Racing Romance: Love, Power, and Desire Among Asian American/ White Couples

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Are You Positively Sure That You Are Not Part Negro? Read This.

The discovery recently, that a presumably white soldier was part Negro, brought forth the following comment, as to the facts portrayed in this little volume, from Mr. John D. Barry, in a recent article of the San Francisco News:—

“The case of the army officer whose death has been the means of apparently revealing him as legally a Negro wasn’t wholly astonishing. It astonished only those unfamiliar with the extent of the blood mixture in this country. The book published a few years ago by Louis Fremont Baldwin. “From Negro to Caucassian.” showed that the mixture had been going on for a long time and that a good many people who passed as white were Negroes. According to our law anyone who has any Negro blood is a Negro.

Most Negroes understand the situation. Among them the word “passing” is commonly used. It refers to those who have succeeded in crossing the color line without detection. Though they don’t admire the resorters to “passing,” though they consider “passing” a repudiation of sacred ties, a denial of loyalty, they know only too well the motive behind it, the natural longing to escape from discriminations and penalties. Louis Fremont Baldwin says there are thousands in this country who are accepted as white and know they are Negroes. He also says there are still more thousands who are Negroes and believe themselves to be white.

As black blood is absorbed into the white stream he claims that it tends to disappear.”

Louis Fremont Baldwin, From Negro to Caucasian: or, How the Ethiopian is Changing His Skin, (San Francisco: Pilot Publishing Company, 1929): i.

Racing Romance: Love, Power, and Desire Among Asian American/ White Couples

Racing Romance: Love, Power, and Desire Among Asian American/ White Couples

Rutgers University Press
June 2009
208 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-4533-2
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-4532-5
Web PDF ISBN: 978-0-8135-4852-4

Kumiko Nemoto, Associate Professor of Sociology
Western Kentucky University

Despite being far from the norm, interracial relationships are more popular than ever. Racing Romance sheds special light on the bonds between whites and Asian Americans, an important topic that has not garnered well-deserved attention until now. Incorporating life-history narratives and interviews with those currently or previously involved with an interracial partner, Kumiko Nemoto addresses the contradictions and tensions—a result of race, class, and gender—that Asian Americans and whites experience.

Similar to black/white relationships, stereotypes have long played crucial roles in AsianAmerican/white encounters. Partners grapple with media representations of Asian women as submissive or hypersexual and Asian men are often portrayed as weak laborers or powerful martial artists. Racing Romance reveals how allegedly progressive interracial relationships remain firmly shaped by the logic of patriarchy and gender inherent to the ideal of marriage, family, and nation in America, even as this ideal is juxtaposed with discourses of multiculturalism and color blindness.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2012 at 03:06Z and is filed under Asian Diaspora, Books, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Racing Romance: Love, Power, and Desire Among Asian American/ White Couples

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