Intimacy, interracial

Randall Kennedy s Interracial Intimacies (2003) is one of only a few book-length treatments in the field of multiracial studies to date that addresses... 

If [interracial] sex [or interracial intimacy more broadly] is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. 

In the previous chapter, we explored the assertion within multiracial discourse that consensual sexual relations between white male slaveholders and enslaved black females allowed genuine interracial intimacy to flourish under the regime of chattel slavery in the antebellum United States. We found the assertion to be not only unsupported on its own terms but also entirely misplaced given the questions at hand—an ethical evasion of the foreclosure of black female consent under the conditions of enslavement, as detailed by a number of noted black feminist scholars. Further, the peculiar historical demand for black female sexual consent in relations with white male slaveholders symbolizes for multiracial advocates a broader problem oipolitical consent from the captive community and its descendents for the project of multiracial democracy up to the present moment. The objective of the current chapter is to reveal the notion of healthy interracial relationships advanced within multiracial discourse as an ideological lure insofar as they are considered to be disconnected from supposedly unhealthy interracial liaisons and, beyond that, a real union of differently... 

One should not be distracted by Stephens s use of qualifiers like almost always when describing the unequal power relations obtaining between blacks and whites in the antebellum United States. He is uninterested in those exceptional cases of interracial relationships that he would suggest unfolded on terms of equality. His point, like those of authors discussed later, is to argue that unequal power relations are ultimately inconsequential to the politics of interracial intimacy. 

Cutrone, Chris. 2000. The Child with a Lion The Utopia of Interracial Intimacy. GLQ A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 6, no. 2 (Spring) 249-85. 

Interracial Intimacies Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption. New York ... 

Moran, Rachel. 2001. Interracial Intimacy The Regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago University of Chicago Press. 

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