Anti-miscegenation laws
Part of a series on |
Discrimination |
---|
Anti-miscegenation laws are laws that enforce
In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have been termed "
Anti-miscegenation laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany as a part of the Nuremberg Laws which were passed in 1935, and they were also enforced in South Africa as a part of the system of apartheid which was introduced in 1948.
United States
The first ever anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage.[3] In a speech in Charleston, Illinois, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".[4] By the late 1800s, 38 U.S. states had anti-miscegenation statutes.[3] By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.[3] While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced backlash for his relationship with a white woman, actress Kim Novak.[5] In 1958, Davis briefly married a black woman, actress and dancer Loray White, to protect himself from mob violence.[5]
In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Richard and Mildred Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years.[3] When former president Harry S. Truman was asked by a reporter in 1963 if interracial marriage would become widespread in the U.S., he responded, "I hope not; I don’t believe in it", before adding "Would you want your daughter to marry a Negro? She won't love someone who isn't her color."[6] In 1967 the law banning interracial marriage was ruled unconstitutional (via the 14th Amendment adopted in 1868) by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.[3]
Anti-miscegenation is a part of
South Africa
Early prohibitions on interracial marriages date back to the rule of the Dutch East India Company when High Commissioner Van Rheede prohibited marriages between European settlers and heelslag or full-blooded slave women (that is, of pure Asian or African origin) in 1685. The ban was never enforced.[7]
In 1905, German South West Africa banned the "Rassenmischehe" (racial mixed marriage). These bans had no legal basis in German citizenship laws (issued in 1870 and 1913) and the "decrees [were] issued by either a colonial governor or the colonial secretary", they were "not laws that had received the approval of the Reichstag". Similar such laws were also adopted in the German colonies of German East Africa (1906) and German Samoa (1912).[8]
In 1927, the Pact coalition government passed a law prohibiting marriages between whites and blacks (though not between whites and "coloured" people). An attempt was made to extend this ban in 1936 to marriages between whites and coloureds when a bill was introduced in parliament, but a commission of inquiry recommended against it.[9]
Australia
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, laws which were called
East Asia
China
Laws and policies which discouraged miscegenation were passed during the rule of various dynasties, including an 836 AD decree which forbade Chinese people from having relationships with members of other people groups such as Iranians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Sumatrans, and so on.[13]
India
While there are no specific provisions regarding the freedom to marry someone who is a member of a different race in the Constitution of India, Article 21 of the Constitution, which is a Fundamental Right, is widely regarded as to provide that freedom as it comes under "personal liberty", which the Constitution guarantees to protect.[14]
After the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857,[15] several anti-miscegenation laws were passed by the British colonial government.[16]
North Korea
After the deterioration of relations between North Korea and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, North Korea began to enact practices such as forcing its male citizens who had married Eastern European women to divorce them.[17]
Additionally, the North Korean government has been accused of performing forced abortions and infanticides on repatriated defectors to "prevent the survival of half-Chinese babies".[18]
Europe
Nazi Germany
The U.S. was the global leader of countries where codified racism was practiced, and its race laws fascinated the Nazis.
Jews, Romani and Black people
Although Nazi doctrine stressed the importance of physiognomy and genes in determining race, in practice, race was only determined through the religions which were followed by each individual's ancestors. Individuals were considered non-'Aryan' (i.e. Jewish) if at least three of four of their grandparents had been enrolled as members of a Jewish congregation; it did not matter if those grandparents had been born to a Jewish mother or had converted to Judaism. The actual religious beliefs of the individual himself or herself were also immaterial, as was the individual's status under halakhic law.
An anti-miscegenation law was enacted by the Nazi government in September 1935 as a part of the Nuremberg Laws. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour ('Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre'), enacted on 15 September 1935, forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans classified as so-called 'Aryans' and Germans classified as Jews.[20] This applied also to marriages concluded in Germany with only one spouse of German citizenship. On 26 November 1935, the law was extended to include, "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring".[21][22][23] Such extramarital intercourse was marked as Rassenschande ("race defilement") and could be punished by imprisonment — later usually followed by the deportation to a concentration camp, often entailing the inmate's death. Germans of African and other non-European descent were classified following their own origin or the origin of their parents. Sinti and Roma ("Gypsies") were mostly categorised following police records, e.g. mentioning them or their forefathers as Gypsies, when having been met by the police as travelling peddlers.
