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.
- Table of Contents
- Acnowledgments
- Introduction: What Interracial Couples Can Tell Us
- Significance of the Book
- Unpacking Basic Concepts: Race, Discrimination, and Miscegenation
- Interracial in the Age of Obama: The Impact of Color-Blind and "Postracial" Discourses
- The Politics of Voice: A Note from the Author
- The Couples, the Interviews, and Analysis
- 1. Racialized Bodies and Borders in the United States
- Defining and Demarcating Borders
- Interracial Borders from the Sixteenth Century to the Present
- Trends in Black-White Intermarriage
- Race and Sex Differences in Marriage Rates: The "Marriage Squeeze"
- Interrracial Mate-Selection Theories
- Summary
- 2. Crossing a Black-and-White Border: Choosing the Other
- Attraction and Falling In Love
- Partners' Reactions to Differences
- Is There Any Difference?
- Negotiating Differences in Axes of Power to Establish a Couple Identity
- In Black and White: The Border of Race
- He Said, She Said: The Border of Gender
- Summary
- 3. Crossing Community Borders: Families of Origin, Friends, and Society at Large
- Social Support and Resistance to the Relationship
- Strategies of Coping with Reactions
- Multiracial Couples and Social Networks
- Partner Sensitivity to Racism: The Community Context
- Summary
- 4. A Nexus of Borders: The Next Generation, and Intersections of Race, Class, and Gender
- The Next Generation and Their Opportunities
- A Persistent Question: "What About the Children?"
- Intersections of Gender and Race
- Intersections of Race and Class
- White Male and Female Partners
- About Difference: Social and Political Dimensions
- Happy Together? Processes Contributing to Couple Identity Formation
- Couple Identities and Negotiation Styles
- Summary
- 5. Raising (adn Erasing) Difference: Dominant and Marginalized Discourses in Interracial Couples' Narratives
- What Is Discourse Analysis?
- The Discourse of Homogamy
- The Discourse of Hypersensitivity
- The Discourse of History's Insignificance
- What These Findings Say About Multiracial Couples
- An Overarching Discourse of "No Race Talk"
- Summary
- 6. Systemic Interventions with Interracial Couples
- The Art of Drawing Distinctions Instead of Conclusions
- What Couples Said About Therapy
- Couples Who Might Present for Therapy
- Specific Assessments and Interventions
- A Narrative Approach to Therapy with Multiracial Couples
- Summary
- 7. (Re)Presentations of Interracial Couples in Cinema, Literature, and Research
- Cinema and Literature: Racial Logics and the Hegemonic Aesthetics of Intimacy
- Interracial Couples' Own Depictions of Their Intimate Relations
- Reflecting on the Research and the Researcher: Integrating the Interview Process
- Are Interracial Couples Different from Intraracial Couples?
- Salience of Identities: Under Which Conditions, and Which Identities
- 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
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