"Romance and Rights: The Politics of Interracial Intimacy,
1945-1954" studies the meaning of interracial romance, love, and
sex in the ten years after World War II. How was interracial
romance treated in popular culture by civil rights leaders, African
American soldiers, and white segregationists?
Previous studies focus on the period beginning in 1967 when the
Supreme Court overturned the last state antimiscegenation law
(Loving v. Virginia). Lubin's study, however, suggests that we
cannot fully understand contemporary debates about "hybridity," or
mixed-race identity, without first comprehending how WWII changed
the terrain.
The book focuses on the years immediately after the war, when
ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality were being reformulated
and solidified in both the academy and the public. Lubin shows that
interracial romance, particularly between blacks and whites, was a
testing ground for both the general American public and the
American government. The government wanted interracial
relationships to be treated primarily as private affairs to keep
attention off contradictions between its outward aura of cultural
freedom and the realities of Jim Crow politics and
antimiscegenation laws. Activists, however, wanted interracial
intimacy treated as a public act, one that could be used
symbolically to promote equal rights and expanded opportunities.
These contradictory impulses helped shape our current perceptions
about interracial romances and their broader significance in
American culture.
"Romance and Rights" ends in 1954, the year of the Brown v.
Board of Education decision, before the civil rights movement
became well organized. By closely examining postwar popular
culture, African American literature, NAACP manuscripts,
miscegenation laws, and segregationist protest letters, among other
resources, the author analyzes postwar attitudes towards
interracial romance, showing how complex and often contradictory
those attitudes could be.
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