The existing 20,454 (as of 1939) marriages between persons racially regarded as so-called 'Aryans' and non-Aryans — called mixed marriages (German: Mischehe) — would continue.[24] However, the government eased the conditions for the divorce of mixed marriages.[25] In the beginning the Nazi authorities hoped to make the 'Aryan' partner get a divorce from their non-Aryan-classified spouses, by granting easy legal divorce procedures and opportunities for the 'Aryan' spouse to withhold most of the common property after a divorce.[26] Those who stuck to their spouse would suffer discriminations like dismissal from public employment, exclusion from civic society organisations, etc.[27]
Any children — whenever born — within a mixed marriage, as well as children from extramarital mixed relationships born until 31 July 1936, were discriminated against as Mischlinge. However, children later born to mixed parents, not yet married at passing the Nuremberg Laws, were to be discriminated against as Geltungsjuden, regardless if the parents had meanwhile married abroad or remained unmarried. Any children who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation were also subject to discrimination as Geltungsjuden.
According to the Nazi family value attitude, the husband was regarded the head of a family. Thus people living in a mixed marriage were treated differently according to the sex of the 'Aryan' spouse and according to the religious affiliation of the children, their being or not being enrolled with a Jewish congregation. Nazi-termed mixed marriages were often not interfaith marriages, because in many cases the classification of one spouse as non-Aryan was only due to her or his grandparents being enrolled with a Jewish congregation or else classified as non-Aryan. In many cases both spouses had a common faith, either because the parents had already converted or because at marrying one spouse converted to the religion of the second (marital conversion). Traditionally the wife used to be the convert.[28] However, in urban areas and after 1900, actual interfaith marriages occurred more often, with interfaith marriages legally allowed in some states of the German Confederation since 1847, and generally since 1875, when civil marriage became an obligatory prerequisite for any religious marriage ceremony throughout the united Germany.
Most mixed marriages occurred with one spouse being considered as non-Aryan, due to his or her Jewish descent. Many special regulations were developed for such couples. A differentiation of privileged and other mixed marriages emerged on 28 December 1938, when Hermann Göring discretionarily ordered this in a letter to the Reich's Ministry of the Interior.[29] The "Gesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden" (English: Law on Tenancies with Jews) of 30 April 1939, allowing proprietors to unconditionally cancel tenancy contracts with Germans classified as Jews, thus forcing them to move into houses reserved for them, for the first time enacted Göring's creation. The law defined privileged mixed marriages and exempted them from the act.[30]
The legal definitions decreed that the marriage of a Gentile husband and his wife, being a Jewess or being classified as a Jewess due to her descent, was generally considered to be a privileged mixed marriage, unless they had children who were enrolled in a Jewish congregation. Then the husband was obviously not the dominant part in the family and the wife had to wear the yellow badge and the children as well, who were thus discriminated against as Geltungsjuden. Without children, or with children not enrolled with a Jewish congregation, the Jewish-classified wife was spared from wearing the yellow badge (else compulsory for Germans classified as Jews as of 1 September 1941).
In the opposite case, when the wife was classified as a so-called 'Aryan' and the husband as a Jew, the husband had to wear the yellow badge, if they had no children or children enrolled with a Jewish congregation. In case they had common children not enrolled in a Jewish congregation (irreligionist, Christian etc.) they were discriminated as Mischlinge and their father was spared from wearing the yellow badge.
Since there was no elaborate regulation, the practice of exempting privileged mixed marriages from anti-Semitic invidiousnesses varied amongst Greater Germany's different Reichsgaue. However, all discriminations enacted until 28 December 1938, remained valid without exemptions for privileged mixed marriages. In the Reichsgau Hamburg, for example, Jewish-classified spouses living in privileged mixed marriages received equal food rations like Aryan-classified Germans. In many other Reichsgaue they received shortened rations.[31] In some Reichsgaue in 1942 and 1943, privileged mixed couples, and their minor children whose father was classified as a Jew, were forced to move into houses reserved for Jews only; this effectively made a privileged mixed marriage one where the husband was the one classified as so-called 'Aryan'.
The inconsistent application of privileged mixed marriages led to different compulsions to forced labour in 1940: Sometimes it was ordered for all Jewish-classified spouses, sometimes for Jewish-classified husbands, sometimes exempting Jewish-classified wives taking care of minor children. No document or law indicated the exemption of a mixed marriage from some persecutions and especially of its Jewish-classified spouse.[32] Thus if arrested, non-arrested relatives or friends had to prove their exemption status, hopefully fast enough to rescue the arrested from any deportation.
