Did You Know the Word ‘Miscegenation’ Was Invented by Democrats as a Smear?

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Nineteenth-century American newspapers were, in general, partisan in their politics, and the New York World was a Democrat paper. In 1863, two writers for the World, George Wakeman and David Goodman Croly, wrote a 72-page pamphlet that was published anonymously with the title, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro.

The title term of the pamphlet was a new coinage, from the Latin words for “mix” and “race,” and the subject was decidedly inflammatory. During his 1858 debates with Democrats Stephen Douglass, Abraham Lincoln had been forced to stipulate that while he was opposed to slavery, he was not an advocate of “social equality” and certainly not in favor what that loaded phrase implied, “amalgamation” as it was then commonly termed. Republicans were very sensitive to such accusations, since even those whites who adamantly opposed slavery were in general horrifed by the thought of “amalgamation.” (Indeed, there was a strong element of white separatism in the “Free Soil” movement, and some Midwestern states had antebellum laws forbidding free blacks from settling there.)

Such was the context, then, within which the Miscegenation pamphlet was anonymously published. Though written by two Democrats, the argument was a sort of deadpan satire, written as a political hoax. The pamphlet argued in favor of interracial unions, asserting that mixed-race nations were actually superior to mono-racial nations, and put that argument into an explicitly political context:

It is idle to maintain that this present war is not a war for the negro … It is a war, if you please, of amalgamation … a war looking, as its final fruit, to the blending of the white and black… Let the war go on… until church, and state, and society recognize not only the propriety but the necessity of the fusion of the white and black—in short, until the great truth shall be declared in our public documents and announced in the messages of our Presidents, that it is desirable the white man should marry the black woman and the white woman the black man.

To further their hoax, Wakeman and  Croly sent their disingenuous pamphlet to leading abolitionists, requesting their endorsements, which some of them willingly supplied in letters. The pamphlet was also advertised in abolitionist journals, and then the authors — whose identities were not discovered until years later — sprang their trap.

They provided copies of Miscegenation and of the abolitionist letters praising the pamphlet to an Ohio Democratic congressman, who gave a February 1864 speech in Congress denouncing the pamphlet’s doctrine and its advocates, suggesting that it expressed the Republican Party’s secret radical policy goals. A month later, Horace Greeley of the Republican paper, the New York Tribune, replied to Cox’s speech in an editorial that conveyed a laissez-faire attitude toward interracial marriage. In response, the World — the Democrat paper for which the pamphlet’s anonymous authors worked — published its own editorial, declaring that “the leading Republican journal of the country is the unblushing advocate of ‘miscegenation,’ which it ranks with the highest questions of social and political philosophy.” Thus began a national controversy that continued for months.

The “Miscegenation Hoax” was a political dirty trick by Democrats from start to finish, and demonstrates how the party has always opportunistically exploited racial animosity for partisan advantage. Indeed, it is one of the marvels of world history that the Democrats, who spent the first 150 years of their existence winning elections by appealing to white racism, were able to become the party of “civil rights” without so much as a blush of shame. (“Civil rights” requiring scare-quotes to convey its actual meaning as a partisan slogan used by Democrats, exactly as “miscegenation” was originally coined for partisan purposes.)

This extended history lesson was necessary as a preamble to a most unusual (and ironic) partisan attack made by a liberal journalist:

Publishing sources familiar with the contents of author Joe McGinniss’ highly-anticipated book “The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin” have revealed shocking secrets that will impact her decision to enter the 2012 presidential race.
In the book, which will be published on September 20th, McGinniss claims Sarah had a steamy interracial hookup with basketball stud GLEN RICE less than a year before she eloped with her husband Todd.
Sarah hooked up with the NBA great, then a 6-foot-8 junior at the University of Michigan when he was playing in a college basketball tournament in Alaska in 1987, the book says. At the time, Sarah, just out of college, was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU.
A publishing source told The ENQUIRER that McGinniss claims Sarah had a “fetish” for black men at the time and he quotes a friend as saying Sarah had “hauled (Rice’s) ass down.”

What a pathetic travesty to see Joe McGinniss, who gained national fame for The Selling of the President, reduced to such a lurid and digusting excuse for “journalism.” What possible purpose could his claims serve, except as a vile personal smear on a Republican politician who is also a wife, mother and grandmother?

