Interracial Families

Interracial sex mattered to the British colonial state in West Africa. In Crossing the Color Line, Carina E. Ray goes beyond this fact to reveal how Gold Coasters—their social practices, interests, and anxieties—shaped and defined these powerfully charged relations across racial lines. The interplay between African and European perspectives and practices, argues Ray, transformed these relationships into key sites for consolidating colonial rule and for contesting its racial and gendered hierarchies of power.

With rigorous methodology and innovative analyses, Ray brings Ghana and Britain into a single analytic frame by examining cases in both locales. Intimate relations between black men and white women in Britain’s port cities emerge as an influential part of the history of interracial sex and empire in ways that are connected to rather than eclipsed by relations between European men and African women in the colony.

Based on rich archival evidence and original interviews, the book moves across different registers, shifting from the micropolitics of individual disciplinary cases against colonial officers who “kept” local women to transatlantic networks of family, empire, and anticolonial resistance. In this way, Ray cuts to the heart of how interracial sex became a source of colonial anxiety and nationalist agitation during the first half of the twentieth century.

Modern ethnic processes in different groups of Enets occur, depending on the specific ethno-demographic situation. In the northern (tundra) group of weak processes of cross-breeding with Caucasians, but actively mixing with the Nenets. The southern group is dominated by Russian, and in the northern Nenets. In the northern group, Mixed Enets-Nenets Nenets population gradually fixed identity. certain "ethnic balance" observed in the south. Natural population growth more noticeable in the southern group, as there are more Caucasoid Métis, who are more likely than the Nenets, Enets people define themselves as Enets. For example, we are seeing the results of Enets passive adaptation of the ethnic group. Enets, long time to adapt to changes in the cultural and natural environment, have come under the influence of numerous and more capable of adapting Nenets ethnos. As a result, Enets lost many members of their own ethnic culture. In the future, we can predict the complete dissolution of the tundra Enets groups among neighboring peoples and the preservation of a formal identity among Enets Forest Enets group.

This study examines how a desire to pass on religious heritage shapes whites' attitudes toward interracial marriage for their children. Utilizing national survey data (Baylor Religion Survey 2007), I estimate ordered logit regression models to examine the extent to which whites' desire to have their children and children's spouses share their religion affects attitudes toward their hypothetical daughters marrying blacks, Latinos, or Asians, net of other factors. Analyses reveal that whites who consider it more important that their children and children's spouses share their religion are less comfortable with their daughters marrying blacks, Latinos, or Asians. These effects are robust to the inclusion of measures for religiosity, political ideology, intimate interracial experiences, and other sociodemographic correlates. These findings suggest that, for whites, religious heritage has a clear ethno-racial component. The greater their desire for descendants to share the same religious views, the more whites would prefer that these descendants themselves be white, indicating that, for many white Americans, religious heritage is equated with whiteness. I conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for research on religion and interracial families.

Preface vi Acknowledgements viii 1 Introduction Stereotypes about mixed children and their parents Literature on the topic Our research study Report structure 2 Patterns of mixing-geographical and social context Analysing the census data Where mixed families live Socioeconomic circumstances Survey of parents' views of 'passing on' heritage Conclusion 3 Diverse approaches to dealing with difference and belonging 'Typifi cations' of difference and belonging Mixed parenting is not just about mixedness Conclusion 4 Negotiating difference and belonging for parent couples One parent-several approaches Maintaining shared approaches Negotiating divergent approaches Reframing cultural difference Who does the childrearing? Gender Conclusion 5 Help and hindrance Neighbourhoods and schools Resources and organisations Grandparents Children's physical appearance and preferences Conclusion 6 Conclusion Mixing and mixedness-main issues Implications for policy and practice Notes References vi Preface We have also had to make decisions about how to refer to the characteristics of mixedness among the parent couples in our sample. As we detail in Chapter 1, the parents embody a diverse range of multiple mixing of race, ethnic and religious backgrounds within a couple and sometimes also for an individual. For the most part, when discussing the couples, we note the aspects of difference that are important to them. This means that, in some cases, we refer merely to a parent's or couple's racial and ethnic characteristics and, in others, we refer to their racial, ethnic and religious characteristics. The order in which we do this (race, ethnicity, faith) has no signifi cance beyond a convention that we have adopted for regularity of style. vii The 'Parenting mixed children' project benefi ted from the efforts of several other researchers in addition to the authors of this report. Darren Smith (University of Brighton) undertook analysis of the 2001 census data for us; Nilufar Miah (London South Bank University) provided support with the schools postal survey; and Kanwal Mand (University of Sussex) and Helen Barrett (Family and Parenting Institute) helped with some of the interviews. Thanks are also due to the schools that kindly agreed to distribute the survey to parents.

