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Modern Marriage: Three Visions

Christina Simmons

in Making Marriage Modern: Women's Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II

Novelists as well as reformers in the interwar period depicted three competing versions of companionate marriage. The most widespread was “flapper marriage,” which modernized but did not really ... More

Novelists as well as reformers in the interwar period depicted three competing versions of companionate marriage. The most widespread was “flapper marriage,” which modernized but did not really confront male dominance. Its proponents acclaimed flapper wives who had rejected demure styles of femininity, but they demonized powerful matriarchs and independent career women. African Americans imagined “partnership marriage,” in which marital roles were less distinct, wives were often employed, and marriage was more anchored in wider kin and community networks. Black and white feminists sought “feminist marriage,” in which not only sex but also paid work and household labor involved greater equality between women and men. Although all versions accepted more individual freedom in style and public behavior than Victorian mores allowed, only African Americans seriously supported individual freedom to choose marriage partners across racial lines.Less

Miscegenation in the Conflict of Laws

Andrew Koppelman

in Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines

This chapter describes legal precedents from the controversy over interracial marriage. It covers polygamy cases; the functions of the miscegenation taboo; and three classes of choice of law problems ... More

This chapter describes legal precedents from the controversy over interracial marriage. It covers polygamy cases; the functions of the miscegenation taboo; and three classes of choice of law problems involving interracial marriages: evasion cases, extraterritorial cases, and migratory cases.Less

: “Poor Little Cupid” and the Marriage Contract

Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor

in Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness

This chapter focuses on the importance of race in marriages during the 1920s. Concerns over race and concerns about marriage often converged when it came time to choose a marriage partner. By 1927, ... More

This chapter focuses on the importance of race in marriages during the 1920s. Concerns over race and concerns about marriage often converged when it came time to choose a marriage partner. By 1927, twenty-nine states outlawed marriages between different races. Race also mattered for marriage in northern states like New York, where no laws forbade interracial marriages.Less

A Historical Review

Carlos A. Ball

in Same-Sex Marriage and Children: A Tale of History, Social Science, and Law

This chapter places the current marriage debates in a historical context by explaining how supporters of earlier class-based marital restrictions enacted in decades past (such as interracial marriage ... More

This chapter places the current marriage debates in a historical context by explaining how supporters of earlier class-based marital restrictions enacted in decades past (such as interracial marriage bans, disability marriage prohibitions, and the differential treatment of nonmarital children), like opponents of same-sex marriage today, defended their policy positions by relying on particular understandings of how individuals should exercise their procreative capacities and how they should form families and rear children in order to promote the social good. The chapter argues that these highly problematic precedents in American marital policy history should make policymakers, courts, and the general public highly skeptical of efforts to impose or maintain class-based marital disqualifications or limitations in order to (ostensibly) promote the social good in matters related to procreation and child-rearing.Less

Interracialism, Pluralism, and Civil Rights: War Bride Marriage in the 1940s and 1950s

Susan Zeiger

in Entangling Alliances: Foreign War Brides and American Soldiers in the Twentieth Century

This chapter discusses how the interracial “war bride” marriages factored into issues of race and race relations in the United States as the nation stood on the cusp of the civil rights movement. The ... More

This chapter discusses how the interracial “war bride” marriages factored into issues of race and race relations in the United States as the nation stood on the cusp of the civil rights movement. The personal had become political for war brides and American soldiers as they confronted the machinery of discrimination in the military and at home during the late 1940s and 1950s. Out of this experience, some individuals or families came to embrace the cause of civil rights. The equality revolution would not coalesce for another decade and a half, but a nascent civil rights movement gathered momentum in the wake of the war. Voices of resistance to racism were heard in the press, among scholars, artists, and writers, and among activists and reformers. For some groups and individuals, the interracial war couples of World War II were an important touchstone, a symbol of racial transformation.Less

Choice of Law and Public Policy

in The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law

This chapter considers the choice-of-law problem that state courts will face. It addresses the question of interstate marriage recognition by developing an analogy with the most profound disagreement ... More