And where are all the liberal advocates of “civil rights” — or for that matter, where are the feminists? — who should be denouncing McGinniss for purposefully sensationalizing racial and sexual issues in this tawdry way for mere publicity and political partisanship?

They have no shame. They have no honor. They are Democrats, implacable enemies of everything good and true, and no decent or honest person could ever associate himself with that foul party.

UPDATE: Good Lord!

“The Rogue” suggests that Todd Palin and the young Sarah Heath took drugs. It also says that she lacked boyfriends and was a racist. And it includes this: “A friend says, ‘Sarah and her sisters had a fetish for black guys for a while.’ ” Mr. McGinniss did in 2011 make a phone call to the former N.B.A. basketball player Glen Rice, who is black, and prompted him to acknowledge having fond memories of Sarah Heath. While Mr. Rice avoids specifics and uses the words “respectful” and “a sweetheart,” Mr. McGinniss eggs him on with the kind of flagrantly leading question he seems to have habitually asked. In Mr. Rice’s case: “So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?”

Really? I mean, really? Never mind. There’s more serious recklessness by McGinniss.

53 comments

  1. So the Stalker, Joe McGiniss, publishes a lurid tale worthy of the National Enquirer. Barack H. Obama II is biracial. And the point is? She’s already been sexualized, so… this is a new angle guaranteed to cause angst and anxiety among Establishmentarians?

    The only folks who are going to be seriously lathered about this are klansfolk and the New Black Panthers.

  2. Wyclef Jean likes Sarah Palin:

    “Cause she’s rad. She’s shrewd. She’s cool. Because at the end of the day, I’m for the people, because this is the United States of America…this is what America’s really about. Anyone should have the right to say, ‘Look I can do the job and this is what qualifies me to do the job.’”

    Well either that or he thinks he might have a chance with her.

  4. “And where are all the liberal advocates of “civil rights” — or for that matter, where are the feminists? – who should be denouncing McGinniss for purposefully sensationalizing sexual and sexual issues in this tawdry way for mere publicity and political partisanship?”
    And of course, don’t forget book sales.

  5. It’s weird: Liberals would loudly denounce any Republican who attacked a Democrat for having had an interracial romance. Yet the liberal McGinniss makes such an attack against Sarah Palin, depicting her as having succumbed to “Jungle Fever,” and from the Left we now hear … crickets.

  6. “They have no shame. They have no honor. They are Democrats, implacable enemies of everything good and true, and no decent or honest person could ever associate himself with that foul party.”
     
    Amen and spot on. They must be destroyed.

  7. They must be destroyed.

    Amen. This is what most Republicans refuse to confront: The Democrats are sworn to the absolute destruction of the GOP, while the GOP imagines that permanent coexistence is possible.

  9. Which is precisely why a second Revolution, followed by a second “exile of the Tories”, is necessary and inevitable.

  11. The policy of the democrat party since it’s inception has been that brown-colored folks are not fully human. The party preaches the same message to this day. To the average benevolent democrat, “the blacks” are a race of retarded children who need protection both by and from their Master Race…in the interests of justice no less. This is why we have a President Brakabama and not a President Booker T Washington.

    Vengeance is mine sayeth the left.

  14. I would kick ass over at AOS and be a voice of reason and sanity!  But I would miss you guys. 

    Oh wait, did you mean McGinniss? 

  15. I don’t understand how Sarah Palin’s sex life is any of my business, as a voter or a citizen, or even as a woman, unless she was passing out political favors in return for sex. I see no evidence – even in this squib – of any such charge.

    Digging about in anyone’s sexual history is prurient and repugnant.

    As you say, where are the feminists?

  22. After reading http://nyti.ms/oF3D3I & http://bit.ly/nxTs4K I think Sarah should follow in Clint Eastwood’s path and sue. Especially if she isn’t running for POTUS.

    And just let me say that the conservatives who are saying that this helps Sarah because it “proves she’s not a racist” are just as misguided and foolish as the vile Dems who push this trash.

  23. It takes work now too, to be good at it without being too obvious. Full disclosure, I trolled people at my own Yahoo Group, and when I finally confessed, on April Fools Day, a few got the joke but most of them hated me and the group died shortly thereafter. Tis a thankless task, being a troll.

  39. But don’t you see the trap that’s being set. If she sued the headlines would be “Sara Palin Outraged At Rumors Of Sexual Relationship With A Black Man”, as though the idea that she had a relationship with a black man is something she’s deeply ashamed of.

