Customer Reviews

Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption

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Randall Kennedy's Interracial Intimacies is many things: well-written, well-researched, revealing, disturbing, detailed, and hopeful. Kennedy, a Yale-trained lawyer, a professor at Harvard Law, and the author of the books Race, Crime, and the Law, and Nigger, once again focuses on race and the law as he weaves his way through the topics of interracial sex, marriage, identity, and adoption. Right from the first case, an adoption involving a mixed-race child presented in the Introduction, the reader is introduced to some truly baroque and rococo thinking on the part of often well-meaning people. Kennedy goes where the available evidence leads and writes things that many readers and reviewers will find politically incorrect [e.g., some intimate slave-master relationships were loving; black adults may not always be the best adoptive parents for a black child]. This attention to empirical evidence makes Kennedy a champion in my mind; I truly dislike it when somebody tries to pass off a personal or political agenda as the best answer without presenting any supporting evidence. Even though not the main reason for reading this book [I fell in love with Kennedy's writing when I read Nigger], the following story from my life illustrates one of many reasons why Kennedy's book is relevant to everybody, including a middle-class white guy like me. Back in the '70s, I attended a predominantly white high school in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In my Junior year, I fell in love with the younger sister of a friend of mine. The friend and her sister where first generation Americans and Chinese by descent. I found out in sometimes not-so-subtle ways that being friends with an asian-american and loving one were very different issues. One of my friends concluded what he wrote in my Junior yearbook with a statement that any children I had with my girlfriend would end up being "Red haired big nosed chinks -shame-." That relationship broke up because of the reasons most high school romances end - his going away to college, her parents don't like him, his behavior, while often exemplary compared to his peers, is still pretty insensitive at times - but I'm proud to say that the relationship ended as it began, without race being an issue for the two of us. My only complaint about the book, and it's a small one, is that there are more typos than there ought to be in a book of this caliber [due to the fact, perhaps, that spellcheck programs check for words that are spelled correctly, whether they are used correctly or not]. I share Kennedy's vision of a society that truly deals with every person as an individual. I highly recommend Interracial Intimacies.

I'm a poor college kid and I spent the last ounce of my money buying this book! Believe me, it has been totally worth it. Interracial Intimacies has been just as enjoyable as last year's "Nigger", and I recommend that every person in America, black or white, mixed or "not" read this book. Wither you are in an interracial relationship or not, this book will shed light on a culture and an acceptable way of life that has now seriously become mainstream. (Those who *are* in an interracial relationship will further appreciate the times we live in) Those who read this book will learn something new with the turn of every page. It is very well written, comprehensive, and full of facts and interesting experiances in history that all people should know. I look forward to the next great book!

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?

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.

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.

Mixed race relationships are a big issue today. The recent imbroglio over Sen. Strom Thurmond's half Black daughter reveals the interest in the subject. Professor Randall Kennedy's book, however,is simply a string of stories that already have been told. Although well written, the book lacks a common thread and it reads like a lengthy monologue about interracial relationships. I find Rachel Moran's book Interracial Intimacy, with which I do not agree with on many points, much more thoughtful, enlightening, and challenging intellectually. Unlike Kennedy, Moran looks well beyond Black/white relationships. In this way, Kennedy appears to have been caught in a time warp.

Randall Kennedy has written an interesting jumble of stuff about interacial relationships whether they be sexual, marital or adoptive. Alas, the book is so big and spawling that it never seems to settle on one point. There is nothing new in this book, J.A. Rogers talked about the same stuff in his superior Race and Sex trilogy.

I never thought that a book full of legal history would be as gripping as this book has been!

I am not afraid to look the reality of colorism in the eye and acknowledge that it does exist within the black community. It is my greatest hope and dream that someday the dark skinned black and the light skinned black will be seen as the one family in the future. I want so much to love the lightskinned sister and brother as my own reflection and not be divided from them or made to feel that one is treated better than the other, but sadly, that day is not here and this book bravely and powerfully illustrates that point to the fullest.

I am a medium brown colored woman, my mother was very dark skinned and I have witnessed the evils of skin color prejudice all my life. In most situations, it was Black Men who were prejudiced against myself and the women around me beccause of our coloring. These men felt no shame or limit in their racist intra-family prejudice and measured their entire lives by how many light skinned or white women they could attain and how light brite their children could come out. It's everywhere and anyone who denies it is both a fool and a liar.

