How “Commonsense” Notions of Race, Class and Gender Infiltrate Families Formed across the Color Line

Abstract

This research presents data from in-depth interviews of sixty adults in Southern California who have formed families across the black/white color line. In a societal context where normative family formation remains mono-racial, many adults in multiracial families manage their social performances to mitigate the stigma associated with their unusual family pattern or to challenge social expectations associated with race, class, and gender. Their stories reveal how they deploy strategic exaggerations of gender and stereotypes of social class in their day to day lives. These deployments operate to manage social interactions when confronting commonsense expectations about what it means to be a man or woman who trespasses the color line in family formation

Black Americans and Interracial Marriage: A Focus on Black Women

“…11 Walsh (2012) presents this interesting account of one of the subjects (a Black woman) in her study who is married to a White man:…”

“…In a study in which 60 individuals living in Southern California and involved in Black-White marriages, Walsh (2012) tells the story of a Black Husband-White wife: that when they started dating her "... parents were thrilled when we started seeing each other. In 1950s having your daughter going with a Neeg-roe (pro-nounced deliberately in two emphatic syllables) was like an endorsement for them, "Look everyone; we raised her with the right values.…”

“…According to Walsh (2012) Research has shown that people who interracially marry are usually highly educated (Fenyo, 2001: p. 334), and in the case of Black-White marriages or couples, the Black husband is usually more educated than the White wife (hypergamy) and the Black wife is also said to be more educated than the White husband (Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1990: p. 213;Qian, 1997 According to Qian (1997), in 1980, White wives were 109% more likely to marry Black men. For African American women: In 1980, and 1990, respectively, they were 19% and 2% less likely to marry White men who were higher in education, and also they were 10% and 17% less likely to marry Hispanic men who had higher levels of education.…”

“…In the study of 40 Black-White couples in four states during the period from 1970 to 1974, in which the couples had dated for an average of 16 months before they got married that Jeter (1982) points to, for four White male-Black female couples "... the black women involved were admired for their independence and self-sufficiency, were pregnant, or desired to marry a man of comparable education and occupational status" (p. 105). Walsh (2012) tells the story of a Black Husband-White wife with a focus on the high society status of the Black husband:…”

“…Another area that has been examined is the gradual acceptance in recent decades of these relationships by Whites or Gentile European Americans, especially acceptance of Asians, Hispanics and other non-Black human beings. A number of these studies have also focused on the factors that are causing non-Blacks to reject Blacks as potential marriage or dating partners, and specifically factors that are causing White Gentile European American men, certain Black men and other non-Black men to reject Black women (Banks, 2011;Blau et al, 1988;Cready & Saenz, 1997;Crowder & Tolnay, 2000;Huges, 2003aHuges, , 2003bKaba, 2011a;Kalmijn, 1993Kalmijn, , 1998Mare, 1991;Model & Fisher, 2001;Porter & Bronzaft, 1995;Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1990;Qian, 1997;Walsh, 2012;Wong, 2003).…”