    Another one might be “Angered At Revelation Of Hypocrisy, Sara Palin Sues”

    Of course there is or would be no hypocrisy involved, but the implicit charge would be that Tea Party conservatives are by definition “racist”.

  40. Of course you all do know this is a lie, don’t you? It has to be. Bear in mind, if a white woman ever has a sexual relationship with a black man there’s no way in hell she’s ever going to be sexually satisfied married to a white man, and that means she could never be emotionally satisfied either, because the lack of sexual satisfaction would be so frustrating it would ruin the marriage in all but name.

    Of course, Sarah technically isn’t married to a white man, Todd is part Eskimo, a people of Asian descent. Which means she would be even more frustrated.

    So no, sorry folks, there’s just nothing to this shit.

  41. […] New York Times: McGinnis Book Is Trash On September 15, 2011, in Sarah Palin, by TWB // .nrelate_flyout {display:block; right: -400px; bottom: 0px; width:360px;} #nrelate_flyout_open{display:block; right: -80px;bottom: 0px;} #nrelate_flyout_close{background: #fff url(http://pohdiaries.com/wp-content/plugins/nrelate-flyout/images/close_window.gif) no-repeat 0 0} // 0) { begin = document.cookie.indexOf(NameOfCookie+"="); if (begin != -1) { begin += NameOfCookie.length+1; end = document.cookie.indexOf(";", begin); if (end == -1) end = document.cookie.length; return unescape(document.cookie.substring(begin, end)); } } return "false"; } function nr_fo_set_closed_cookie(value,domain) { var NameOfCookie="nr_fo_closed"; var ExpireDate = new Date (); // Expiration date set to 2 hours. Must give at least 2 hours until view gets incremented for this url per user. ExpireDate.setTime(ExpireDate.getTime() + (7*24*60*60*1000)); document.cookie = NameOfCookie + "=" + value + "; expires=" + ExpireDate.toGMTString()+"; path=/" + "; domain="+domain ; } value=nr_fo_get_closed_cookie(); if(value=="false") nr_fo_closed=false; else nr_fo_closed=true; var nr_fo_hidden = true; jQuery(function($){$(window).scroll(function() {var lastScreen;lastScreen = getScrollY() + $(window).height() < ($("#nr_fo_bot_of_post").offset().top) – ($("#nr_fo_top_of_post").offset().top) ? false : true;if (lastScreen && !nr_fo_closed && getScrollY()!=0 && nRelate.flyout_show) {$(".nrelate_flyout").stop().animate({"right":"0px"});nr_fo_hidden = false}else if (nr_fo_closed && lastScreen && getScrollY()!=0 && nRelate.flyout_show) {$("#nrelate_flyout_open").stop().animate({"right":"0px"});nr_fo_hidden=false;}else if (!nr_fo_hidden && !nr_fo_closed) {$(".nrelate_flyout").stop().animate({"right":"-400px"});nr_fo_hidden = true;}else if (!nr_fo_hidden && nr_fo_closed) {$("#nrelate_flyout_open").stop().animate({"right":"-80px"});nr_fo_hidden = true;}});$("#nrelate_flyout_close").live("click",function() { $(".nrelate_flyout").stop().animate({"right":"-400px"}); $("#nrelate_flyout_open").stop().animate({"right":"0px"}); nr_fo_closed = true; nr_fo_hidden = false; nr_fo_set_closed_cookie(true,"pohdiaries.com");});$("#nrelate_flyout_open").live("click",function() { $("#nrelate_flyout_open").stop().animate({"right":"-80px"}); $(".nrelate_flyout").stop().animate({"right":"0px"});nr_fo_closed = false; nr_fo_hidden = false; nr_fo_set_closed_cookie(false,"pohdiaries.com");});}); var entity_decoded_nr_url = jQuery('').html("http://api.nrelate.com/fow_wp/0.49.2/?tag=nrelate_flyout&keywords=New+York+Times%3A+McGinnis+Book+Is+Trash&domain=pohdiaries.com&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpohdiaries.com%2Fnew-york-times-mcginnis-book%2F&nr_div_number=1&quot;).text(); nRelate.getNrelatePosts(entity_decoded_nr_url); //]]> Tweet There’s no institution that would like to see Sarah Palin “put in her place” more than the New York Times. Except for maybe MSNBC. That being said, even the Times has to admit that the upcoming smut book by Joe McGinnis is just that. Smut. […]

  48. “[T]he media now force interracial images into the public mind and a number of perfectly rational people react to these images with an altogether natural revulsion.

