Interracial Couples, Intimacy, and Therapy

Crossing Racial Borders

Kyle Killian

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780231536479
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Grounded in the personal narratives of twenty interracial couples with multiracial children, this volume uniquely explores interracial couples' encounters with racism and discrimination, partner difference, family identity, and counseling and therapy. It intimately portrays how race, class, and gender shape relationship dynamics and a partner's sense of belonging. Assessment tools and intervention techniques help professionals and scholars work effectively with multiracial families as they negotiate difference, resist familial and societal disapproval, and strive for increased intimacy. The book concludes with a discussion of interracial couples in cinema and literature, the sensationalization of multiracial relations in mass media, and how to further liberalize partner selection across racial borders.

One

RACIALIZED BODIES AND BORDERS IN THE UNITED STATES

ANECDOTAL–AND STATISTICAL–EVIDENCE ABOUNDS to Confirm that some people carry a very negative bias toward those who are different from them in race, ethnicity, or religion, and that some people are still vehemently opposed to interracial relationships. In 2000 Alabama repealed a ban on interracial marriage, the last state to do so. While the repeal of such a ban certainly represents progress, the distressing backstory to this event is that 41 percent of Alabamans voted against lifting the ban. In December 2004, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation into a hate mail campaign against prominent black men married to white women (National Public Radio, Dec. 30, 2005). In 2009, the FBI issued a press release stating that anti-black hate crimes had risen 8 percent from 2006, whereas the combined total of hate crimes against all other races in the same period declined by 19 percent (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2009). Cross-burning incidents continue across the country, and since President Obama’s election, the numbers of hate groups (i.e., nativists, Neo-Nazis, etc.) and militias have exploded to record levels (Southern Poverty Law Center 2010, 2012). And in late 2009, a white justice of the peace in Louisiana refused to issue a marriage license to a black and white couple out of concern for any children they might have. Mr. Bardwell said, “I think those children suffer, and I won’t help put them through it” (New York Times, Oct. 17, 2009). What do we make of this?

One interpretation is that while a great deal of progress has been made, racial borders and divisions are alive and well in the United States, and interracial marriage is still a hot-button issue within and across racial communities. Pressing this button activates a host of struggles and contestations, including racialized and sexualized stereotypes, opposition from family and friends, and community rejection (Childs 2005). Marrying across race, and being seen with an interracial partner or multiracial children, raises important and often volatile questions: Who belongs, and in what social spaces? Which bodies can mix with what other bodies? What borders are being crossed, by whom, and with what potential consequences? We may have come a long way in the past century in terms of civil rights and tolerance for persons racially and ethnically different from ourselves, but reactions to interracial marriage clearly indicate that there is more work to be done. This chapter discusses the concept of borders, gives a brief history of interracial sexual relations in the United States, and presents current trends and tensions surrounding interracial marriage. This chapter sets the stage for the presentation and analysis of interracial couples’ narratives regarding the impact of border crossings on their lives in chapters 2 through 4.

DEFINING AND DEMARCATING BORDERS

Borders are commonly defined as lines officially separating countries and regions. As markers of geographically distinct spaces, borders abound in the US context. Stereotypes of Northern, “Yankee” carpetbaggers and “good old boy” Southern “rebels,” the East Coast/West Coast rivalry in the rap/hip-hop communities, and jokes told about people living across the state line in contiguous states: all represent the recognition and negotiation of regional differences. Crossing the Mason-Dixon line during Jim Crow, or the Ohio River before the Emancipation Proclamation, or, in modern times, venturing into another gang’s territory or turf “wearing colors,” are all types of border crossings that mean different things to different people in particular sociohistorical contexts. But borders frequently exist in less official, and more informal and implicit forms, demarcating which people belong, and which do not, in particular spaces. To cross a border is to penetrate a social space with its own rules, norms, values, and expectations.

Discussing important intersections between geography and the study of whiteness, Dwyer and Jones state that white sociospatial epistemology “relies upon discrete categorizations of space—nation, public/private and neighborhood—which provide significant discursive resources for the cohesion and maintenance of white identities. It also relies upon the ability to survey and navigate social space from a position of authority” (2000:210). Thus, border crossings frequently precipitate inspection of one’s social credentials and identity (or social location), and often involve risk. Persons, often self-appointed (e.g., the Minutemen of the Texas and Arizona border regions and beyond), perform the role of border guards, policing the line, checking for any potential violators of the dominant group’s social norms and expectations. This kind of process is epitomized by talking heads who regularly send out the alarm about the “epidemic” and the scourge of illegal immigration into the United States. In such “news reports,” the economic forces underlying the phenomenon of international migrant labor are consistently rendered invisible in favor of calls for a strict policing of the flows of legal and illegal migrant laborers across the border. While national and regional differences and state rivalries are geographically based, within states, counties, cities, and towns other differences are utilized to construct the roles of “insiders” and “outsiders.”

