The Race of the Future
Encyclopedia
The Race of the Future theory
/idea
states that due to the process of miscegenation
, the mixing of different races, especially in marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations, all the races are blending to become one single new race in the future.
The same scenario had been envisaged, with rather less enthusiasm, by Madison Grant
in his 1916 The Passing of the Great Race
, calling for an eugenics
program to prevent this development, and in a similar ideological context in Lothrop Stoddard
's The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
in 1920.
Gottfried de Purucker
was an author and theosophist
. When asked about intermarriage
in 1930, he said "In answering your question very briefly, I can say simply this, that the time has not come when I would willingly suggest intermarriage; but I am in honesty bound to qualify that by saying that the race of the future will be a composite, composed of the many different races on earth today. Let us also remember that all men are ultimately of one blood."
The word miscegenation was used in an anonymous propaganda
pamphlet
printed in New York City
in late 1863, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man
and Negro
. The pamphlet purported to be in favor of interbreeding of whites and blacks
until the races were indistinguishably mixed as mulatto
s, claiming that this was the goal of the United States Republican Party. The real authors were David Goodman Croly
, managing editor of the New York World
, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman
, a World reporter. The pamphlet soon was exposed as an attempt to discredit the Republicans, the Lincoln
administration, and the abolitionist movement
by exploiting the fears and racial biases common among whites. Nonetheless, this pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the American Civil War
by opponents of Republicans.
The British colony of Maryland
was the first to pass an anti-miscegenation law (1664). In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed anti-miscegenation laws
, often based on controversial interpretations of the Bible
, particularly the story of Phinehas
. Typically a felony
, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies. 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. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the federal District of Columbia did not pass anti-miscegenation laws. In 1883, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama.
In 1948, the California Supreme Court
in Perez v. Sharp
effectively repealed the California anti-miscegenation statutes, thereby making California the first state in the twentieth century to do so. In 1967, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia
.
, the proportion of Multiracial American
children is growing. Interracial partnerships are rising, as are transracial adoptions. In 1990, about 14% of 18-19 year-olds, 12% of 20-21 year-olds, and 7% of 34-35 year-olds were involved in interracial relationship
s (Joyner and Kao, 2005).
Roughly 10 years later, 20% of 18-19 year-olds and 16% of 24-25 year-olds were in an interracial relationship.
Theory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
/idea
Idea
In the most narrow sense, an idea is just whatever is before the mind when one thinks. Very often, ideas are construed as representational images; i.e. images of some object. In other contexts, ideas are taken to be concepts, although abstract concepts do not necessarily appear as images...
states that due to the process of miscegenation
Miscegenation
Miscegenation is the mixing of different racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation....
, the mixing of different races, especially in marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations, all the races are blending to become one single new race in the future.
History
Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi distinctly advocated race mixing in his 1925 Practical Idealism:- "The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice. The EurasianEurasian (mixed ancestry)The word Eurasian refers to people of mixed Asian and European ancestry. It was originally coined in 19th-century British India to refer to Anglo-Indians of mixed British and Indian descent....
-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals."
The same scenario had been envisaged, with rather less enthusiasm, by Madison Grant
Madison Grant
Madison Grant was an American lawyer, historian and physical anthropologist, known primarily for his work as a eugenicist and conservationist...
in his 1916 The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of the Great Race
The Passing of The Great Race; or, The racial basis of European history was an influential book of scientific racism written by the American eugenicist, lawyer, and amateur anthropologist Madison Grant in 1916. The book was largely ignored when it first appeared but went through several revisions...
, calling for an eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
program to prevent this development, and in a similar ideological context in Lothrop Stoddard
Lothrop Stoddard
Theodore Lothrop Stoddard was an American historian, journalist, racial anthropologist, eugenicist, political theorist and anti-immigration advocate who wrote a number of books which are cited by historians as prominent examples of early 20th-century scientific racism.- Biography :Stoddard was...
's The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy , by Lothrop Stoddard, postulates the collapse of white world empire, and of colonialism, because of the population growth among colored peoples...
in 1920.
Gottfried de Purucker
Gottfried de Purucker
Gottfried de Purucker was an author and Theosophist who joined the Theosophical Society on August 16, 1893...
was an author and theosophist
Theosophy
Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...
. When asked about intermarriage
Interracial marriage
Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations...
in 1930, he said "In answering your question very briefly, I can say simply this, that the time has not come when I would willingly suggest intermarriage; but I am in honesty bound to qualify that by saying that the race of the future will be a composite, composed of the many different races on earth today. Let us also remember that all men are ultimately of one blood."
The word miscegenation was used in an anonymous propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
pamphlet
Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound booklet . It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths , or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple book...
printed in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in late 1863, entitled Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
and Negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
. The pamphlet purported to be in favor of interbreeding of whites and blacks
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
until the races were indistinguishably mixed as mulatto
Mulatto
Mulatto denotes a person with one white parent and one black parent, or more broadly, a person of mixed black and white ancestry. Contemporary usage of the term varies greatly, and the broader sense of the term makes its application rather subjective, as not all people of mixed white and black...
s, claiming that this was the goal of the United States Republican Party. The real authors were David Goodman Croly
David Goodman Croly
David Goodman Croly was an American journalist, born in New York and educated at New York University. He was associated with the Evening Post and the Herald , and then became an editor and subsequently the managing editor of the World. He married Jane Cunningham, known as "Jennie June", in 1856...