    Um, force? So Sarah was *forced* to have sex with a man she found attractive? Said man was *forced* to reciprocate (or least confirm that he and Sarah did have a relationship of some sort and that he had a crush on her after)?

    Good lord, she’s not a fucking nun! Get a grip, Stacy!

  50. How much nonsense can be crammed into one post and it’s comments?  Let’s find out!

    “The “Miscegenation Hoax” was a political dirty trick by Democrats from start to finish, and demonstrates how the party has always opportunistically exploited racial animosity for partisan advantage. Indeed, it is one of the marvels of world history that the Democrats, who spent the first 150 years of their existence winning elections by appealing to white racism, were able to become the party of “civil rights” without so much as a blush of shame. (“Civil rights” requiring scare-quotes to convey its actual meaning as a partisan slogan used by Democrats, exactly as “miscegenation” was originally coined for partisan purposes.)”

    It only seems like a marvel if you’re a hack.  Democrats felt no shame for embracing the cause of civil rights because that’s not really anything to be ashamed of.

    ” What possible purpose could his claims serve, except as a vile personal smear on a Republican politician who is also a wife, mother and grandmother?”

    Some might find the claim interesting because it’s yet another example of Palin not practicing what she preaches. 

    And the fact that you think McGinnis’ claim is a vile personal smear says more about you than him or any liberal

    “And where are all the liberal advocates of “civil rights” — or for that matter, where are the feminists? – who should be denouncing McGinniss for purposefully sensationalizing racial and sexual issues in this tawdry way for mere publicity and political partisanship?”

     The only person “sensationalizing racial and sexual issues” is you and other conservatives. 

    “It’s weird: Liberals would loudly denounce any Republican who attacked a Democrat for having had an interracial romance. Yet the liberal McGinniss makes such an attack against Sarah Palin, depicting her as having succumbed to “Jungle Fever,” and from the Left we now hear … crickets.”

    McGinniss didn’t attack Palin for having an interracial romance.  McGinniss reported that Sarah Palin had a one night stand with Glen Rice back in 1987.

    “The policy of the democrat party since it’s inception has been that brown-colored folks are not fully human. The party preaches the same message to this day. To the average benevolent democrat, “the blacks” are a race of retarded children who need protection both by and from their Master Race average benevolent  average benevolent ..in the interests of justice no less. This is why we have a President Brakabama and not a President Booker T Washington.”

    I think Republicans should try to attract black voters with this message.  “How can you vote for Democrats?  Don’t you understand that they think you are a race of retarded children who need protection both by and from their Master Race…in the interests of justice no less.  On the other hand, your  average benevolent Republican thinks you’re  a race of retarded children who are incapable of figuring out how to vote in your own self-interest.”

    “But don’t you see the trap that’s being set. If she sued the headlines would be “Sara Palin Outraged At Rumors Of Sexual Relationship With A Black Man”, as though the idea that she had a relationship with a black man is something she’s deeply ashamed of. 

    Another one might be “Angered At Revelation Of Hypocrisy, Sara Palin Sues”
    Of course there is or would be no hypocrisy involved, but the implicit charge would be that Tea Party conservatives are by definition “racist”.”
    God, you people are ridiculous.  The only people making a big deal about the fact that Glen Rice is black are conservaives.   If she sues the headlines would say “”Sarah Palin Outraged At Rumors Of Sexual Relationship”.

    And how in the world is there no hypocrisy involved?  Sarah Palin makes a big deal about her Christian values, one of which is a prohibition on premarital sex.”The libs/McGinniss  consider an attraction for black males to be a “fetish”.      Huh??”Hahahahahaha.  Pathetic.”I don’t understand.  Its an insult to say that Sarah likes black cock?”It seems that conservatives think so.  McCain thinks merely reporting that Palin had sex with a black man is “an attack” and “sensationalizing racial issues””I’m confused. How does enjoying the fruits of interracial love qualify one as racist?Did they update the Newspeak Dictionary while I wasn’t looking?”

    Huh? Who said having interracial sex makes one a racist?

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