Borders traditionally have been “lines or zones, strips of land, which are places of separation and contact or confrontation, areas of blockage or passage … fixed or shifting zones, continuous or broken lines” (Balibar 2002:77). Between and within geographical spaces, bodies also function as borders. Bodies turn into borders that serve a polysemic function; that is, borders have the ability to create differentiation between individuals (Balibar 2002). “Black” bodies (or other bodies) become the borders, and their very “existence” is “neither this nor that” (Balibar 2002:78–79). When institutions constructed around the social organizing principles of race and class fix their bodies as borders, white and black bodies become tools and strategies of power. Balibar suggests that such borders have become heterogeneous and ubiquitous. Just as women’s bodies become the borders that reassert the asymmetrical power of the “Western man” in the Internet marital trade (Killian and Agathangelou 2008), the bodies of persons of color become borders that demarcate the asymmetrical power of white people in contrast to ethnic minorities in our society. Conceivably, white bodies become a site of power that creates a space for the fulfillment of the fantasies and desires of those persons feeling disenfranchised in a racist society.

As it defines who has access to power and privilege and who does not, the border between white bodies and black bodies is constantly patrolled and defended by stakeholders (usually white people), and transgressions across it are likely to result in disciplining or punishment (Farley 2000). As Dalmage stated:

The manner in which people react to individuals who cross the color line highlights the investment, the sense of solidarity, and perhaps the comfort these observers have with existing categories. Perhaps most important, the reaction shows the wide acceptance of racial essentialism as the explanation for the color line. When the color line is crossed, the idea of immutable, biologically based racial categories is threatened. The individual who has crossed the line must be explained away or punished so that essentialist categories can remain in place.

(2000:40–41)

Thus our social locations are defined by much more than just geography. Identities are differentiated along multiple systems of difference. Our locations on axes of power, such as education, social class, and sexual orientation, contribute to the social status and accompanying privilege we possess in our daily lives. And in American society, race and skin color are aspects of personal social location that have pervasively and persistently defined who belongs and who is to be excluded. Taking on multiple meanings for different persons and communities, race is a social construction that carries profound consequences when employed in social contexts. Unsubstantiated myths and stereotypes associated with racial groups have been, and today continue to be, seen as “facts” and employed to justify, or rationalize, a host of prejudices and racist social policies (e.g., Jim Crow, and anti-miscegenation laws).¹ Categories of race often serve as a means of keeping others out of social groups and communities. To some extent, they represent “lines in the sand,” the crossing of which can carry serious, and lethal, consequences. Being in the “wrong neighborhood,” on the “wrong side of town,” or on the “wrong side of the tracks”—clichéd phrases grounded in geographical metaphors—also refer to differences along the lines of race, and of class.

Fryer noted that:

Courts often stated that blacks would be made equal under the law but remain subordinate in informal, intimate spheres of life. In Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537 [1896]), the U.S. Supreme Court argued that integration in schools, parks, railroads, and courts could not be mandated because they were private, social concerns. The last civil rights to be granted pertained to the laws governing social interactions, like whom to marry and where to live.

(2007:71–72)

While residential neighborhoods and social networks are more integrated today than they were in the 1970s, Fryer went on to observe that in “a typical American city, 64% of blacks would have to move to ensure an even distribution of blacks across the city” (2007:71). Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Centre, an anti-bias advocacy and litigation group, stated, “Residential segregation underlies virtually every racial disparity in America, from education to jobs to the delivery of health care” (New York Times, August 10, 2009). In a court case litigated by Mr. Gurian, Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at the City University of New York, found that “racial isolation is increasing for blacks, falling slightly for whites,” and that “income level has very little impact on the degree of residential racial segregation experienced by African-Americans” (New York Times, Aug. 10, 2009). Further, friendship networks in public schools are still quite segregated, with the average student possessing not even one friend of a different race (Echenique and Fryer 2008).

