Miscegenation

miscegenation

interbreeding of races, esp where differences of pigmentation are involved

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miscegenation [mi‚sej·ə′nā·shən]

(anthropology)

Intermarriage between different races.

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Miscegenation 

the mixing of human races. The offspring of these mixed marriages are called half-breeds.

Racial mixing has always taken place in regions where various racial groups have been in contact with one another. The scale of such crossing grew considerably after the great geographical discoveries of the 15th to 17th centuries and the subsequent colonial expansion and slave trading. It is a natural phenomenon in human history and proves the untenability of the reactionary theory of polygenism (the theory of the origin of the principal races of mankind from different ancestors, thereby ascribing Caucasoids, Mongoloids, and Negroids to separate species). The same capacity of half-breeds for reproduction as is found in intraracial unions—not the case between different species—is the most convincing proof of the species unity of mankind and the close kinship of all human races.