Racial Categories and the Emergence of Miscegenation

A Redenção de Cam (Redemption of Ham) by By Modesto Brocos (Image: Wikipedia) 

A few days ago I received an email from a friend in Seattle that had several links to articles about American history, with a particular focus on African-American history.  One of the links went to an article entitled "The Miscegenation Troll," which is about how the term Miscegenation - nomenclature for romantic and sexual interracial relationships - came about.  In response to the article, I commented on it in an email to my friend saying:

I am glad you sent me this if for no other reason than one of the articles offers some research material for one of my book projects.  In regards to the story about the the Miscegenation pamphlet, I did not know this history.  While the whole thing is a good read, the part about the pamphlet's author denigrating the Irish was a surprise, especially considering so many Black American's are have Irish relatives.  Reading about the pamphlet helped me see my own work a little differently - as less radical and intense as I sometimes fear certain aspect's are.

As I suspect you are aware, racial categories have no scientific [biological] support, which the statement of "in the first place: Before one can speak of “mixed races,” one must believe the races are separate enough" essentially alludes to in the article.

Also as the article states, the abolitionist pamphlet was a hoax; carried out by 2 journalist for a newspaper that was against the abolition of slavery.  And yet, hoax or not, we know that above and beyond Strom Thurmond, for instance, there had to be plenty of White segregationists sexually (romantically?) involved with African-Americans throughout our history - otherwise who sired all the nation's mulattos, quadroons and octaroons?

The article in question is found here.