Although interracial (hetero)sexual relations are no longer illegal, and the number of visible, consensual interracial partnerships has increased, there still remains a discourse against these social arrangements circulating in the United States that continues to bear the traces of the history of antimiscegenation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the everyday negotiation of public spaces of an African-American man as he participates in interracial (heterosexual relations. With a theoretical debt to both Lefebvre and de Certeau, and employing a narrative approach, I highlight the complex interactions of race, gender, and sexuality, and how these are manifest spatially. Through this narrative, moreover, I demonstrate how resistance to one form of hegemony (racism) may simultaneously contribute to the augmentation of other forms of dominance (patriarchy).
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AitkinS C, 1998Family Fantasies and Community Space (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ)
2.
BarroA, 1994, “Church accused of discrimination; interracial couple's wedding takes unusual turn”News and Record 21 June, page A1 (Greensboro, NC)
3.
BedermanG, 1995Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL)
4.
BellD, 1991, “Insignificant others: Lesbian and gay geographies”Area23323–329
5.
BellD, 1995, “Pleasure and danger: The paradoxical spaces of sexual citizenship”Political Geography14139–153
6.
BellDValentineG (Eds), 1995Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities (Routledge, London)
7.
BinnieJ, 1997, “Coming out of Geography: Towards a queer epistemology?Environment and Planning D: Society and Space15223–237
8.
BluntAWillsJ, 2000Dissident Geographies: An Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practice (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ)
9.
CashmoreE, 1994 … And There Was Television (Routledge, New York)
10.
ChristensonS, 1996, “Vow of love in Thomasville; couple marry in spite of series of bad breaks, bigotry”The Florida Times-Union 29 November, page A1
11.
CollinsP H, 1990Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (Routledge, New York)
12.
CrangMThriftN (Eds), 2000Thinking Space (Routledge, New York)
13.
CresswellT, 2000, “Falling down: Resistance as diagnostic”, in Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance Eds SharpJ PRoutledgePPhiloCPaddisonR (Routledge, New York) pp 256–268
14.
de CerteauM, 1984The Practice of Everyday Life (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA)
15.
DelaneyD, 1998Race, Place, and the Law, 1836–1948 (University of Texas Press, Austin, TX)
DenzinN K, 1998, “The art and politics of interpretation”, in Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials Eds DenzinN KLincolnY S (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA) pp 313–344
18.
DomoshM, 1998, “Those ‘gorgeous incongruities’: Polite politics and public space on the streets of nineteenth-century New York City”Annals of the Association of American Geographers88209–226
19.
DuncanN (Ed.), 1996Body space: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, New York)
20.
FerberA, 1998White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD)
21.
FieldsB, 1990, “Slavery, race and ideology in the United States of America”New Left Reviewnumber 181, 95–118
22.
FinkelmanP, 1997, “Crimes of love, misdemeanors of passion: The regulation of race and sex in the colonial South”, in The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South Eds ClintonCGillespieM (Oxford University Press, Oxford) pp 124–135
23.
Fox-GenoveseE, 1988Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC)
24.
FrankenbergR, 1993White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
25.
GiljeP, 1996Rioting in America (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN)
26.
GoldfieldM, 1997The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainspring of American Politics (The New Press, New York)
GubriumJ FHolsteinJ A, 1995, “Biographical work and new ethnography”, in Interpreting Experience: The Narrative Study of Lives Eds JosselsonRLieblichA (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA) pp 45–58
29.
HaleG E, 2000, “‘For colored’ and ‘for white’: Segregating consumption in the South”, in Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights Eds DaileyJGilmoreG ESimonB (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) pp 162–182
30.
HannahM, 1997, “Imperfect panopticism: Envisioning the construction of normal lives”, in Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity Eds BenkoGStrohmayerU (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 344–359
31.
HartmanS V, 1997Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-making in Nineteenth-century America (Oxford University Press, New York)
32.
HummelJ, 1996Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Open Court, Chicago, IL)
33.
JackmanT, 1998, “12-year prison term imposed in Rushville cross-burning”The Kansas City Start 15 May, page A1
34.
JosselsonR, 1995, “Imagining the real: Empathy, narrative, and the dialogic self”, in Interpreting Experience: The Narrative Study of Lives Eds JosselsonRLieblichA (Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA) pp 27–44
35.
KirbySHayI, 1997, “(Hetero)sexing space: Gay men and ‘straight’ space in Adelaide, South Australia”The Professional Geographer49295–305
36.
KnoppL, 1992, “Sexuality and the spatial dynamics of capitalism”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space10651–669
37.
KobayashiAPeakeL, 2000, “Racism out of place: Thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium”Annals of the Association of American Geographers90392–403
MitchellD, 1995, “The end of public space? People's Park, definitions of the public, and democracy”Annals of the Association of American Geographers85108–133
47.
MorehouseB J, 1996, “Conflict, space, and resource management at Grand Canyon”The Professional Geographer4846–57
48.
MumfordK J, 1997Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, New York)
49.
NamasteK, 1996, “Genderbashing: Sexuality, gender, and the regulation of public space”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space14221–240
50.
NastH, 2000, “Mapping the ‘unconscious’: Racism and the Oedipal family”Annals of the Association of American Geographers90215–255
51.
NastHPileS (Eds), 1998Places Through the Body (Routledge, New York)
52.
PaulinD, 1997a, “De-essentializing interracial representations: Black and white border-crossings in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever and Octavia Butler's Kindred”Cultural Critique Spring, 165–193
ProbynE, 1995, “Lesbians in space: Gender, sex and the structure of missing”Gender, Place and Culture277–84
55.
PuhdoL, 2000, “Rethinking environmental racism: White privilege and urban development in Southern California”Annals of the Association of American Geographers9012–40
56.
RoseG, 1993Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)
57.
RussellK K, 1998The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions (New York University Press, New York)
58.
St Petersburg Times1994, “Justice Department asks court to remove principal”, 18 May, page 3A
59.
ShieldsR, 1997, “Spatial stress and resistance: Social meanings of spatialization”, in Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity Eds BenkoGStrohmayerU (Blackwell, Oxford) pp 186–202
60.
SojaE, 1989Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, London)
61.
StaehehL AThompsonA, 1997, “Citizenship, community, and struggles for public space”The Professional Geographer4928–38
62.
StewartL, 1995, “Bodies, visions, and spatial politics: A review essay on Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space13609–618
63.
StolerA, 1995Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
64.
The News and Observer2000, “Date another race? Parents must give OK”, 8 March, page A6 (Raleigh, NC)
65.
TynerJHoustonD, 2000, “Controlling bodies: The punishment of multi-racialized sexual relations”Antipode32387–409
66.
United Press International1993, “Student suing over ‘immoral conduct’ expulsion”, 19 March
67.
ValentineG, 1993a, “(Hetero)sexing space: Lesbian perceptions and experiences of everyday spaces”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space11395–413
68.
ValentineG, 1993b, “Desperately seeking Susan: A geography of lesbian friendships”Arena25109–116
69.
ValentineG, 1995, “Out and about: Geographies of lesbian landscapes”International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies1996–112
70.
ValentineG, 1996, “(Renegotiating the ‘heterosexual street’: Lesbian productions of space”, in Body space: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality Ed. DuncanN (Routledge, New York) pp 146–155
71.
WongD W S, 1999, “A geographical analysis of multiethnic households in the United States”International Journal of Population Geography531–48
72.
YeohB S AHuangS, 1998, “Negotiating public space: Strategies and styles of migrant female domestic workers in Singapore”Urban Studies35583–602
73.
YoungR J C, 1995Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (Routledge, New York)