This chapter considers the choice-of-law problem that state courts will face. It addresses the question of interstate marriage recognition by developing an analogy with the most profound disagreement in American history over marriage recognition, the conflict of laws over interracial marriage. Until 1967, when the Supreme Court invalidated them, many state laws prohibited such marriages. Like same-sex marriage, interracial marriages involved an exceedingly strong public policy: the Southern courts regarded marriages between blacks and whites as “connections and alliances so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them.” The statutes prohibiting such marriages were worded at least as strongly as those of the recent state laws against same-sex marriage: they usually declared such marriages void and punished their celebration with criminal penalties. Yet even in this charged context, the courts rejected the blanket rule of nonrecognition. In every case that did not involve cohabitation within the forum, and in some that did, the Southern courts recognized interracial marriages.Less

Interfaith Marriage as a Protest Against Bigotry?: Debates in the 1950s and 1960s

Linda C. McClain

in Who's the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law

This chapter revisits controversies in the 1950s and 1960s over interfaith marriage. Commentators debated whether objections to interfaith marriage stemmed from bigotry and intolerance or legitimate ... More

This chapter revisits controversies in the 1950s and 1960s over interfaith marriage. Commentators debated whether objections to interfaith marriage stemmed from bigotry and intolerance or legitimate grounds, such as lower rates of marital success. The chapter reviews diagnoses of such marriages as resulting from assimilation and increasing social contact among Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Some contended that young people intermarried to protest against bigotry. Cautions against interfaith marriage—particularly mixed marriage, where spouses retained their distinct religions—appealed to science to fortify religious arguments. Objectors warned of harms to spouses’ conscience and to children’s sense of identity. Comparing diagnoses of both interfaith and interracial marriage as problem marriages, the chapter discusses Albert I. Gordon’s Intermarriage (1964), which featured in Virginia’s defense of its anti-miscegenation law in Loving v. Virginia (1967). The chapter ends by considering early twenty-first-century analyses of interfaith marriage.Less

Love across the Color Line: The Limits of German and American Democracy, 1945–1968

Maria Höhn

in Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange

Recent research on the American military occupation in West Germany has addressed issues of gender and race by exploring the African American GIs’ sexual relationships with German women. This chapter ... More

Recent research on the American military occupation in West Germany has addressed issues of gender and race by exploring the African American GIs’ sexual relationships with German women. This chapter examines the German and American debates on interracial relationships and how black soldiers stationed in Germany began to challenge interference in their relationships or the de facto segregation of bars and restaurants to GIs. It argues that African American GIs were defining civil rights not only in terms of political and economic equality, but also in terms of social equality. The chapter considers the irony of an American government that forced the abolition of the Nuremberg Laws and a ban on marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans, but tolerated the many state laws banning interracial marriages. It also comments on the attitudes of black soldiers who felt less racism and discrimination in U.S. military bases in Germany than in America, and, finally, discusses the debate about the propriety of racial mixing in Germany and its implications for democracy.Less

Introduction: Race Mixing and Ethnoracial Boundaries

Chinyere K. Osuji

in Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race

The Introduction defines the concept of “ethnoracial boundaries” and introduces the concept of “groupness” to the reader. It discusses how scholars of ethnicity and nationalism have neglected how ... More

The Introduction defines the concept of “ethnoracial boundaries” and introduces the concept of “groupness” to the reader. It discusses how scholars of ethnicity and nationalism have neglected how non-elites negotiate ethnoracial boundaries through non-state social interaction. It also critiques race and ethnicity scholars for essentializing ethnoracial categories and focusing exclusively on the United States. This chapter advocates a “critical constructivist” approach to race and ethnicity that focuses on how non-elite social actors negotiate ethnoracial boundaries and incorporates critical race theory's concept of intersectionality. Following this discussion, the chapter explains the history of race-mixing between blacks and whites in the United States and Brazil. It also outlines: the methodology of the book; the categorization of respondents; the sampling strategy; the meaning of marriage in the two societies; a statement on researcher reflexivity; and an overview of the remaining book chapters. It ends with a summary of the book's conclusion, that race mixture is no replacement for public policy and can coexist with white supremacy.Less

