miscegenation

Miscegenation is the genetic admixture that occurs among peoples of different races and among peoples of different ethnic groups. Historically, miscegenation has been socially controversial and subject to legal proscription in racist societies and in racialist societies that enforce racial segregation, hierarchical systems of racial caste, and a culture of social conservatism. The word 'miscegenation' has various adjective forms, including "miscegenated", "miscegenist", and "miscegenetic"; in contemporary English usage, there are multiple equivalent terms with less negative connotations, including "interethnic", "mixed-race", "multiethnic", "multiracial", and "interracial".

==Etymology== The English word miscegenation derives from the Latin words miscere (“to mix”) and genus (“kind”). In Hispanoamerica, the term mestizaje (miscegenation) derives from the word mestizo (a person born to an Amerindian and a Spaniard), hence the national populations of the countries that are Hispanoamerica usually are genetically 18 per cent Native American and 65.10 per cent Iberian in ancestry. The terms for racial mixing — the Spanish mestizaje, the Portuguese mestiçagem, and the French métissage — derive from the Late Latin word mixticius (“mixed”), which also is the Latin root-word for the Spanish word mestizo (a man of mixed race). Moreover, Portuguese language also uses the term miscigenação, derived from miscere, the Latin root-word for the English word miscegenation. Historically, these racialist terms were functionally integral to the system of racial castes (casta) with which the Spanish and the Portuguese colonists described and classified the racial lineages of the native peoples of colonial Hispanoamerica.