Interracial Intimacies
Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption
-
- $5.99
-
- $5.99
Publisher Description
With the same piercing intelligence as the bestselling Say it Loud!, Interracial Intimacies hits a nerve at the center of American society: race relations and our most intimate ties to each other.
“The best book written on the subject, an exhaustive source of deep, rich scholarship and surefooted brilliant analysis.”—Seattle Times
Analyzing the tremendous changes in the history of America’s racial dynamics, Randall Kennedy challenges us to examine how prejudices and biases still fuel fears and inform our sexual, marital, and family choices. He takes us from the injustices of the slave era up to present-day battles over race matching adoption policies, which seek to pair children with adults of the same race. He tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics, the historic role of legal institutions in policing racial boundaries, and the real and imagined pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy. A bracing, much-needed look at the way we have lived in the past, Interracial Intimacies is also a hopeful book, offering a potent vision of our future as a multiracial democracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Does a biracial child from Louisiana belong with the black family who wants to adopt her or in the indifferent foster care system that has classified her as white? Kennedy, who created a media storm with Nigger, begins his third book about race with an obscure 1952 legal case that addresses this question, then traces the customs, laws and myths surrounding interracial relationships that came before and after it. As in Nigger, Kennedy's controversial examination of the taboo word, much of this book centers on legal actions and court rulings. It is laced with enough anecdotes and pop culture references, however, to make it an accessible, compelling read for anyone. The Harvard law professor even wrote to people who placed what he calls "racially discriminatory" personal ads (SWM seeks SWF, for example), asking them to explain themselves (few did). For the most part, the book stays focused on black and white relationships, and Kennedy dutifully but unremarkably covers well-known examples such as the slavery era's Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and the 20th century's O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson. He is at his best and most instructive tackling issues like racial passing (he devotes an entire chapter to a mid-20th-century interracial couple and their daughter's Imitation of Life like attempts to pass for white) and interracial adoption (he deplores race matching as "a destructive practice in all its various guises"). While Kennedy points out that race relations have made huge strides since the 1952 Louisiana adoption case, he also openly conveys his disappointment at how America remains "a pigmentocracy" influenced by white supremacist notions. The book provides plenty of examples to back up this assertion, but stops short of offering tangible solutions.