Systematic deportations of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent started on 18 October 1941.[33] German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent living in mixed marriage were in fact mostly spared from deportation.[34] In case a mixed marriage ended by death of the 'Aryan' spouse or divorce, the Jewish-classified spouse residing within Germany was usually deported soon after, unless the couple still had minor children not counting as Geltungsjuden.[31]
In March 1943, an attempt to deport the Berlin-based Jews and Gentiles of Jewish descent living in non-privileged mixed marriages, failed due to public protest by their relatives-in-law of 'Aryan kinship' (see Rosenstrasse protest). Also, the Aryan-classified husbands and Mischling-classified children (starting at the age of 16) from mixed marriages were taken by the Organisation Todt for forced labour, starting in autumn 1944.
A last attempt, undertaken in February/March 1945 ended, because the
With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 the laws banning mixed marriages were lifted again. Marriage dates could be backdated, if so desired, for couples who lived together unmarried during the Nazi era due to the legal restrictions, upon marrying after the war.[36] Even if one spouse was already dead, the marriage could be retroactively recognised, in order to legitimise any children and enable them or the surviving spouse to inherit from their late father or partner, respectively. In the West German Federal Republic of Germany 1,823 couples applied for recognition (until 1963), which was granted in 1,255 cases.[37]
France
In 1723, 1724 and 1774 several administrative acts forbade interracial marriages, mainly in colonies, although it is not clear if these acts were lawful. On 2 May 1746, the Parlement de Paris validated an interracial marriage.[38]
Under
On 20 September 1792, all restrictions regarding interracial marriage were repealed by the Revolutionary government.
Italy
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the Ostrogoths under the Theodoric the Great established the Ostrogothic Kingdom at Ravenna, ruling Italy as a dominant minority.[47][48][49] In order to prevent the Romanization of his people, Theodoric forbade intermarriage between Goths and Romans.[47][48] Theodoric's effort to separate Goths and Romans was however not successful, as intermarriages and assimilation were common.[50][48] The Rugii, a Germanic tribe which supported Theodoric while preserving its independence within the Ostrogothic Kingdom, avoided intermarriage with Goths and other tribes in order to maintain administrative control.[51][52]
As part of the
An analogous legislation was adopted in 1942 in the fascist Republic of San Marino.[55]
Pre-Islamic Iberia
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the late 5th century, the
See also
- Amalgamation (history)
- Endogamy
- History of Bob Jones University
- Historical race concepts
- Hypodescent
- Judicial aspects of race in the United States
- Loving Day
- Mixed Race Day
- One drop rule
- Race of the future
- Racial hygiene
- Scientific racism
- Social interpretations of race
References
- ^ "Loving v. Virginia". Oyez. Retrieved 2019-10-03.
- ^ "Loving v. Virginia". LII / Legal Information Institute. Retrieved 2019-10-03.
- ^ a b c d e "Eugenics, Race, and Marriage". Facing History.org. Retrieved February 23, 2021.
- ^ Douglas, Stephen A. (1991). The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858. University of Chicago Press. p. 235.
- ^ a b Lanzendorfer, Joy (August 9, 2017) "Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star", Smithsonian Retrieved February 23, 2021.
- ^ Wallenstein, Peter (2004). Tell the Court I Love My Wife: Race, Marriage, and Law--An American History. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 185.
- ISBN 978-0-624-04823-7.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-2819-3.
- ISBN 978-0-624-04823-7.
- ^ Rita M. Byrnes, ed. (1996), "Legislative Implementation of Apartheid", South Africa: A Country Study, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, retrieved 2008-01-04
- ^ of Australia, Parliament of. "History of Marriage Laws in Australia" (PDF). aph.gov.
- ^ Verass, Sophie. "Illegal love: Is this NT couple Australia's Richard and Mildred Loving". Special Broadcasting Service.
- ISBN 978-0-521-49781-7
- ^ Gupta, Shivani (February 14, 2015). "MARRIAGE IN INDIA". lawctopus.com. Retrieved May 18, 2020.
- ISBN 0-8223-3074-1
- ISBN 0-19-516507-1
- The Real North Korea: Life and politics in the failed Stalinist utopia(Oxford 2015) page 20
- ^ "BBC NEWS - Asia-Pacific - N Korea 'kills detainees' babies'". 22 October 2003. Retrieved 7 October 2014.
- ^ a b Whitman, James Q. (2017). Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Princeton University Press. pp. 37–43.
- ISBN 978-0-89672-837-0.
- ISBN 9780691086842.
- ISBN 978-0-521-39802-2.
- ^ "The Nuremberg Race Laws". Archived from the original on 19 May 2014. Retrieved 1 May 2016.
