Toward Contingent Understandings of Intersecting Identifications among Selected U.S. Interracial Couples: Integrating Interpretive and Critical Views

Abstract

This essay includes selected examples of interview discourse derived from a larger study exploring how social structures and cultural identification issues of race, sex, and class are jointly negotiated in the relational accounts of black and white interracial marital partners. A dialectic of critical and interpretive perspectives is utilized to uncover complex intersecting cultural and relational identifications. The discourse shows that couples negotiate who they are in their relationships; ambivalence, contradiction, and change over time are evident. At some points, couples' negotiations reveal disassociation from the label “interracial,” and discursive forms that show both problematizing and evading race in their personal relationships and in the workplace. Overall, couples' collaborative interview discourse reveals a vigilance and protection of the partners, their relationship, and family from discrimination.

Keywords:

• Ambivalence
• Dialectic of Critical and Interpretive Perspectives
• Intersecting Identifications
• Vectors of Difference
• White Privilege

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Thompson

Jennifer Thompson (PhD, University of Denver, 2002) is a Research Consultant for the Lundy Foundation assessing Centers for Children Orphaned by AIDS in Tanzania, Africa.

Mary Jane Collier

Mary Jane Collier (PhD, University of Southern California, 1982) is Full Professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism at the University of New Mexico.