Illicit Love is a history of love, sex, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and settler citizens at the heart of two settler colonial nations, the United States and Australia. Award-winning historian Ann McGrath illuminates interracial relationships from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century through stories of romance, courtship, and marriage between Indigenous peoples and colonizers in times of nation formation.

More and more is known about the ‘mixed’ population of Britain – those brought up in families with different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds. But less is known about their parents. Who are they and what are their experiences of bringing up their children?

This report aims to provide insights about parenting mixed children to inform debates about family life and professional strategies for support. Focusing on mothers and fathers living together, it:

Investigates how parents from different racial, ethnic and/or faith backgrounds give their children a sense of belonging and identity.
Examines parents’ approaches to cultural difference and how they pass on aspects of belonging and heritage across generations.
Explores the opportunities, constraints, challenges and tensions in negotiating a sense of identity and heritage between parents.

Sexuality scholars largely neglect interracial intimacy in the United States as a site worthy of sustained empirical research. Consequently, monoraciality is not adequately problematized or identified as a racial prerequisite to fundamental heterosexual privileges. Further, by implicitly constructing same-sex couples as monoracial, scholars fail to consider how heterosexuality and White supremacy together saturate public spaces to render queer interraciality profoundly invisible. In this essay I critique the monoracial bias of sexuality research by analyzing interracial narratives on the topic of visibility. Using in-depth qualitative interviews with four heterosexual and four same-sex interracial couples, I argue that for interracial partners a paradoxical tension surrounds visibility. Though couples may seek public affirmation of intimate relationships, for both heterosexual and queer interracial couples, public recognition risks harassment or violence.

Studies of multiethnic families often assume the ethnic identification of children with the minority group results from the minority parent. This study examines an alternate view that mainstream parents also play an important role in transmitting minority ethnicity. It explores this argument using data from New Zealand on the ethnic labels mothers assign to their Maori-European children. It finds that European mothers are just as disposed as Maori mothers to designate their child as Maori, either exclusively or in combination. Two explanations, grounded in ethnic awareness and gendered inheritance, are proposed. Although neither satisfactorily predicts maternal designation decisions, the readiness of European mothers to identify their child as Maori underscores their role in diffusing Maori ethnicity.

Colorful PDF slideshow of a presentation at the Japan Association for Language Teaching Kobe Chapter. There is much to read in the slideshow on all aspects of bilingualism in Japan, and the presentation contrasts a developmental bilingual perspective with the usual native speaker-oriented and monolingual second language acquisition paradigm.

*Best Book Award* (2020) Mormon History Association

*Starred Review* at Publisher's Weekly: "combines meticulous research with illuminating insight in this landmark work on gender and sexuality in Mormon thought.... Information-packed, with a forceful thesis and jargon-free prose, this is an important contribution to Mormon studies as well as a convincing consideration of the ways religions construct and maintain frameworks. Any academic studying the intersection of religious practice and progressive social change will want to pick this up."

*Starred review* at Library Journal: “ Petrey’s work...is a brilliant exception to studies of sexuality, gender, and religion that too often focus on a narrow subject and don’t speak to broader concerns of larger issues in history and society....Petrey writes beautifully, offering readers across a wide variety of academic fields, including religious studies and the history of sexuality, an elegant intellectual text that will please casual readers as well. Highly recommended.”

Taylor G. Petrey’s trenchant history takes a landmark step forward in documenting and theorizing about Latter-day Saints (LDS) teachings on gender, sexual difference, and marriage. Drawing on deep archival research, Petrey situates LDS doctrines in gender theory and American religious history since World War II. His challenging conclusion is that Mormonism is conflicted between ontologies of gender essentialism and gender fluidity, illustrating a broader tension in the history of sexuality in modernity itself.
As Petrey details, LDS leaders have embraced the idea of fixed identities representing a natural and divine order, but their teachings also acknowledge that sexual difference is persistently contingent and unstable. While queer theorists have built an ethics and politics based on celebrating such sexual fluidity, LDS leaders view it as a source of anxiety and a tool for the shaping of a heterosexual social order. Through public preaching and teaching, the deployment of psychological approaches to “cure” homosexuality, and political activism against equal rights for women and same-sex marriage, Mormon leaders hoped to manage sexuality and faith for those who have strayed from heteronormativity.

