Struck by Lightning? Interracial Intimacy and Racial Justice

Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, p. 528, 2003

Posted: 16 Sep 2003

See all articles by Kevin R. Johnson

Kevin R. Johnson

University of California, Davis - School of Law

Kristina L. Burrows

University of California, Davis - School of Law

Abstract

Over the last decade, growing attention has been paid to the mixed race population in the United States. Much of the literature on the subject offers compelling stories of the life experiences of persons with African American and white parents. In addition, the controversy over the proper classification of mixed race people for Census 2000 attracted national attention.

Only recently has legal scholarship begun to analyze the rich history of the legal regulation of racial mixture in the United States and its modern day repercussions. Breaking important new ground in this emerging field, Professor Rachel Moran's book Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (University of Chicago Press, 2001) represents the first comprehensive review of the intricacies of the law and policy of racial mixture, ambitiously surveying wide-ranging legal terrain from the anti-miscegenation laws to transracial adoption. By tackling a much-neglected topic that is central to a full appreciation of civil rights in the modern United States, Interracial Intimacy deserves attention and will likely serve as an influential guide to future research in the field.

As Interracial Intimacy unravels the law's efforts to regulate and respond to intermarriage, it offers powerful evidence that race is a social and legal construct, a product of our collective mind rather than an immutable biological fact. But Professor Moran goes well beyond that. She demonstrates how intermarriage is inextricably linked to the quest for racial justice. A central theme of Interracial Intimacy is that the prevailing racial segregation in the United States makes intermarriage far less likely than would be the case in an integrated society. The low rate of interracial relationships is a function of pervasive housing, school, and employment segregation, as well as the lack of racial diversity in higher education. Socioeconomic class disparities reflected in residential and employment patterns factor in as well, implicating the connection between race, class, and marriage.

Put simply, people are less likely to select mates of another race if they rarely meet them. Because Americans of different races continue to live separate daily lives, we should expect that people will continue to marry others of their own race. Professor Moran's reference to love striking "like lightning" (p. 14) makes it seem all the more romantic. However, as we all know, one's location can affect whether he or she is hit by lightening. So too, location and geography matter for love and romance. That, indeed, is one of Interracial Intimacy's powerful insights. Somewhat ironically, Professor Moran proves that, at one level, the segregationists of the old South were entirely correct: segregation and "race mixing" indeed are - and always have been - deeply interrelated. As Gunnar Myrdal observed in his classic study of race relations in the United States, "[e]very single measure [of segregation] is defended as necessary to block 'social equality' which in its turn is held necessary to prevent 'intermarriage.'"

One can only speculate why serious legal scholarship has failed for so long to analyze the connection between love, intimacy, and racial justice. In part, the failure may stem from the view that intensely private and personal decisions are immune from legal purview. By implicating issues of passion and eroticism, intimacy may appear to be beyond rational analysis. Professor Moran's book breaks the long silence in legal scholarship on this critically important topic.

Interracial Intimacy also identifies deeply perplexing questions worthy of further exploration. Notably, African Americans marry whites much less frequently than Asian Americans, Latina/os, and Native Americans do. Are these other minorities effectively "white," or at least "whiter," than African Americans? One can only wonder about the future of interracial marriage between African Americans and whites and what it portends for racial progress.

Ultimately, Interracial Intimacy leaves open whether optimism or pessimism is justified about Black/white intermarriage in the next millennium and its impact on civil rights in the United States. In that way, the book proves sobering as well as enlightening. Although the nation stands at a proverbial crossroads, it is not precisely clear what, if anything, government, or we as individuals, should do if we accept Professor Moran's views about the centrality of intermarriage to the pursuit of racial justice. In this way, like any thoughtful and ambitious book, Interracial Intimacy raises as many provocative questions as it answers.

Part I pursues one of the many issues identified by Interracial Intimacy and analyzes a much neglected California Supreme Court decision written by the famous Justice Roger Traynor - nearly twenty years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same conclusion - that invalidated the Golden State's anti-miscegenation law. This case, besides suggesting that Justice Traynor was a nascent Critical Race Theorist, implicates a fundamental question about the racial identity of Latina/os. By analyzing this decision, we hope to offer a sense of the richness of Interracial Intimacy and highlight how it helps define a field suitable for future scholarly analysis. Part II critically analyzes the broad themes identified in Interracial Intimacy and avenues for future research.

Note: This is a description of the paper and not the actual abstract.

Keywords: Race, Civil Rights, Mixed Race

Suggested Citation

Johnson, Kevin R. and Burrows, Kristina L., Struck by Lightning? Interracial Intimacy and Racial Justice. Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 25, p. 528, 2003, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=411763

Kevin R. Johnson

University of California, Davis - School of Law ( email )

Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall
400 Mrak Hall Drive
Davis, CA 95616-5201
United States
530 752 0243 (Phone)
530 752 7279 (Fax)

Kristina L. Burrows (Contact Author)

University of California, Davis - School of Law ( email )

Martin Luther King, Jr. Hall
Davis, CA CA 95616-5201
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
1,891
PlumX Metrics