Anti-miscegenation laws

Anti-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.

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. 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 U.S. states and U.S. 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 After the Second World War, an increasing number of states repealed their anti-miscegenation laws.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.

Anti-miscegenation 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.

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