Derived from genus and miscere, Latin for race and mix, miscegenation historically evoked white fear. Democrats, charging Republicans with “the sexual mixing of races, particularly of whites and blacks,” perpetrated anti-miscegenation laws in at least twenty, mostly southern states, from the end of the Civil War to Loving v. Virginia (1967). Anti-miscegenation ideology also fueled collective terror, such as black lynching, against “interracial domestic relationships.” Loving overruled Virginia and all states’ statutes banning white–black marriage.

Comparatively few interracial unions have occurred since that decision. For every 100,000 married couples in 1960, there were 126 white–black marriages and 396 by 1990. But attitudes were changing. In the mid-1990s, only 18 percent of whites said yes to this National Research Opinion Center query: “Do you think there should be laws against marriages between Blacks and Whites?” In addition, 97 and 99 percent of black men and women, respectively, preferred marriage in their racial group.