It is also important to note that while whites can usually avoid spaces where they anticipate they will be unwanted (e.g., black neighborhoods) because of the existence of gated communities and segregated neighborhoods, persons of color are not afforded the same opportunity to move without fear as they pass through residential and commercial spaces in the United States (Dwyer and Jones 2000). Social mobility and the freedom to move without feelings of terror and dread highlight the “pervasive embeddedness of whiteness”—in which “whiteness is about who is able to monitor social spaces of travel” (Dwyer and Jones 2000:218). A wry observation on this phenomenon can be found in the pop-cultural phrase “DWB,” “driving while black,” a reference to the criminalization of black drivers (see Staples 2009).

Further, African Americans are well aware that different standards are applied by police officers in situations where a black person is involved. New York State Senator Eric Adams, a black, retired New York City police captain, told the New York Times that black men had a higher probability of being locked up for getting “lippy” (police parlance for being verbally combative), an observation supported by research on double standards applied to black and white persons in a variety of social situations.² Senator Adams added, “The ‘uppity Negro’ may not have committed a crime, but you know what? [He or she’s] got a big mouth” (New York Times, July 25, 2009). These comments were made after Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a noted scholar on racial identity and equality (and a black man married to a white woman), was arrested in his own home by a white male Cambridge police officer following an anonymous tip that two men were trying to break into the house. It is interesting to note that Gates was handcuffed and taken to the police station after his identity as the owner of the home had been established to the officer’s satisfaction (partially through the viewing of family photographs of himself, his white wife, and their multiracial children). Such instances reveal that the freedom to travel in one’s home, much less in public spaces, can be suspended at an officer’s discretion. This incident also highlights that, in the eyes of the law and society in general, partners in interracial relationships may not be on equal footing and may not be accorded the same requisite rights and privileges. Thus, their experiences can be radically different.

As Childs asserted, “Within the social worlds of interracial couples borders certainly exist—borders between black and white and between race and sexuality” (2005:11). As a result of the legacy of racism and discrimination, crossing the borders of race in the act of choosing one’s mate can carry serious consequences in one’s personal network of family and friends and in one’s interactions in the wider world. Crossing racial borders challenges the organizing principle of homogamy, which has held that couple and family formation is an enterprise that is biologically based, and racially “pure.” Interracial couples challenge basic understandings about what constitutes a “normative” social and intimate relationship, and they disrupt the idea of a “pure” race, or blood. Hence, interracial couples, much like gay and lesbian couples, disturb and perturb narrowly punctuated norms about what are legitimate and acceptable family units in our society.

In addition, a hierarchy of acceptability exists among various interracial couple combinations. Lewandowski and Jackson (2001) found that African American/European American couples were perceived as significantly less compatible than Asian American/European American couples. In addition, respondents in the study found it easier to imagine themselves in an interracial marriage with an Asian American than with an African American partner, highlighting a persistent resistance to black and white interracial combinations.

Looking at the statistics set forth by the 2004 General Social Survey, we can get a sense of just how controversial, and potentially divisive, racial border crossings are. I am well aware of the uses and abuses of statistics, especially during political campaigns. What statistics say, and do not say, is often equally important. The Pew Research Center statistics quoted in the introductory chapter did not include a category of those who neither favored nor opposed (that is, the profoundly undecided) interracial marriage in their families. In contrast, here are the 2004 General Social Survey results:

Note that a significant portion—nearly half of whites, blacks, and other ethnic minorities—reported ambivalence about a close relative marrying interracially. These results indicate that there are a lot of people in the United States (well over 60 percent) who are not comfortable with interracial marriage when asked to consider how they would feel if it happened in their family. Such statistics help constitute, and reproduce, a popular discourse that surrounds questions of mate selection. That is, the consumption of such statistics supports an episteme that points toward “the best” or “most acceptable” approach to social and intimate relations—homogamy (Killian 2001, 2003, 2012).

Table 1.1

WHAT ABOUT HAVING A CLOSE RELATIVE OR FAMILY MEMBE...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction What Interracial Couples Can Tell Us
• 1. Racialized Bodies and Borders in the United States
• 2. Crossing a Black-and-White Border: Choosing the Other
• 3. Crossing Community Borders: Families of Origin, Friends, and Society at Large
• 4. A Nexus of Borders: The Next Generation, and Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender
• 5. Raising (And Erasing) Difference: Dominant and Marginalized Discourses in Interracial Couples’ Narratives
• 6. Systemic Interventions with Interracial Couples
• 7. (RE)Presentations of Interracial Couples in Cinema, Literature, and Research
• Appendix A. Summary of Participant Information
• Appendix B. Assessment Inventories
• Appendix C. Directions for Scoring the Assessment Inventories
• Appendix D. Resources for Interracial Couples and Multiracial Families and Individuals
• Notes
• References
• Index