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Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

Modern connotations of the word "miscegenation aside" aside (the word's denotation means "mixing of races", which is exactly the correct terminology for the issue), and laying aside modern understanding of "race" vs "ethnicity", in Fisher's era racial separatism was considered a solution to racism, not only by White people but also by many leading Black rights activists, such as Malcom X and Muhammad Ali in the Nation of Islam. Ethnonationalism may well be a bad idea in theory or or practice, but it's not purely an oppressor's idea. (It's not obvious that there is any unalloyed good solution to racism and human nature.)

https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/mxp/speeches/mxt14....

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2016/06/10/481414008...

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It was common enough at the time to hold the opinion that "mixing of the races" resulted in offspring that were worse than either race.

Frequently expressed across the colonial Commonwealth, Canada to Australia, South Africa and elsewhere.

eg Daisy Bates (sometime wife of Breaker Morant) wrote in the state newspaper in regard of Australian Aborigines:

  Aboriginal civil-rights leader, William Harris, wrote an article in response and said bi-racial Aboriginal people could be of value to Australian society. Bates replied, "as to the half-castes, however early they may be taken and trained, with very few exceptions, the only good half-caste is a dead one."

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_Bates_(author)

Miscegenation Laws regarding mixing of races remained in force in Bates part of the world until the 1960s, as did others enforcing the separation of mixed children from their families.

It seems less "a solution to racism" and more an excuse to enforce racist ideas aand attitudes.

sometimes I read stuff like this and feel so sad I was born in the 21st century and not in the 31st

Pizza delivery hasn't led me to time machines yet :(

Only because you don't know what strange new kinds of racism people will have managed to invent in the 31st century.

Future racism is explored in The Expanse. Humans have colonized the solar system, humans on Earth are on the brink of war with the humans on Mars, and they have slurs for each other.

well the hope is I go enough into the future where being poor doesn't exist or at least I can exist

unlike David Ricardo my wants are not infinite lol

Robert De Niro's child is perhaps the best example of the astounding beauty of mixed raced children. That child is the most beautiful of the lot.

It's such a strange opinion because hybrid vigor[1] is so well known in nature.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis

> in Fisher's era racial separatism was considered a solution to racism

Not just a solution to racism, but also a defense against genocide. Forced interracial "marriages", rape, etc were used as a genocidal tool against the natives along with murder. Natives who refused to mix with whites were derogatorily called racists by the white settlers.

Miscegenation was actually supported by natives, blacks, asians, etc in order preserve their cultures/races in a white dominated nation. Racism ( by all sides ) actually preserved diversity in the US for centuries. Otherwise, everyone would be white due to demographic realities of the nation.

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