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Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Slavery constituted the principal backdrop against which whites and blacks encountered one another for over two hundred years, from the 1660s to the 1860s..." (more)
Key Phrases: antimiscegenation provisions, race matching, black adoptive home, United States, African American, New York (more...)

3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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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

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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: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #534,712 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
Slavery constituted the principal backdrop against which whites and blacks encountered one another for over two hundred years, from the 1660s to the 1860s. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
antimiscegenation provisions, race matching, black adoptive home, racial signals, interracial parenting, interracial intimacy, racial selectivity, interracial adultery, interracial adoption, state antimiscegenation laws, white adoptive parents, religious matching, multiracial household, apple syndrome, racial regulation, antimiscegenation legislation, family doctrine, transracial adoption, interracial intimacies, parentless children, antimiscegenation statute, white racial purity, prospective adoptive parents, adoption petition, interracial character

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, African American, New York, South Carolina, Jim Crow, Native American, American Indian, North Carolina, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, Black No More, George Schuyler, Guess Who's Coming, Walter White, Indian Child Welfare Act, Racial Integrity Act, World War, Douglas Bates, Fourteenth Amendment, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Civil Rights Act, District of Columbia, Harriet Jacobs, Hettie Jones

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Citations (learn more)

26 books cite this book:

Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds by Erica Chito Childs on 5 pages
Literature and Law (Rodopi Perspectives on Modern Literature, 30) by Michael J. Meyer on page 223, and page 227
Romance and Rights: The Politics of Interracial Intimacy, 1945-1954 by Alex Lubin on page 9, and Back Matter
Constructing Black Selves: Caribbean American Narratives and the Second Generation (Nation of Newcomers) by Lisa McGill in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (RGS-IBG Book Series) by Alison Blunt in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

See all 26 books citing this book

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

Navigating Interracial Borders by Erica Chito Childs

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	72% buy the item featured on this page: Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption 3.9 out of 5 stars (9)
	9% buy Just Don't Marry One: Interracial Dating, Marriage, and Parenting 3.6 out of 5 stars (8) $13.50
	7% buy Multiracial Couples: Black & White Voices (Understanding Families series) 4.5 out of 5 stars (2) $49.53
	6% buy Why Black Men Love White Women: Going Beyond Sexual Politics to the Heart of the Matter 3.5 out of 5 stars (29)

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

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Average Customer Review

3.9 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Content With Character, February 16, 2003

By	Bruce Crocker "agnostictrickster" (Whittier, California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

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.

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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read, just as brilliant and intriguing as Nigger, January 27, 2003

By	Kyra W (Hampton U) - See all my reviews

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!

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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A painfully beautiful book, September 11, 2003

By	Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald (USA) - See all my reviews

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?

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars The Real Truth Will Eventually CATCH UP
I am not afraid to look the reality of colorism in the eye and acknowledge that it does exist within the black community. Read more

Published on May 25, 2005 by Journey

5.0 out of 5 stars A legal history book I can't put down!
I never thought that a book full of legal history would be as gripping as this book has been!

Published on July 29, 2004 by Jamia

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing!
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. Read more

Published on May 17, 2004

3.0 out of 5 stars wrong analysis
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... Read more

Published on April 26, 2004 by Seth J. Frantzman

5.0 out of 5 stars Much Better than his last book
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... Read more

Published on July 20, 2003 by Andre M.

3.0 out of 5 stars there's got to be a point in here somewhere
Randall Kennedy has written an interesting jumble of stuff about interacial relationships whether they be sexual, marital or adoptive. Read more

Published on February 15, 2003 by Kimberley Wilson

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