"Indeed, Tabernacles of Clay is a model for how scholars can use a singular tradition to tell a much larger lesson. Petrey convincingly argues that Mormonism demonstrates “the queer contours of modern notions of gender and sexuality as persistently marked by ambiguity, fluidity, contradiction, and paradox” (223). Despite how rigid contemporary debates are, and despite how cemented modern Mormonism’s gender rhetoric appears to be, history is always more flexible and complicated than typically allowed." Ben Park https://benjaminepark.com/2020/05/20/the-circuitous-history-of-mormonisms-gender-essentialism/

"A path-breaking work of religion and gender and sexuality, Tabernacles of Clay sets the agenda for a new generation of scholars interested in the recent Latter-day Saint past." Chris Babbits https://newbooksnetwork.com/taylor-petrey-tabernacles-of-clay-sexuality-and-gender-in-modern-mormonism-unc-press-2020/

As transnational social networks expand, people increasingly form intimate relationships with partners from a different sociocultural background. While intercultural intimate relationships are not a new phenomenon, they have attracted research only recently due to their global proliferation. Scholars are particularly interested in how such mixed relationships communicate and how their interculturality impacts on partners' (and their offspring's) identities. Some studies have been criticized for overemphasizing cultural differences and identification problems of intercultural partners. This depiction of intercultural coupledom as problematic in early research echoed initial societal perceptions of it. Contrastingly, recent works explore how intercultural partners can effectively communicate and negotiate their complex sociocultural repertoires. The hybrid cultural forms and meanings that intercultural couples create are shown as empowering rather than debilitating. This new approach is also reflected in society and the media, which increasingly represent intercultural families in a positive light, gradually normatizing or even endorsing them.

Christopher Buck, “’Abdu’l-Baha’s 1912 Howard University Speech: A Civil War Myth for Interracial Emancipation.” ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s Journey West: The Course of Human Solidarity. Edited by Negar Mottahedeh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. 111–144. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137032010.0009.

EXCERPT:

In his 1912 Howard University speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation in essentialist terms, anchored in historical generalizations, as a rhetorical strategy for promoting interracial emancipation. Abolition of slavery was a first step in the progressive emancipation of African Americans within color-bound American society. Slavery’s roots run deep in American history, and are yet to be fully extirpated. They extend, in more subtle forms, down to the present. Racism is a ghost of the slaver’s psyche, and legislation alone cannot eradicate the problem. Something profoundly different is needed to significantly steer social history in a new direction. This is what makes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 sojourn in America of such historical import. . . .

To recapitulate, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his Howard University speech, emphasized the personal sacrifice of Northern whites for Southern blacks in the course of the Civil War, and that African Americans (as the descendants of emancipated slaves) should therefore be grateful to whites in kind. In so saying, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invoked history (or a certain view of it) in order to make history—by completing the unfinished work of the Emancipation Proclamation. . . .

And so it is that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tasked the whites with a mission equal to the objectives of the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction in achieving what was (and is) still undone, to “endeavor to promote your [i.e. African Americans’] advancement and enhance your honor.” Such interracial unity entails more than fostering interracial camaraderie. Advancement is required. Actual progress must be fostered, for it is this “advancement” that “will be the cause of love (sabab-i maḥabbat).” In other words, doing “good” (by tangible actions) is a precondition for “goodwill” (as an intangible feeling). This, indeed, was the mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, as an interracial endeavor. . . .

The advancement of African Americans was an integral element in the progress of America as a nation, and so there is a strong argument that the development of its own social capital was in the nation’s enlightened self-interest. Here, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s rhetorical strategy was to establish a clear basis, anchored in American history, for overcoming entrenched antagonisms in favor of reciprocal appreciation in the interests of interracial harmony and cooperation. In that sense, the accuracy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historical generalizations is quite beside the point, as the focus was on fostering racial healing and solving America’s racial crisis. . . .

