Mis·ceg·e·na·tion n. The interbreeding of what are presumed to be distinct human races, esp. marriage or cohabitation between white and non-white persons (Lat. miscere, to mix + genus, race.)
America has a long and troubled history with miscegenation. Novelist William Faulkner wrote of the terrible fears of white Southerners in the antebellum years which lay behind the slave codes. And yet a tremendous amount of “interbreeding” went on. Diarist Mary Chesnut lived in Charleston in the war years and wrote that there was hardly a plantation where there were not “mulatto” children who looked like the master. After importation of kidnapped Africans was made illegal in 1808, the only way the slave population in the U.S. could be replenished was through childbirth. The white plantation owners thought it highly in their interest to have their slave women produce as many offspring as possible.
Baz Luhrmann’s recent movie Australia lays open some of his country’s own troubled racial past. The dark-skinned aboriginal people were kept separate from the whites, and mixed-race children were mocked as “creamies.” Children of color were routinely taken from their aboriginal communities and raised in the white culture. Race fears are nothing new. The people of Israel had a very hard time accepting Moses’ Cushite (African) wife.
Fears of miscegenation persist in our country. Earlier this month a Louisiana judge, Keith Bardwell, was forced to resign his post because he refused to marry people of different races. He thought it would be too hard on the children. Indeed, if we allow a culture to continue where multiracial children are mocked and shut out of both heritages, the children will have a hard time. Some friends of mixed ancestry have confided to me that sometimes they feel like nomads, fully accepted by nobody.
But we can do better. We have role models at the very top of American government and sports because of people named Barack and Tiger. As Christians we can accept one another as in Christ God accepted us. We can build a new culture where people of mixed racial heritage can be proud of both (or all) of the people streams that produced them. We need them to be bridge-builders. Hit ‘em straight, Tiger.
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Straight talk. Real hope.
11/16/2009 - Posted by JB
Deuteronomy 7:3 & 4 (NIV) says, "Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods". Jesus sums up the reason for this in Matthew 22:36-40 "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." If you need help knowing who your neighbor is, see Luke 10:30-37, but let me tell you, it has nothing to do with the color of a person’s skin.
11/15/2009 - Posted by RH
Is it biblical ok to marry another race?