Mixed Marriages, Motley Schools, and the Struggle for Racial Equality

Kyle G. Volk

in Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy

This chapter reveals how racial amalgamation (racial mixture) became the third moral problem that provoked crucial debates about majority rule and minority rights in the 1840s. It shows how, ... More

This chapter reveals how racial amalgamation (racial mixture) became the third moral problem that provoked crucial debates about majority rule and minority rights in the 1840s. It shows how, beginning in Massachusetts, abolitionists challenged the long-standing legal ban on interracial marriage and policies of segregating black and white children in public schools. Defenders insisted that these measures properly prevented amalgamation and were supported in true democratic fashion by the overwhelming majority. At town meetings, in courtrooms, in newspapers, and elsewhere, however, black activists and white abolitionists painted race regulations as markers of inequality. To them, equality was a hallmark of democracy that no majority, no matter how large, could contravene in public policy. This chapter follows the struggle from grass-roots challenges to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and eventually to the 1855 state law that ended de jure school segregation, the first in the nation.Less

Whitening Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Cuban Counterpoints

Karen Y. Morrison

in Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora

This chapter examines the question of whitening as a process that required both family and nation to force ideological and behavioral commitments on individuals. Focusing on race-making behaviors in ... More

This chapter examines the question of whitening as a process that required both family and nation to force ideological and behavioral commitments on individuals. Focusing on race-making behaviors in nineteenth-century Cuba, it interrogates the historical ambiguity of blanqueamiento, or whitening process, using a methodology that emphasizes the social construction of race. More specifically, it proposes the concept of “sexual economy of race” as a means to elucidate the conjunction between reproductive behavior and the social construction of race. It also explores the restriction of interracial marriages in Cuba as part of its whitening agenda, along with the ways in which racialized reproductive choices influenced the standard system of racial classification and fostered whitening in some cases and discouraged it in others. The chapter shows that whitening efforts in colonial Cuba were not as predictable or linear as previously theorized.Less

Conflicted Intimacies

Janet McIntosh

in Unsettled: Denial and Belonging Among White Kenyans

This chapter examines close relationships between white and black Kenyans. It explores interracial sex, marriage, and integration in portraying a complicated social landscape that is only in part ... More

This chapter examines close relationships between white and black Kenyans. It explores interracial sex, marriage, and integration in portraying a complicated social landscape that is only in part informed by Kenya's history of interracial relations and racism. The chapter describes the social geography of interracial distance, citing the more frequent instances of interracial marriage among expats and how this contrasts with those among the settlers. Many settler descendants interviewed for this study cleave to their cultural comfort zones, and this, in conjunction with their geographic choices, often amounts to self-segregation. Trying to capture the quality of segregated integration among white Kenyans, one respondent sums it up: “You mix, but you don't end up really mixing.”Less

Conclusion: “Can Interracial Love Save Us?”

Chinyere K. Osuji

in Boundaries of Love: Interracial Marriage and the Meaning of Race

Boundaries of Love overtly challenges the sanguine picture of interracial marriage being the solution to racism and white supremacy. Adopting a “critical constructivist” perspective, this book ... More

Boundaries of Love overtly challenges the sanguine picture of interracial marriage being the solution to racism and white supremacy. Adopting a “critical constructivist” perspective, this book reveals how black-white couples - whether in a society where they are flexible or one in which they are more rigid - often reproduced ethnoracial boundaries. Race mixture as a solution to racism has been a potent racial ideology both Brazil and the United States. The ideology of Brazil as a “racial democracy” has characterized it as having harmonious race relations, integration, and high proportions of interracial mating. This ideology obscured how centuries of race-mixing have co-existed alongside a white socioeconomic and political elite disenfranchising non-white Brazilians. The notion that “interracial love saves America” can gloss over ethnoracial preferences based in anti-blackness for both white and black partners. Of course, not all of the couples that I interviewed subscribed to these notions. However, enough did in both societies to call into question the blanket statement that all interracial love is anti-racist. More importantly, none of the couples in either society revealed a disintegration or blurring of racial boundaries that many, including academics, have come to expect.Less

