Anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races. Anti-miscegenation laws were first introduced in North America from the late seventeenth century onwards by several of the Thirteen Colonies, and subsequently by many US states and US territories and remained in force in many US states until 1967.
After the Second World War, an increasing number of states repealed their anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, in landmark case Loving v. Virginia, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws were held to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. Similar laws were also enforced in Nazi Germany as part of the Nuremberg laws which were passed in 1935, and in South Africa as part of the system of Apartheid which was passed in 1948. In the United States, interracial marriage, cohabitation and sex have been termed "miscegenation" since the term was coined in 1863. Contemporary usage of the term is infrequent, except to refer to historical laws banning the practice.
United States
While there have been no nationwide anti-miscegenation laws in the United States, there were state laws in individual states, particularly in the Southern States and the Plains States, that prohibited miscegenation. These laws were a part of American law since before the United States was established and remained so until ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that:"the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."All anti-miscegenation laws banned the marriage of whites and non-white groups, primarily blacks, but often also Native Americans and Asian Americans. The first anti-miscegenation law that applied to both men and women was enacted in the colony of Virginia in 1691 and was punishable by exile, it prohibited “English or other white man or woman being free” to intermarry with “a negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free”. Sometimes, the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of adultery or fornication would be brought against them instead. In addition, the state of Oklahoma in 1908 banned marriage "between a person of African descent" and "any person not of African descent"; Louisiana in 1920 banned marriage between Native Americans and African Americans ; and Maryland in 1935 banned marriages between blacks and Filipinos. In many states, anti-miscegenation laws also criminalized cohabitation and sex between whites and non-whites.
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 in 1685. The ban was never enforced.In 1927, the Pact coalition government passed a law prohibiting marriages between whites and blacks. 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.
South Africa's Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, passed in 1949 under Apartheid, forbade marriages between whites and anyone deemed to be non-whites. The Population Registration Act of 1950 provided the basis for separating the population of South Africa into different races. Under the terms of this act, all residents of South Africa were to be classified as white, coloured, or native people. Indians were included under the category "Asian" in 1959. Also in 1950, the Immorality Act was passed, which criminalized all sexual relations between whites and non-whites. The Immorality Act of 1950 extended an earlier ban on sexual relations between whites and blacks to a ban on sexual relations between whites and any non-whites. Both Acts were repealed in 1985 as part of the reforms carried out during the tenure of P. W. Botha.
Middle East
Egypt
In Egypt the government reviews all marriages between Egyptian men and Israeli women to decide on an individual basis whether to strip the men of their Egyptian citizenship. The cabinet takes into consideration whether the Israeli woman is an Arab or a Jew. This is, however, done for political reasons considering Israelis are not a race and there are Israelis of Egyptian descent.Egyptian law says citizenship can only be revoked if the citizen is proven to be spying on his country, and marrying an Israeli is considered an act of spying.
Israel
Within Israel there is no provision for civil marriage, so marriages can only be conducted between people of the same religion. Cross-religious marriages performed abroad are generally recognized. As a consequence, Jews cannot legally marry non-Jews in Israel and a significant number of Israelis marry in Cyprus.Saudi Arabia
Saudi women are prohibited from marrying men other than Arab citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries without special dispensation from the King. Under Shari'a law, Saudi women, as Muslims, are not permitted under any circumstances to marry non-Muslim men.Saudi men require a government permit to marry a foreign woman and must be at least 25 years old to apply for such a permit. They may obtain a permit to take a foreign woman as a second wife only if their first wife has cancer, is disabled, or is unable to bear children. Saudi men are forbidden to marry women from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Chad and Pakistan. Supposedly, this decision was predicated on the population of these countries collectively surpassing 500,000.
Asia
China
Laws and policies which discouraged miscegenation were issued in various dynasties, including an 836 AD decree forbidding Chinese to have relations with other peoples such as Iranians, Arabs, Indians, Malays, Sumatrans, and so on.India
Even though there is no specific provisions in the Constitution of India regarding the freedom to marry someone from a different race, 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.Around 1500 BC, the Indian subcontinent was settled by Indo-Europeans from the north, who called themselves Aryans. The aboriginal population they encountered, the Dasa, are described in the Rigveda as dark skinned, phallus worshipping people. The Aryans instituted a rigid system of social stratification called Varna, in which the aboriginals were relegated to the lowest rank, Shudra. The Shudra were tasked with serving the other classes, and were excluded from ritual communion. Members of the four varnas were forbidden from eating together or marrying each other. The Shudras who were relegated to the most degrading occupations, now known as the Dalit, were deemed members of a fifth varna and considered untouchable. Physical contact between them and the other varnas was completely forbidden.