On February 1, 2012, Cornel West, professor of African American Studies and Religion, Princeton University, expressed his appreciation of the Bahá’í efforts to foster ideal race relations: “When you talk about race and the legacy of white supremacy, there’s no doubt that when the history is written, the true history is written, the history of this country, the Baha’i Faith will be one of the leaven in the American loaf that allowed the democratic loaf to expand because of the anti-racist witness of those of Baha’i faith.” (“Cornel West praises work of Baha’is in establishing Racial Unity” (February 1, 2012). Professor West here recognizes the leavening influence of the Bahá’ís in the history of race relations in America. . . .

‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s 1912 Howard University speech was for then, yet it has a message for us now as well: It could be said that in his Howard speech, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá invited his audience to build on history by making history, in commencing a new era of global solidarity.

https://www.academia.edu/29904876/_Abdu_l-Baha_s_1912_Howard_University_Speech_A_Civil_War_Myth_for_Interracial_Emancipation_2013_

Early research on black racial identity development cautioned that close relationships with whites signaled an alienation from blackness and a subconscious acceptance that ‘white is right’. These assumptions mirrored popular media and political discourse suggesting that romantic relationships outside of one’s racial group reflect a devalued or inauthentic racial
self. More recent scholarly research presents a mixed picture about the role of interracial intimacy on black racial identities. Using in-depth qualitative narratives with forty-two interracially partnered African Americans, this article explores whether interracial intimacy recasts the meaning or intensity of black racial identities. Findings affirm that black racial identities are heterogeneous–some partners experienced blackness as a central, fundamental identity while others possessed ambivalent attachments to blackness. Across these experiences, however, adult interracial intimacy had at most an incremental influence on racial identity. Interracial contact during adolescence was far more influential because it
allowed blacks to develop dimensions of white cultural identity.

The essay first provides a quantitative over-view of Māori discussion of hāwhekaihe (half-castes) within the Māori-language newspaper corpus (1842-1933), and then discusses selected articles, in order to reveal a number of key points. First, hāwhekaihe were not generally viewed as a distinct racial group, and in many respects were well-integrated within Māori communities. Second, colonialism produced a number of tensions over land within Māori tribal groupings, where members at times attempted to exclude others from land rights. Divisions between Māori and hāwhekaihe over land were most apparent in the South Island. Third, the competition for mana within the parliamentary political arena at times resulted in the two groups criticizing each other from the late 1860s. This tension between Māori and hāwhekaihe over land and mana was expressed within a “discourse of blame” that emerged in the later nineteenth century in which both groups blamed each other for the ills that had befallen the Māori people. Fourth, while a number of Pākehā spoke out against “miscegenation”, there is only one article in the niupepa specifically appealing to Māori not to marry Pākehā. Unlike the Pākehā commentators, the writer is more concerned with Māori extinction through absorption, and the loss of Māori land. Most discussion about hāwhekaihe appears in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and tensions between Māori and hāwhekaihe appear to have largely dissipated by the early twentieth century.

Economic migrants from wealthy industrial countries are arriving in increasingly large numbers in the rising “global cities” of the developing world, including Shanghai. A portion of these are settling long-term, setting up households and forming communities of long-term migrants. Within this group, intermarriage with local residents is common, serving as a pathway of incorporation into local society. This paper presents five case studies of Europeans and Americans married to Chinese and living in Shanghai to show how the local and transnational social contexts of these new migration patterns influence partner choices and marital exchanges. Living in the new Shanghai creates possibilities and pressures for new types of exchanges between spouses, including exchanges of symbolic and social capital. Many of these married couples are business partners as well as partners in raising bicultural children. They engage in family arrangements that mix elements of Chinese and Western practices. In conclusion, the data is used to illustrate how intermarriage facilitates the integration of each of the partners into broader social networks and community structures, while also exploring the tensions these married couples face.

This is a strong book of verse, especially for a debut. It's narrative poetry,  but not as lively as Bukowski so if you're expecting the stereotypical gambling, drinking and whoring around, you won't find it here. What you will find is a unique perspective of a Cambodian man living in a world different from the one of his youth, a human dealing with ghosts while trying to make a new life with a new spouse in a new profession and enjoying life in the process. And that is definitely a good process to read about.