Beginning

Kathryn Talalay

in Composition in Black and White: The Life of Philippa Schuyler

This chapter focuses in the early life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. She was born during the Great Depression, on August 2, 1931, at her parent's home in Harlem. Her father, George Schuyler, was a black ... More

This chapter focuses in the early life of Philippa Duke Schuyler. She was born during the Great Depression, on August 2, 1931, at her parent's home in Harlem. Her father, George Schuyler, was a black journalist for one of America's oldest black newspapers, making his absence a sad necessity to Philippa's early days. Her mother, Josephine Schuyler, however kept a detailed scrapbook of Philippa's development for George to see when he came home. Philippa's family lived in an apartment on the fourth floor of Park Lincoln, with Colonial Park near by and as a child, Philippa would spend many hours playing there. Philippa's birth was talked about in all the black newspapers. It was broadly known that she was the product of the first interracial celebrity marriage of the 20th century.Less

How to Give the Present a Past? Family Law in the United States 1950–2000

Michael Grossberg

in Cross Currents: Family Law and Policy in the US and England

This chapter places the last fifty years of United States family law in historical context in order to help introduce a series of substantive analyses of particular aspects of contemporary ... More

This chapter places the last fifty years of United States family law in historical context in order to help introduce a series of substantive analyses of particular aspects of contemporary Anglo-American domestic relations law. It argues that a series of fundamental changes in the United States family law during the early years of the era transformed American domestic relations by ending a nineteenth-century regime of family governance. The changes are worth recovering and analysing because they have framed subsequent legal practice and disputes. At the same time, however, the nature of the new domestic relations regime was determined not simply by change, but also by continuities in family law and by reactions to the transformations. This chapter thus documents a range of family law changes ranging from maternal preference to bans on interracial marriage, fault-based divorce laws against abortion and birth control, refusals to accept charges of marital rape, circumscribed juvenile rights, and even basic legal definitions of families.Less

Who’s the Bigot?: Puzzles about Bigotry

Linda C. McClain

in Who's the Bigot?: Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law

This chapter uses two advice columns, fifty years apart, to introduce the argument that the increasing turn to the language of bigotry poses puzzles that demand attention. Despite evident agreement ... More

This chapter uses two advice columns, fifty years apart, to introduce the argument that the increasing turn to the language of bigotry poses puzzles that demand attention. Despite evident agreement that bigotry in all its forms is wrong and contrary to national ideals, political battles in the United States over “calling out” bigotry are fraught and polarizing; people disagree over bigotry’s forms. Conflicts during the 2016 presidential election and the Trump presidency provide examples. The chapter introduces several puzzles about bigotry that later chapters will address by analyzing controversies over interfaith, interracial, and same-sex marriage; racial desegregation; and civil rights laws. That study reveals recurring patterns of argument. The chapter also contends that past examples of bigotry on which there is now consensus—such as anti-Semitism and racism—inform judgments about newer forms, as in the constitutional conflicts over same-sex marriage and conscience-based objections to civil rights laws.Less

Love and Death in the American Pacific: Myth versus History in the Melville Revival

Heidi Kim

in Invisible Subjects: Asian America in Postwar Literature

The Melville Revival of the 1950s, by critics of varied political persuasions, reinstated Herman Melville as one of the most important American authors. As many modern critics have discussed, these ... More

The Melville Revival of the 1950s, by critics of varied political persuasions, reinstated Herman Melville as one of the most important American authors. As many modern critics have discussed, these critics used Moby-Dick as a frame narrative for the Cold War, but the discussion of totalitarianism and individualism still relies on the comfortable use of the Asian figure, whether loving or diabolical, as mythic and symbolic. The interest in Melville is inseparable from the larger interest in the Asia-Pacific region postwar, as well as the role of the Asian in the discussion of interracial marriage and intimacy. Leslie Fiedler’s infamous hypothesis of the “innocent homosexuality” between the white and black man in American literature explicitly includes the Asian/Pacific Islander, this chapter argues, and represents the anxiety over homosexuality in this period but also the concern with white-Asian marriages, particularly war brides, as a stand-in for the larger fears of white-black interracial marriage.Less