, managing editor of the New York World
New York World
The New York World was a newspaper published in New York City from 1860 until 1931. The paper played a major role in the history of American newspapers...
, a Democratic Party paper, and George Wakeman
George Wakeman
Sir George Wakeman was an English royal physician to Catherine of Braganza, Consort of Charles II of England. In 1678, he was perjured by Titus Oates, who had gained backing of Thomas Osborne, 1st Earl of Danby, highly placed in government...
, a World reporter. The pamphlet soon was exposed as an attempt to discredit the Republicans, the Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
administration, and the abolitionist movement
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
by exploiting the fears and racial biases common among whites. Nonetheless, this pamphlet and variations on it were reprinted widely in communities on both sides of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
by opponents of Republicans.
The British colony of Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
was the first to pass an anti-miscegenation law (1664). In the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, many American states passed anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws
Anti-miscegenation laws, also known as miscegenation laws, were laws that enforced racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different races...
, often based on controversial interpretations of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, particularly the story of Phinehas
Phinehas, son of Eleazar
Phinehas was a High Priest of Israel in the wilderness, the grandson of Aaron, and son of Eleazar the High Priest , who distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim by his zeal against the Heresy of Peor: the immorality with which the Moabites and Midianites had successfully tempted the people to...
. Typically a felony
Felony
A felony is a serious crime in the common law countries. The term originates from English common law where felonies were originally crimes which involved the confiscation of a convicted person's land and goods; other crimes were called misdemeanors...
, these laws prohibited the solemnization of weddings between persons of different races and prohibited the officiating of such ceremonies. Sometimes the individuals attempting to marry would not be held guilty of miscegenation itself, but felony charges of adultery
Adultery
Adultery is sexual infidelity to one's spouse, and is a form of extramarital sex. It originally referred only to sex between a woman who was married and a person other than her spouse. Even in cases of separation from one's spouse, an extramarital affair is still considered adultery.Adultery is...
or fornication
Fornication
Fornication typically refers to consensual sexual intercourse between two people not married to each other. For many people, the term carries a moral or religious association, but the significance of sexual acts to which the term is applied varies between religions, societies and cultures. The...
would be brought against them instead. Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Alaska, Hawaii, and the federal District of Columbia did not pass anti-miscegenation laws. In 1883, the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation laws was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Pace v. Alabama.
In 1948, the California Supreme Court
Supreme Court of California
The Supreme Court of California is the highest state court in California. It is headquartered in San Francisco and regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacramento. Its decisions are binding on all other California state courts.-Composition:...
in Perez v. Sharp
Perez v. Sharp
In 1948, in the case Perez v. Sharp, also known as Perez v. Lippold and Perez v. Moroney, the Supreme Court of California recognized that interracial bans on marriage violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution....
effectively repealed the California anti-miscegenation statutes, thereby making California the first state in the twentieth century to do so. In 1967, the remaining anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia, , was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v...
.
Contemporary developments
In the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the proportion of Multiracial American
Multiracial American
Multiracial Americans, US residents who identify themselves as of "two or more races", were numbered at around 9 million, or 2.9% of the population, in the census of 2010. However there is considerable evidence that the real number is far higher. Prior to the mid-20th century many people hid their...
children is growing. Interracial partnerships are rising, as are transracial adoptions. In 1990, about 14% of 18-19 year-olds, 12% of 20-21 year-olds, and 7% of 34-35 year-olds were involved in interracial relationship
Intimate relationship
An intimate relationship is a particularly close interpersonal relationship that involves physical or emotional intimacy. Physical intimacy is characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment, or sexual activity. The term is also sometimes used euphemistically for a sexual...
s (Joyner and Kao, 2005).
Roughly 10 years later, 20% of 18-19 year-olds and 16% of 24-25 year-olds were in an interracial relationship.
See also
- Racial hygieneRacial hygieneRacial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable...
- Interracial marriageInterracial marriageInterracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry. This is a form of exogamy and can be seen in the broader context of miscegenation .-Legality of interracial marriage:In the Western world certain jurisdictions have had regulations...
- La Raza CósmicaLa Raza CósmicaPublished in 1925, La Raza Cósmica is an essay written by late Mexican philosopher, secretary of education, and 1929 presidential candidate, José Vasconcelos to express the ideology of a future "fifth race" in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or...
- Melting potMelting potThe melting pot is a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" into a harmonious whole with a common culture...
- MulticulturalismMulticulturalismMulticulturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
- MultiracialMultiracialThe terms multiracial and mixed-race describe people whose ancestries come from multiple races. Unlike the term biracial, which often is only used to refer to having parents or grandparents of two different races, the term multiracial may encompass biracial people but can also include people with...
- MestizoMestizoMestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
- Brazilian PardoPardoIn Brazil, Pardo is a race/colour category used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics in Brazilian censuses. It is a Portuguese word that encompasses various shades of brown, but is usually translated as "grayish-brown"...