The word “miscegenation” (from the Latin words miscere , “to mix,” and genus , meaning “race” or “type”) means the inbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word first appeared within The New York World newspaper, December, 1863, in a pamphlet entitled: “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro,” authored by David Goodman Croly, along with other writers. It was published anonymously in advance of the 1864 U.S. presidential election. The work purported to be a sincere advocacy of the virtues of racial mixing, but it was a literary forgery intended to argue against racial equality, and to blame the Lincoln administration for allegedly supporting this goal. The authors unsuccessfully attempted to trick Lincoln into endorsing the work. The term soon afterwards came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws.
Opposition to miscegenation, framed as preserving so-called racial purity, is a typical theme of racial supremacist movements. Although the notion that racial mixing is undesirable has arisen at different points in history, it gained particular prominence among white communities in America during the colonial period. The historical taboo surrounding white–black relationships among American whites can be seen as a historical consequence of the oppression and racial segregation of Black Americans. In many U.S. states, interracial marriage was already illegal when the term miscegenation was coined in 1863. (Before that, it was called “amalgamation“.) The first laws banning interracial marriage were introduced in the late 17th century in the slave-holding colonies of Virginia (1691) and Maryland (1692). Later these laws also spread to colonies and states where slavery did not exist.
Before the Civil War, accusations of support for miscegenation were commonly made against Abolitionists by defenders of slavery. After the war, similar charges were made against advocates of equal rights for Black Americans by white segregationists. According to these accusations, they were said to be secretly plotting the destruction of the white race through the promotion of miscegenation. In the 1950s, segregationists alleged that a Communist plot to promote miscegenation in order to hasten the takeover of the United States was being funded by the government of the Soviet Union. In 1957, segregationists cited the anti-semitic hoax, A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, as a source of evidence which proved the supposed validity of these claims. Bob Jones University banned interracial dating until 2000.
In the United States, segregationists, including modern-day Christian Identity groups, have claimed that several passages in the Bible, such as the stories of Phinehas (see Phineas Priesthood), the Curse and mark of Cain, and the curse of Ham, should be understood as referring to miscegenation and they also believe that certain verses in the Bible expressly forbid it.
Interracial marriage has gained more acceptance in the United States since the civil rights movement. Approval of mixed marriages in national opinion polls has risen from 4% in 1958, 20% in 1968 (at the time of the SCOTUS decision), 36% in 1978, to 48% in 1991, 65% in 2002, 77% in 2007, and 86% in 2011. The most notable American of mixed race is the former President of the United States, Barack Obama, who is the product of a mixed marriage between a black father and a white mother. Nevertheless, as late as 2009, a Louisiana justice of the peace refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, justifying the decision on grounds of concern for any future children which the couple might have.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation
The “Miscegenation” Troll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Racial_Program_for_the_Twentieth_Century
The Historical Memory Recovery Channel 