- ISBN 3-929728-85-0
- ISBN 3-11-013379-2
- ISBN 3-935877-68-4
- ISBN 3-933374-22-7
- ^ This was maintained by the pre-1939 practice of Jewish congregations in Germany, which denied Jewesses who married Gentiles, to be precise non-converts to Judaism, to keep their membership in a congregation. This turned the Jewesses, if they did not convert to another faith, legally into irreligionists. On the other hand, Jews marrying Gentile women could (stay) enroll(ed) as member of a Jewish congregation.
- ISBN 3-7672-1055-X
- ^ Cf. Reichsgesetzblatt (RGBl., i.e. the Reich's law gazette) 1939 I, 864 § 7 law text
- ^ ISBN 3-929728-85-0
- SS1939–1944; 1984 extended to 14 vols.), Heinz Boberach (ed. and compilator), Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag (dtv), 21968, (dtv-dokumente; vol. 477) p. 208. ISBN B0000BSLXR
- occupied France) had been organized in those specific areas and not generally throughout the Reich.
- ISBN 3-7700-4063-5
- ISSN 0175-3592
- ^ Bundesgesetz über die Anerkennung freier Ehen (as of 23 June 1950, Federal law on recognition of free marriages).
- ISBN 3-933374-22-7
- ^ M. Allemand in "Traité du Mariage", imprimerie E. Leboyer (Riom France, 1847) p.129
- ^ Arrest du Conseil d'état du Roi concernant les mariages des noirs, mulâtres, ou autres gens de couleur, du 5 avril 1778 (Lille: NJB Peterinck-Cramé, 1778).
- ^ {fr} Pétition des hommes de couleur de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe, Impriperie E. Duverger, Paris (feb. 1829), p. 8-9
- ^ Louisiana code, art.
- ^ Law of September 20th, 1792
- ^ Archives nationales (henceforward A.N.) BB15–211, R4, no 3266
- ^ Allemand 1847, p. 130
- ^ Sir Beguin and Emilie born slave in Guadeloupe—Allemand 1847, p. 131
- ^ Law of April 24th, 1833
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
With his people, who may have numbered 100,000 persons, Theodoric arrived in Italy in late August 489... his people could not legally intermarry with Romans... He never missed an opportunity to propagate the idea of civilitas ("civilized life" or "civilization"), a concept that includes the maintenance of peace and order, racial harmony, and the outlawing of oppression and violence.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, conquered Italy and killed Odoacer in 493. The decades of the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy (493–552) can be seen as the first true period of Germanic rule in the peninsula, for an entire tribe of 100,000 to 200,000 people came with Theodoric... Theodoric, who did not want the Ostrogoths to become Romanized, encouraged them to keep their distance from the Romans. Yet such apartheid did not last. Some Romans joined the army; many more Goths became landowners, legally or illegally, and adopted civilian Roman cultural traditions.
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
The barbarians were everywhere a small minority. They established themselves on the great estates and divided the land to the benefit of the federates without doing much harm to the lower classes or disturbing the economy.
- ISBN 978-0-19-965192-4.
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
The remaining Rugi followed Theodoric for revenge, although they maintained their independence even within the Ostrogothic state, keeping their own administrators and avoiding intermarriage with the Goths. They disappeared with the fall of the Ostrogothic state.
- ^ Modern Humanities Research Association (1967). The Modern Language Review, Volume 4.
The Rugians kept their race pure by refusing to intermarry with other tribes
- ^ Davide Rodogno (3 August 2006). Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War. Cambridge University Press. p. 65.
- ^ "Rassegna stampa: "Arabi e negri? Non sono ariani" Le leggi razziali del '38 e le circolari emanate dal regime fascista". Università degli Studi di Roma "Tor Vergata" (in Italian). Retrieved 8 August 2023.
- ^ "provvedimenti in materia matrimoniale e in difesa della razza" [Archive of Laws, Decrees and Regulations]. Consiglio Grande e Generale (in Italian). 1942.
- ISBN 978-0-520-90851-2.
- Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved August 23, 2018.
Despite the collapse of imperial rule in Spain, Roman influence remained strong. The majority of the population, probably about six million, were Hispano-Romans, as compared with 200,000 barbarians... A Roman law that prohibited intermarriage between the two peoples was, however, abolished in the late 6th century. Still, the task of bringing the two peoples together and of achieving some sort of political and cultural unity was a formidable one.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0312086916.
Further reading
- "The Canadian marriage at 150: A look back". theglobeandmail.com. November 12, 2017. Retrieved December 8, 2017.
- Thompson, Debra (2008). "Nation and Miscegenation: Comparing Anti-Miscegenation Regulations in North America" (PDF). Canadian Political Science Association.