The migration flow, ease of communication and locomotion contributed to the growing increase in intercultural marriages, and, consequently, the formation of new families. It is interculturality that proposes a way to build a new social and affective fabric, respecting the different ways of conceiving the world between religion, race, gender, generation, and nationality. Intercultural couples symbolize the deterritorialized and territorialized union. We assume that there is one integration bigger at different levels. How do married women, in transnational contexts, negotiate values, worldview, projects? We define that the objective of this work is to discuss the perspectives of symbolic registers, negotiations, and appropriations of women of different nationalities, within an intercultural relationship. The object of study is women (3 Brazilian and 3 foreign) married to heteronormative partners of different nationalities. The theoretical- methodological references are bibliographic and qualitative research. The method used is the interview of the Comprehensive Sociology of Jean-Claude Kaufmann (2013). The interviews were transcribed and submitted to critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2001) and Maria Rocha-Coutinho (1994). In the theoretical conception to understand the intercultural phenomena involved such as family traditions, culinary habits, religious practices, among others, we used the authors Néstor Canclini (2015), Clifford Geertz (1989) e Alfred Schutz (2010). Awareness concerning intercultural aspects allows a necessary approach to identify subjective traits that interfere in the process of adaptation and integration to the new social and symbolic space.
Keywords: Transnational migration; intercultural couples; affection; women.

This was published in WHOLE EARTH REVIEW (Summer 1988) one year after I had gone to Jamaica for the first time, just as my career in the Austin music biz was ending, and one year before I entered grad school in the San Francisco Bay Area. As such, "Fashion Dread Rasta: On the One in Jamaica with Bob Marley's Children" is a historical piece, showing the influence of my careers in journalism and songwriting in Austin, Texas during the 1980s. I would later go on to write a full-length study of Bob Marley and the Rastas, published by Cambridge UP in 1999 in the book On Racial Frontiers.

Larry: A guy at work told me “Mixed marriage offends me, it just offends me.” And I can accept that, it's not for everybody.  But it's his heart that's hurting, not mine.  Not everyone can do this.  Not everyone is that strong.
Debra:  Yes, everybody has to decide what they can live with and can't live with.
(From an interview with a black male-white female couple)

Robert: We’re just like any other couple….perfectly normal.
Linda: As far as things happening to us, we’re real boring.
(A black male spouse and a white female spouse in separate interviews)

As persons in intimate relationships can quickly confirm, individuals looking at the same picture, or living through the same event, often report completely different experiences. Attending to different aspects of situations, we tend to make sense of what we are sensing, feeling, and thinking in different ways.  The two couples quoted above report very different experiences, just as individual partners in interracial relationships may have differing takes or constructions of what is “real” or “true” for them.  While this can be a source of confusion or frustration, it is also a phenomenon that all couples must learn to effectively handle if their relationship is to be successful.  As partners in interracial relationships diverge from one another on multiple axes of power, such as gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, and social class, their basic beliefs and assumptions often differ markedly, and such differences shape the lenses through which they view their interpersonal worlds. Therefore, partners in interracial relationships, coming from different social locations, may exhibit very different understandings of everyday situations that they encounter.

Objective. This study examines how religious affiliations, salience, beliefs, and practices influence engagement in interracial dating or romance. Methods. Bivariate and multivariate analyses are employed using data from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey (N = 1,268). Logistic regression models are estimated in order to determine how certain dimensions of religious life predict whether one has engaged in interracial dating or romance, net of sociodemographic and ideological controls. Results. Relative to evangelicals, mainline Protestants are less likely to have engaged in interracial romance. Those who frequently attend church and affirm biblical literalism are less likely to have dated across race, but those who engage in devotional practices such as prayer and sacred text reading are more likely to have interracialy dated. Conclusion. The relationship between religion and interracial romance is more complex than previously thought. Future studies should both acknowledge and account for this complexity in their analyses.

Whilst over the past few decades, mixed racial people, couples and families in Britain have become increasingly visible in the public eye, there is still a tendency to herald their presence as part of a new multicultural phenomenon – what has been dubbed the rise of ‘Beige’ or ‘Brown Britain.’  Yet, such groups have a long presence in Britain, as evidenced not only by late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries public debates about the implications of interracial relationships and ‘mulattoes’ or ‘half-caste’ children but also, as is slowly being revealed, through their own accounts. Drawing on findings from a British Academy funded project,  this chapter examines the intersection between the perceptions of officialdom with those of mixed racial people, couples and families themselves. Concentrating on the period between 1920-1950, it discusses the experiences of these groups in what might be considered the ‘era of moral condemnation’ for racial mixing and mixedness. Indeed, during this time the stigmatisation of mixed race people and families in Britain appears at its greatest, a process to which many major institutions and significant public figures contributed.  Nevertheless, alongside the more familiar tales of social bigotry and prejudice facing mixed race couples, families and people can also be glimpsed threads of tolerance, acceptance and inclusion and, most importantly, a sense of everyday ‘ordinariness’ largely ignored in the history of this group to date.

