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Introduction 1 1 Introduction THE INTERRACIAL CANARY , As for you two and the problems you’re going to have, they seem almost unimaginable. . . . I’m sure you know what you are up against. There will be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked, offended, and appalled at the two of you. The 1967 Academy Award–winning movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner concluded with this warning from a white father to his daughter and her “Negro” fiancé. That same year, the Supreme Court overturned any laws against interracial marriage as unconstitutional . Yet how does the contemporary U.S. racial landscape compare? In this ever-changing world of race and color, where do black-white couples fit, and has this unimaginable opposition disappeared? While significant changes have occurred in the realm of race relations largely from the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, U.S. society still has racial borders. Most citizens live, work, and socialize with others of the same race—as if living within borders, so to speak—even though there are no longer legal barriers such as separate facilities or laws against intermarriage. Yet if these largely separate racial worlds exist, what social world(s) do blackwhite couples live in and how do they navigate these racial borders? Even more important, how do white communities and black communities view and respond to black-white couples? In other words, do they navigate the racial borders by enforcing, ignoring, or actively trying to dismantle them? My goal is to explore these issues to better understand the contemporary beliefs and practices surrounding black-white couples. This book takes an ethnographic look at interracial couples. Unlike most ethnographies, however, it is not geographically located but rather an exploration of the social worlds of interracial couples. My data comes from varied sources, including Web sites, 2 Navigating Interracial Borders black-white couples, Hollywood films, white communities, and black communities. Black-white couples are often heralded as a sign that racial borders or barriers no longer exist. For example, in Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage , Identity, and Adoption, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy argues : “Americans are becoming increasingly multiracial in their tastes, affections and identities. The rates of interracial dating, marriage and adoption are inching, and in some places rocketing, upward. This trend is, in my view, a positive good. It signals that formal and informal racial boundaries are fading.”1 Furthermore, the idea that American society is “color-blind,” or at least steadily moving in that direction, has become extremely popular and widely heard. The notion that not acknowledging race or refusing to “see” color is desirable has generated wide acceptance. In two major news magazines , Time and Newsweek, there have been articles on “color-blind love” and interracial couples, a phenomenon that has spread across the country.2 This color-blind discourse, or color-blindness, has been identified by various scholars as the dominant ideology based on a belief that refusing to see or acknowledge race is politically correct and humanistic.3 Colorblindness is based on the belief that “if we were to make people aware of racial differences, simply by noticing we would reintroduce the illusion of race and thus inevitably polarize and divide, or perhaps even worse, stigmatize .” By not acknowledging race or racial difference, the problem of race disappears—somewhat of a see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil mentality .4 In her work on whiteness, Ruth Frankenberg identifies color-blindness as “color-power evasiveness,” where race is viewed as increasingly less significant , emphasizing the importance of the individual. The growing visibility of interracial couples is often cited as an example of how “color-blind” society is, even in matters of the heart. Yet this color-blind ideology or colorpower evasiveness is problematic because it ignores, even disguises, the power and privilege that still characterizes race relations in this country.5 Can anyone—even interracial couples—really be color-blind in a “colorconscious ” society like ours? Despite the color-blind discourse, there is also an emphasis on multiculturalism—celebrating, or at least recognizing, the role race plays in individuals’ lives as members of racial and ethnic groups. Interracial couples are also seen as a symbol of this multicultural world and an example of how race and racial difference can be recognized and celebrated. Frankenberg defines this alternate discourse of race consciousness as an insistence on the importance of recognizing race and difference, understood in historical, po- [18.191.174.168] Project MUSE...

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