Interracial marriage

A multiracial European family walking in the park.

Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different "races" or racialized ethnicities.

In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation (Latin: 'mixing types'). The word, now usually considered pejorative, 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 published in 1864.[1] Even in 1960, interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 U.S. states.

It became legal throughout the United States in 1967, following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the case Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia, violated the Equal Protection Clause (adopted in 1868) of the United States Constitution.[2][3]

  1. ^ "Miscegenation; the theory of the blending of the races, applied to the American white man and negro". Library of Congress. Retrieved 6 October 2023.
  2. ^ "Loving v. Virginia". Oyez. Retrieved 21 September 2019.
  3. ^ "Loving v. Virginia". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 21 September 2019.