The article is based on field materials of the author. It is considered the ethnic composition of the population Taz region of the Yamal - Nenets Autonomous District and its changes during the XX century. The documents relating to the Tazovsky village council, it was found that the composition of its population, apart Nenets, Khanty and Nenets Enets birth origin, includes Selkups. The study of literature and comparing them with field materials helped to identify the origin of some Selkup names and determine the approximate time of their resettlement in the lower reaches of the basin.

Since the early 1980s western men have been coming to China to work and live in coastal cities such as Shanghai, and many have become involved in sexual relationships with Chinese women. Using the framework of sexual capital and sexual fields, this article examines the changes in the sexual status of white western men in their relationships with Chinese women over the past 30 years. A historical perspective shows how the political economy of the interracial sexual field is conditioned by broader changes in the economic and social status of foreigners in China. Western men in China experience their foreign masculinity as both empowering and marginalizing, a kind of alien sexual capital・that is simultaneously exploitable but estranged. Chinese women find that they can invest in specific forms of sexual capital relevant to this field of interracial relationships, but also feel alienated from social and sexual relations with Chinese men. Despite some psychological stress, both for men and women, sexual capital produced in this interracial field is convertible to other forms of social and cultural capital relevant to life in the global city.

Serge Goriely's paper is about "The Sorcerers", his play on interracial marriage, and how the latter may cause unexpected challenges and cruelties even within a liberal family. In the play, a Caucasian European photojournalist who has gone to Africa in his work, brings back to Belgium an African woman he has fallen in love with and marries her. Weirdly, his open-minded, progressive family casts a European-style spell on her, instigating her descent into madness. The play has been translated and published (Segal Theatre Center Publ., 2015) and was premiered in New York in March 2016 (by David Willinger, Theater for the New City)

How does the convergence of national and religious identities potentially fortify white racial boundaries in the USA? Focusing on openness to racial exogamy as an indicator of racial boundaries, we examine the link between Christian nationalism and white Americans' views towards their hypothetical daughter marrying an African American, Latino, or Asian. Drawing on insights from social identity complexity theory, we argue that the convergence of religious and national identities serves to reinforce in-group boundaries, thereby fortifying notions of white purity, and consequently, strengthening whites' discomfort with potential race-mixing in marriage. Multivariate analyses of national survey data demonstrate that Christian nationalism is strongly associated with an increase in white Americans' discomfort with a daughter marrying any racial minority, and particularly African Americans. We demonstrate how the convergence of religious and national identities in Christian nationalism influences whites' regulating of racial boundaries (evidenced in intermarriage attitudes) above and beyond the independent effects of political conservatism or religious exclusivism.

This thesis examines print media news stories about Black/White interracial families from 1990-2003. Using the concept of dialogism, I conduct a textual analysis of selected newspaper and news magazine stories to examine the dialogic interaction between dominant and resistant discourses of racial identity. My findings suggest that a multiracial identity project can be seen emerging in print media stories about interracial families, but the degree to which this project is visible depends on each journalist's placement of individual voices and discourses within the narrative of each story. I find some evidence of a move from placing interracial families within narratives of conflict toward a more optimistic view of such families' position in society.

How do White members of Black-White interracial families negotiate the meanings of race, and particularly Whiteness? Inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois's concept of double consciousness, this article argues that interracial intimacy is a microlevel political site where White people can acquire a critical analytical lens that we conceptualize as racial literacy. This article fills a gap in the empirical and theoretical literature on race and Whiteness by including gay, lesbian, and heterosexual families on both sides of the Atlantic. Drawing on two ethnographic research projects involving one hundred and twenty-one interracial families in the United Kingdom and the eastern United States, we provide an analysis of how White people learn to translate racial codes, decipher racial structures, and manage the racial climate in their communities. We draw on "racial consciousness" interviews conducted with one hundred and one heterosexual families and twenty gay and lesbian families to present seven portraits that illuminate three dimensions of racial literacy: double consciousness, negotiation of local racial meanings, and seeing routine forms of everyday racism.

2017 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, Hon. mention; 2018 AES Senior Book Prize, Hon. mention.


