Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption [Hardcover]

Randall Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 7, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0375402551 | ISBN-13: 978-0375402555 | Edition: 1st

From the author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word and Race, Crime, and the Law—a tour de force about the controversial issue of personal interracial intimacy as it exists within ever-changing American social mores and within the rule of law.

Fears of transgressive interracial relationships, informed over the centuries by ugly racial biases and fantasies, still linger in American society today. This brilliant study—ranging from plantation days to the present—explores the historical, sociological, legal, and moral issues that continue to feed and complicate that fear.

In chapters filled with provocative and cleanly stated logic and enhanced by intriguing historical anecdotes, Randall Kennedy tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics and of race in sexual politics, the prominence of legal institutions in defining racial distinction and policing racial boundaries, the imagined and real pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy, and the competing arguments around interracial romance, sex, and family life throughout American history.

In Interracial Intimacies, Randall Kennedy offers nothing less than a bracing, much-needed ethic of multiracial living.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* A Harvard law professor and the author of, most recently, Nigger [BKL F 15 02], Kennedy offers a brilliant analysis of one the most controversial areas of American race relations--interracial sex. Kennedy weaves together history, law, literature, politics, and social policy in a searing examination of how blacks and whites have intermixed since Africans were brought to the U.S. as slaves. Beginning with the rape and sexual exploitation of black women by white men, Kennedy examines the underlying myths and stereotypes that have shaped social policy on marriage, identity, and adoption and given rise to the convoluted legal and social structure meant to maintain the racial hierarchy. He explores the social context of famous black-white relationships, from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, through boxing champion Jack Johnson's marriages to white women, to the Loving v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court case that outlawed bans on interracial marriage. In addition, Kennedy examines the image of black men as sexual predators bent on raping white women, a charge used to incite lynching. Kennedy also details the nation's shameful history of racial classification and the phenomenon of racial passing as portrayed in movies and literature and as practiced in real life. A comprehensive, well-researched look at the intersection of race and sex in the U.S. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 688 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (January 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375402551
• ISBN-13: 978-0375402555
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #785,824 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A painfully beautiful book September 10, 2003

By Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald

Format:Hardcover

The author pulls the mirror up to our faces and makes us confront our own prejudices today and mourn our prejudices of the past. Of all the things I come away with in this book, I wholeheartedly support the author in his view that race matching in adoption is a destructive practice in all its various guises. Yes, 'it ought to be replaced by a system under which children in need of homes may be assigned to the care of foster or adoptive parents as quickly as reasonably possible.' We have several couples in our neighborhood who have adopted children of other races, and two black children are among them. This is real progress.

Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a full account of the history of legal and social challenges March 13, 2010

By La Reyna

Format:Paperback

Randall's book is a very accurate account of the history of interracial relationships of the Black/nonblack variety, most particularly the troublesome and controversial Black-White relationships and marriage. Mr. Kennedy traces the history of interracial relationships from the Colonial/slavery times to the early decade of the 21st century. Mr. Kennedy really knows his history and law regarding this elephant in the room, i.e., interracial relationships between Blacks and Whites.

I recommend this book along with J.A. Rogers' Sex and Race. I hope people open their eyes to the largely unexplored and controversial issue of multiracial relationships.

9 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Better than his last book July 20, 2003

By Andre M.

Format:Hardcover

This book as a whole is better than his last book whose title I will not name here. I met Randall Kennedy at the college where I teach last year and made it clear to him what I thought of that book. But I like this one. For one thing, it has a lot of rare and little known history such as the sad tale of Black Reactionary George Schuyler and his racially confused daughter, the young lady who was prevented from being adopted in Jim Crow Louisiana due to confusion over her race, and the angry racially-mixed young man who grew up to be a Black Panther. These and numerous other stories are excellently told and are quite informative, as well as facts and figures on interracial marriages and adioption that may surprise street-corner dogmatists on this issue.

This book made me view Dr. Kennedy in a new light. Although I still despise his last book, I will merely agree to disagree with him on that one. I think he is sincerely trying to clear up the confusion that abounds over race in this country on both sides (as he makes clear in the afterword) because he actually has hope that this can be done. The sad thing is that many such people WANT to stay confused to provide an outlet for their personal frustrations and are not likely to read this book. As I have said about John McWhorter, I don't agree with all he says, but since he is not of the Ken Hamblin/George Schuyler reactionary school, we have enough common ground as to where I would be happy to speak to him again.