Miscegenation and Censorship

Definition: Intermixing of members of different racial groups in marriage or sexual relationships

Significance: In most states of the United States and in the Republic of South Africa, miscegenation and intermarriage between races were once forbidden by law

Fear of miscegenation has historical roots. In most of the thirteen North American colonies, and later in most of the United States, taboos against exogamy, especially against marriage between black and white partners, were maintained by law. Early in the twentieth century thirty U.S. states had statutes banning marriage between African Americans and European Americans. In 1967, when the Supreme Court finally declared antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional in the case Loving v. Virginia, racial intermarriage was still banned in nineteen states, not all of which were in the South. In addition to state laws, interracial marriage and relationships faced significant censorship in the popular media.

The Film Industry

Popular attitudes and laws against interracial partnerships have been reflected in the arts and in the cinema in particular. Some films and producers thrived on controversy, but generally political and economic pressures led to censorship of films. In 1916 film producers and directors formed the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI). It was resolved that many things would not appear in pictures, and the list included miscegenation. In 1929 this code was superseded by the Motion Picture Production Code. This elaborate code dealt with depictions of criminal and sexual acts, and specified, under “particular applications” of “general principles,” that “miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden.”

Various groups sought to ensure that the code was enforced. The Legion of Decency was one. An organization sponsored by the Roman Catholic church, which boycotted pictures it deemed objectionable, the Legion of Decency did not object to the banning of certain depictions of love and marriage. The Legion set up its own rating system in 1936, and occasionally publicized violations of the Motion Picture Code, but there is no hint in its reports of attempts at portraying miscegenation. This aspect of the code went unchallenged for a long time; since African Americans were either ignored or relegated to farce, musicals, and films specifically for black audiences, there was no difficulty in enforcing this aspect of the code. In the few early films that included black roles other than domestic employees, white actors were made up to play black characters.

In 1956 the Production Code Administration, or board of censorship, amended the code to permit a wider range of subjects, including miscegenation. This liberalization, however, made little immediate difference in the products of the film industry.

The taboo on depicting relations between Asians and white persons was the first to dissolve. The King and I was released in 1956, with the European American Yul Brynner in the title role as the Siamese king in love with an English woman. There were a few films, such as The Quiet American of 1957, which hinted at interracial relationships. Miscegenation is the theme of The World of Suzie Wong, released in 1960.

Miscegenation as a subject of films increased in the 1960s. Roughly forty-eight North American films produced in the decade of 1961 to 1970 dealt with or involved scenes of miscegenation. Many of these were about relations between whites and Asians or Native Americans, rather than whites and blacks, while other films on the subject were produced abroad. The sensitive and subtle film One Potato, Two Potato of 1964, the story of a black and white couple, caused a minor sensation, even though it was a low-budget, independent production from Ohio; realistically enough, the couple is penalized at the end of the story for defying conventions.

Television

A television code was drafted in 1951, but its terms were not universally followed. In any case, all major networks followed, by and large, the prescriptions of the Motion Picture Production Code. Regarding miscegenation, some situation comedies, beginning in the 1970s (especially All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and some serials imported from the United Kingdom), challenged bigotry by portraying or implying relationships between white men and black women. Earlier, producers of the series Star Trek had successfully resisted network attempts to censor a kiss between the white Captain Kirk and the black Lieutenant Uhura. Although marriages between black men and white women outnumbered marriages between black women and white men almost four to one in the United States, the former type of relationship proved a far touchier issue, and remained inconsistently portrayed on television much longer.

Literature and Other Arts

Literature and works of art were seldom censored for depicting miscegenation, partly because the topic itself was seldom addressed. Various English-language translations of the ancient stories from the Middle East, known as The Arabian Nights' Entertainments, or The Thousand and One Nights, were among the works most often censored or attacked in the courts, but it is not clear that these attacks resulted from the stories’ depictions of miscegenation or from the stories’ eroticism. In the case of United States v. Levine (1936), Levine was convicted of sending obscene materials through the mail, one of which was a book about an Englishwoman kept in a Sudanese harem. As a result of a series of photographs in the 1962 volume of the magazine Eros, published and distributed by Ralph Ginzburg, depicting interracial sex, the publisher was charged with the crime of sending obscene materials through the mail, the attorney general’s justification being that these pictures might exacerbate feelings of racial hatred in the South. Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice (1968) was banned from certain school libraries because of its references to miscegenation.

In 1967, with the repeal of state laws against miscegenation and intermarriage following the Supreme Court decision, the attitudes of some film producers began to change. In 1967 the film In the Heat of the Night appeared, dealing with the topic of racism. Directed by Norman Jewison, the film won the Academy Award for best picture. This was also the year of Stanley Kramer’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, depicting an interracial relationship, starring Sydney Poitier, Katherine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy. Miscegenation was clearly no longer a topic that was to be censored in film.

Public attitudes among the white population also underwent change, although it is not clear whether this was a result of the portrayal of miscegenation in the media or, what seems more likely, that the media were gradually reflecting changes in attitudes, including greater tolerance in racial matters. Although a significant percentage of the white population in the United States continued to object to racial intermarriage, the number of racially mixed marriages increased more than fourfold after the 1960s.

Artistic productions, including novels and films, have occasionally emphasized interracial relations without creating a furor. The film The Bodyguard (1992), for example, with its interracial affair, was originally conceived in the 1970s (for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen), but had to wait until 1992 to be made (with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner). Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever (1991), focussing on interracial sexual and romantic relations, was well received. The film Showgirls (1995) was panned by practically all critics, but the interracial sexual relationships portrayed in it were hardly mentioned. The film Jefferson in Paris (1995) took for granted that Thomas Jefferson had an intimate relationship with his black slave Sally Hemmings, although some historians argue that there is little evidence that they had such a relationship. Pornographic films depicting interracial sex have been common and appear to have sold well, judging from their marketing, which has tended to emphasize interracial themes over sex. Such films have not, however, been subjected to greater censorship than other categories of X-rated pictures.

Public disapproval of miscegenation and interracial marriage declined greatly into the twenty-first century, and in turn censorship of such issues became less common. The election of President Barack Obama, the son of a white mother and a black father, significantly raised the profile of interracial relationships. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, a record 87 percent of Americans approved of intermarriage between blacks and whites, a drastic increase from 4 percent in 1958 and even from 48 percent in 1995. However, media portrayals of miscegenation remained far less common than relationships between people of the same race. Additionally, legal disputes over the subject still occasionally appeared. For example, in 2009 a judge in Louisiana refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, claiming he worried about the potential future of their children, attracting widespread condemnation from other government officials and the press.

Bibliography

Lemire, Elise Virginia. "Miscegenation": Making Race in America. Philadelphia: U of Philadelphia P, 2002. Print.

McGrath, Ann. Illicit Love: Interracial Sex and Marriage in the United States and Australia. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2015. Print.

Pascoe, Peggy. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Scott, Ellen C. Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2015. Print.

Sheffer, Jolie A. The Romance of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism in the United States, 1880–1930. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2013. Print.