“Janet McIntosh's book Unsettled: Denial and Belonging among White Kenyans is a major ethnographic achievement…far more than a contribution to the field of critical whiteness studies, Unsettled promises to have a long-lasting impact in fields as diverse as postcolonial African studies, sociolinguistics, and the anthropology of subjectivity…Unsettled demonstrates an extraordinary level of intellectual maturity and sophistication, and establishes a high standard for any anthropologist seeking to elucidate the connections between race, inequality and privilege.”
-2018 AES Senior Book Prize Committee.


“Richly nuanced, theoretically sophisticated, and utterly compelling. A major scholarly achievement.”
-Richard Schroeder, author of Africa after Apartheid: South Africa, Race, and Nation in Tanzania. 


“Janet McIntosh lifts the debate on belonging. Her vivid portrait shows how twisted memory does not necessarily undermine sincerity of feeling. Her notion of ‘structural oblivion’ and her magnificent demonstration of the plurality of whiteness offer keys to understanding the vicissitudes of belonging in the present-day world.”
-Peter Geschiere, author of The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe.


“A splendid book, one of the best in the new and growing literature on postcolonial whiteness and in whiteness studies generally.”
-Brett Shadle, author of The Souls of White Folk: White Settlers in Kenya, 1900–1920s.


(Book available on amazon)

In the early nineteenth century, an obscure rural policeman petitioned the French government with an unusual story. Charles Fanaye had served with Napoleon's armies in Egypt. Chased by Mameluks, he was rescued in the nick of time by a black Ethiopian woman and hidden ...

Christian nationalism seeks the preservation or restoration of a supposed religio-national purity. We argue that, within the racialized social system of the United States, this idealized religio-national purity is inextricably linked with notions of ethno-racial purity. Focusing on interracial families as a violation of ethno-racial purity, we theorize that adherents to Christian nationalism will be less supportive of family formations in which ethno-racial purity is formally transgressed. We demonstrate this by examining the impact of Christian nationalism on Americans' views toward transracial adoption (TRA). Americans' attitudes toward TRA provide an interesting test case in that, unlike attitudes toward racial exogamy, TRA implies no biological or cultural race-mixing between social peers, but only a socio-legal guardianship across races. Opposition to TRA thus taps Americans' attitudes about the ''ideal'' ethno-racial composition of families socially and legally, rather than their beliefs about the biological or cultural incompatibility of ethno-racial groups. Analyzing national survey data, we find that adherence to Christian nationalism is strongly and negatively associated with support for TRA, net of relevant controls. We demonstrate that the influence of Christian nationalism is robust and independent of respondents' trust of other races and their religious commitment, both that are strongly and positively associated with support for TRA. Findings affirm that Christian nationalism implies ethno-racial separation and purity, and thus, we propose that a resurgence of Christian nationalist ideology in the public sphere may serve to reinforce racial boundaries and exclusion in other realms of American social life.

The background of these reflections is a number of therapies with a quite uniform content matter: the adopted child enters puberty, and the family experiences a number of serious conflicts to the surprise of those involved. These conflicts often contain the element of intense anger towards the adoptive parents, some times even violence. I have tried to convey some reflections on useful ways of understanding this chain of events, hoping that they can be useful for therapists when planning the therapeutic sessions. Three questions are considered:

1. What is special about the bonding process between adoptive parents and the adoptee?
2. What problems may be generated by these circumstances?
3. How can you work with them?

Religious factors have been shown to influence whites' attitudes toward interracial marriage, but this relationship has yet to be studied in depth. This study examines how religious affiliation, beliefs, practices, and congregational composition affect whites' attitudes toward interracial marriage with African Americans, Asians, and Latinos. Employing data from Wave 2 of the Baylor Religion Survey, I estimate ordered logit regression models to examine the influence of religious factors on whites' attitudes toward racial exogamy, net of sociodemographic controls. Analyses reveal that, relative to evangelicals, religiously unaffiliated whites report greater support of intermarriage with all minority groups. Biblical literalists are less likely to support interracial marriage to Asians and Latinos. However, whites who frequently engage in devotional religious practices are more likely to support interracial marriage with all racial groups, as are whites who attend multiracial congregations. My findings suggest that the relationship between religion and whites' attitudes toward racial exogamy is more complex than previously thought and that the influence of religious practices and congregational composition should not be overlooked.