the anti-miscegenetic White Anglo-Saxon Club of America, that contains several legalities pertinent to our narrative. Namely:

“Be it enacted that the State registrar shall prepare a form whereon the racial composition of any individual, as Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, American Indian, Asiatic Indian, Malay, or any mixture thereof, shall be certified, and shall be known as a registration certificate.”

For the first time in the country’s history, birth certificates must define the ‘race’ of the child. Falsifying race on this document becomes punishable by one year in prison. Following its opening gambit, the ironically named Racial Integrity Act of 1924 goes on to declare a "white person" as one who has no trace of blood other than Caucasian. With the stroke of a pen, we are in the realm of the ‘one-drop’ rule.

Classifications of Human – children of the same God

Unlike the revered Bishop Desmond Tutu, the bible, nor the vast majority of the globe’s cultures, does not consider us to be ‘children of the same God.’ In regard to this, a word on the word ‘Caucasian.’ The notion that ‘white’ people originate from the mountain range at the intersection between Asia and Europe, known as the Caucasus, arises from the biblical belief that, following the three hundred and seventy days of the Genesis Flood [40 raining, 150 flooding, and 180 receding], Noah’s Ark plops itself down on the volcanic Mount Ararat, situated at the northeast end of what is now Turkey.

 This also, rather snazzily, happens to be the location - either on the volcanic Mount Elbrus or Mount Kazbek - where the Titan Prometheus, having founded humanity from clay and then having had the audacity to provide us with fire, gets his regenerating liver eaten, on a daily basis, by Zeus’ eagle.

As the Caucasus, through his son Japheth, subsequently becomes the point of origin of the European descendants of Noah, it goes without saying that it is the genesis point of all ‘white people,’ hence Caucasians. Biblically, Asians and Africans have different, polygenetic origins as they are descended from Noah’s other sons, Shem and Ham. Although, it should be noted, they are also on the Ark.

In an attempt to pin down these confusing biblical notions, in the early nineteenth century, scholars at the University of Göttingen School of History, the likes of physician and anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, set about examining the question of the human species in a ‘scientific manner.’ From their research, they concluded there are five races: Caucasian [white], Mongolian [yellow], Malayan [brown], Ethiopian [black], and American [red].

In an examination of sixty human crania, Professor Blumenbach puts down the distinctions between the five ‘types’ of human to variations in skull anatomy and skin color, concluding that these ‘differences’ arise due to differences in local climate conditions. But the good Herr Doctor adds a cautionary warning:

"All national differences in the form and color of the human body run so insensibly, by so many shades and transitions one into the other, that it is impossible to separate them by any but very arbitrary limits.”

The German naturalist is absolutely correct, yet, soon after his cautionary prognostication, the five inept and ill-fitting classifications of a human will create havoc in the legal battles over anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, especially in California.

If only the Virginian framers of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 had heeded the professor’s concern. But they did not. In Virginia, and by extension in all forty-eight of the United States - Alaska and Hawaii are yet to come – Caucasian denotes ‘pure white.’ And once they’ve cleared that up, the Virginia Assembly sets about defining the legal conditions under which a ‘pure white’ person is permitted to marry an ‘other’:

“No marriage license shall be granted until the clerk has assurance that the statements as to the color of both man and woman are correct.”

You will note we are in the automatically assumed it’s ‘a man and a woman’ age of no same-sex marriages.  Then, to ensure that no ‘color’ mistakes are made in granting the marriage license, a further clause in the Act stipulates,

“If there is cause to disbelieve that the applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk shall withhold the granting of the license until satisfactory proof is produced that both applicants are ‘white persons.’”

This final commandment will lead to dire repercussions for any American who wants to marry any person on the wrong side of the ‘white’ spectrum.