After the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, several anti-miscegenation laws were passed by the British.
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.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".
Europe
Nazi Germany
The Nazis enacted miscegenation statutes which discriminated against Jews, Roma and Sinti, and blacks. The Nazis considered the Jews to be a race supposedly bound by close genetic ties to form a unit which one could neither join nor secede from, rather than a religious group of people. The influence of Jews had been declared to have detrimental impact on Germany, in order to justify the discrimination and persecutions of Jews. To be spared, one had to prove one's Aryan descent, normally by obtaining an Aryan certificate.Jews, Romani and blacks
Although Nazi doctrine stressed the importance of physiognomy and genes in determining race, in practice race was determined only through the religions followed by each individual's ancestors. Individuals were considered non-Aryan 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 family or had converted to Judaism in adulthood. The actual religious beliefs of the individual himself or herself were also immaterial, as was the individual's status under Halachic law.An anti-miscegenation law was enacted by the National Socialist government in September 1935 as part of the Nuremberg Laws. Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, enacted on 15 September 1935, forbade sexual relations and marriages between Germans and Jews. On 26 November 1935, the law was extended to include, "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". Such extramarital intercourse was marked as Rassenschande 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 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 marriages between persons racially regarded as Aryans and so-called non-Aryans – called mixed marriages – would continue. However, the government eased the conditions for the divorce of mixed marriages. 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. Those who stuck to their spouse would suffer discriminations like dismissal from public employment, exclusion from civic society organisations, etc.
Any children – whenever born – within a mixed marriage, as well as children from extramarital mixed relationships born until July 31, 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. Traditionally the wife used to be the convert. 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. The "Gesetz über die Mietverhältnisse mit Juden" 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.
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.
In the opposite case, when the wife was classified as an 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 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 December 28, 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. 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 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. 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 October 18, 1941. German Jews and German Gentiles of Jewish descent living in mixed marriage were in fact mostly spared from deportation. 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.
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. Also, the Aryan-classified husbands and Mischling-classified children 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 extermination camps already were liberated. However, 2,600 from all areas of the Reich, not yet captured by the Allies, were deported to Theresienstadt, of whom most survived the last months until their liberation.
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. 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, which was granted in 1,255 cases.
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.Under King Louis XVI, the order of the Conseil du Roi of 5 April 1778, signed by Antoine de Sartine, forbade "whites of either sex to contract marriage with blacks, mulattos or other people of color" in the Kingdom, as the number of blacks had increased so much in France, mostly in the capital. Nevertheless, it was an interracial marriage prohibition, not an interracial sex prohibition. Moreover, it was an administrative act, not a law. There was never any racial law about marriage in France, with the exception of French Louisiana. But some restricted rules were applied about heritage and nobility. In any case, nobles needed the King's authorization for their marriage.
On 20 September 1792, all restrictions regarding interracial marriage were repealed by the Revolutionary government. On 8 January 1803, a Napoleonic governmental circular forbade marriages between white males and black women, or black men and white women, although the 1804 Napoleonic code did not mention anything specific about interracial marriage. In 1806, a French court validated an interracial marriage. In 1818, the highest French court validated a marriage contracted in New York between a white man and a colored woman. All administrative prohibitions were canceled by a law in 1833.
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. In order to prevent the Romanization of his people, Theodoric forbade intermarriage between Goths and Romans. Theodoric's effort to separate Goths and Romans was however not entirely successful. The Rugii, a Germanic tribe which supported Theodoric while preserving its independence within the Ostrogothic Kingdom, likewise avoided intermarriage with Goths and other tribes in order to preserve the purity of their race.As part of the Manifesto of Race in Fascist Italy, laws prohibiting marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans were passed in Italy and its foreign colonies.