That is why I highly recommend THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman. There is no truer portrait of the self-hatred among our people than the one extolled in this book, and what makes it even sadder is that this book was written in the 1920's. So that only shows how deep this kind of evil runs.

Lately, I have become very interested in this subject and I have searched for other books that explore this subject with intelligence, honest, beauty and wisdom and I have found several that I consider to be classics on the subject of Colorism.

(1) MARITA GOLDEN'S book "Don't Play In the Sun" is definitely the most modern up to date book of the bunch. It expertly weaves the story of her life experiences in the 1960's Black Power movement with the current struggles of women like Serena Williams and India Arie to find their way in the world, even in the midst of being shunned and ignored by the black community itself. The book's analysis of the Hollywood casting system and the "Mulatto Follies" of BET and MTV is priceless.

(2) "The Bluest Eye" by TONI MORRISON is by far the most riveting and painful book that I have read on this subject of colorism. I believe that her book, more than any mother, gets to the psychological and historical root cause of the problem and exposes the mode in which we pass the problem on generation to generation. The destruction of an innocent black girl named Pecola Breedlove will leave you heartbroken and shocked as you see the bold naked truth unfold right before your eyes. You can't ignore this book, because the story being told is the one that you are all too familiar with no matter what color you are.

(3) "Flesh and the Devil" by African novelist KOLA BOOF is another deeply powerful book that examines colorism, but not out in the open. This book is unique in that it focuses on a very enchanting love story between a Black Prince and Princess and follows their reincarnations through history as they struggle to find their way back to each other. Through detailed moments in black history, both in Africa and the United States, the provocative author highlights the way that black people originally viewed their beauty and humanity and then juxtuposes it against the way they see themselves now in the modern world. The result is nothing less than devastating. I love this book so much, because the storytelling is so rich and the depth is so sweeping and grand. Anyone who loves good writing and is proud to be descended from the Black race will find themselves literally changed forever by the powerful images depicted in this very poetically moving story.

(4) "The Color Complex"--VARIOUS AUTHORS, is a very simple, straight forward analysis from a sociological point of view. Much research and statistical facts are used to illustrate that our communities are infested with these issues.

(5) "The Darkest Child" by Dolores Philips is another great novel that shows us the poor blacks who live under the poverty line ingesting these complex social hierarchies based on color and how they not only expose their children to them, but force the entire community to live by the "color code". Everybody is used to it from slavery and the system goes on and on unchallenged. In this book, Tangy Mae, the darkest of 10 children by the white-looking mother Rozelle, struggles to find her dignity and confidence in the midst of her evil light skinned mother inflicting one horrid abuse on top of the other. One thing I will say for the evil white-looking mother, Rozelle, is that she treated all of her children hiddeously and with contempt, from the whitest to the blackest. But she killed the child who was born looking like Tangy Mae and that spoke volumnes. This book is a very real metaphor for what goes on. Very real.

Here we see an analysis that is not only wrong, but illogical. The main argument here, above all the other rhetoric, is that adoption of interracial children should be the norm among people and that it is incorrect for the agencies to `match' the race of the children with the parents. Rather the argument is the parents should just be given whatever comes along regardless of the fact that the parents might like to raise a kid that resembles themselves, thus making it easier for the child to feel that his parents are actually his parents.

The truth of the matter is people don't want interracial children. Why? Because people have a natural instinct to prefer what they are. Just as a dog would choose a puppy from its own breed a human will do the same. Many couples have worked hard to adopt `unwanted' children, for instance both my uncles have inter-racial kids that are adopted. And these people who are willing to have these children make up for all the people who prefer like-race children.

This book argues the opposite. That its actually better for people to adopt outside their race. But what is the motive here? ISnt the motive secretly that the people adopting are narrow minded and believe that by adopting a child from another race that they are being `diverse'. The reality is that a child does not make someone `tolerant' and it doesn't help the child to end up as a pawn in the race game that pervades America. It is universally a fact that minorities refuse to adopt children that are inter-racial, in fact minorities frequently try to adopt children that are as `pure' which is to say one race as possible. Thus this book is pitched to European-Americans asking them to adopt these `unwanted children' and arguing that those that refuse to do so are `racist'. But what about the minorities, aren't they just as racist? This book simply ignores this fact. And ignores reality.

Seth J. Frantzman