Miscegenate (Verb)
Meaning
Marry or cohabit with a person of another race.
Classification
Verbs of being, having, spatial relations.
Examples
- Many laws in the 19th and 20th centuries prohibited people from different racial backgrounds to miscegenate and punished those who did so.
- Historically, some groups encouraged their members not to miscegenate in order to preserve their perceived racial or cultural purity.
- During the time of apartheid, interracial couples in South Africa were banned from miscegenating, and doing so led to severe punishments.
- In some parts of the world, people are still negatively judged and penalized for choosing to miscegenate and start families with someone from another racial background.
- Laws against those who chose to miscegenate were not fully dismantled in the United States until after the landmark Supreme Court decision in the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967.