Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2006. / Includes appendices. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of History, Faculty of Arts. Includes bibliography.

Writing the history of sexuality in the United States is a notoriously slippery task. For years, scholars ignored the history of American sexuality, abiding by the assumption that sex belongs in the bedroom, the private realm, and thus has no bearing on the high politics and economics that used to dominate American historiography. Interracial sexuality occupied a particular historical silence in a nation whose Supreme Court would not strike down all laws against interracial marriage until 1967. In his 1995 presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, Gary Nash declared that of race-mixing and mixed-race people in America to be a "hidden history." Since the late 1990s, however, dozens of monographs and anthologies have appeared exploring sexuality in colonial and early America. Despite the best intentions of colonial authorities to establish order and social hierarchy in the New World, both environment and human nature militated against the observance of ironclad sexual regulations and racial boundaries. Reinforcing this new American sexual history has been a sophisticated historiography on legislation against interracial marriage. These works recognize the public nature of marriage as a means of ordering society, defining citizenship, and even constructing racial and gender difference. While the physical act of race mixing has occurred throughout American history, the settings in which this mixing acquired meaning - positive and negative - have necessarily been linked to imperatives of social control and the maintenance of that control. Yet scholars of interracial marriage assert that antimiscegenation laws were not historical absolutes but contingent, contested, shifting measures across time and space subject to debate and contravention. The twin revelations that interracial sex was both privately common and publicly important do not yet tell us how the civil and political associations that operated as intermediaries between individuals and the state dealt with it. And in the case of associations that sought emancipation and civil rights for African-Americans, we still lack a thorough understanding of how they grappled with the strong prejudice against interracial marriage and mixed-race people as they agitated for black inclusion in society and the polity on equal terms. This study contributes to that understanding by taking a broad view of both the African-American civil rights struggle and the paradoxical history of interracial marriage in the United States between 1833 and 2000. It divides that one hundred sixty-seven-year span into five periods of struggle (with occasional overlap) and focuses on those organizations that were in the vanguard of protest at the time: the American Anti-Slavery Society (1833-1870), the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1865-1910), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909-1967), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960-1972), and the Multiracial Movement (1975-2000). Each of the civil rights organizations under study here possessed a historically-informed understanding of the role antimiscegenation laws played in establishing and maintaining racial hierarchy. This historical awareness created an internal logic, or "organic intellect," that shaped the attitudes these organizations adopted to interracial sex, marriage, and love as potential protest targets or as long-term means of ending prejudice. Part of this study recounts these organization's unexpected engagement with interracial intimacy despite its long history of criminalization. Far from a non-issue or a liability better left ignored, criticism of the sexual enforcement of racial boundaries permeates the sources these activists left behind. As much as they were influenced by external hostility, however, attitudes toward interracial love were also shaped by their internal organic intellect. This organic intellect acknowledged that restrictions on cross-racial intimacy served the ends of white supremacy. It also knew that interracial sex was as old as America, and neither it nor the presence of generations of ambiguously-complected mulattoes had eradicated that prejudice. This historical pragmatism acted with a sense of group loyalty that complicated any advocacy of wholesale interracial marriage, because to do so suggested a racial self-loathing and hankering after whiteness that ran counter to the freedom struggle itself. For all its apparent power, antimiscegenation laws never convinced activist African-Americans and their white allies that the color line was impermeable or that black and white could not love each other. Even so, the black freedom struggle could also never be convinced that love - or at least sex - would fix everything. This study uncovers the unexpected ways in which racism and white supremacy have infiltrated not only American sexual mores but our very notion of family and our definition of love. Both the permissive and prohibitive impulses that have shaped the contradictory history of interracial sexuality in America reveal complicated truths about our ancestors and ourselves.

The proposed study was designed to evaluate a newly developed Prejudice towards Interracial/Interethnic Couples Scale (PTICS) using exploratory and confirmatory analyses. In this study, 963 workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) (which was randomly split 60/40 to form the exploratory and confirmatory datasets) completed the 25 items generated for the PTICS, the Marlowe-Crone Social Desirability Scale (MCSDS) Form C, the Political Correctness Ideology-Race Scale (PCIRS), the Social Distance Scale (SDS), the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) scale, the Color-blind Racial Attitude Scale (CoBRAs), the Modern Racism Scale (MRS), and a demographic survey. The researcher collected data from two different subject matter expert groups to modify the original 17 item PTICS generated from a review of the literature. AMT workers (N = 50) currently in interracial/interethnic relationships and graduate students (N = 21) enrolled in a graduate level Principles of Measurement course at the time of data collection, indicated whether the items measured prejudice towards interracial/interethnic relationships, whether the items were clearly written, types of prejudice not captured by the items, and their own experiences (if applicable) with prejudice towards interracial/interethnic relationships. Based on the feedback from the subject matter experts, items were revised and 8 additional items were added to form the final 25 item PTICS. Exploratory factory analyses of the PTICS resulted in a two factor (relationship inferiority, social disapproval) final solution containing 14 items. Reliability and validity analyses were conducted, and were especially promising for the relationship inferiority subscale (i.e., α = .900; significantly positively correlated with CoBRAS, MRS, SDS, and SDO, significantly negatively correlated with interracial/interethnic exposure), and the PTICS total score (α = .849; significantly positively correlated with CoBRAS, MRS, SDS, and SDO, significantly negatively correlated with diversity exposure and interracial/interethnic exposure); while further refinement is needed for acknowledging social disapproval (α = .706; significantly negatively correlated with CoBRAS, and MRS, significantly positively correlated with SDS). Confirmatory factor analyses showed global and local fit issues with the two-factor structure, particularly with items from the social disapproval subscale; however, when seven covarying errors were added, global fit improved and issues with local fit were eliminated. Global fit was also improved from the original two-factor model when conducting a one-factor model which included only the relationship inferiority scale, though a few areas of local misfit still remained. Reliability and validity analyses conducted with the cross-validation data further supported the strong reliability and validity for the relationship inferiority subscale (α = .897; significantly positively correlated with CoBRAS, MRS, SDO, and SDS, significantly negatively correlated with diversity exposure and interracial/interethnic exposure), and the PTICS total score (α = .849; significantly positively correlated with CoBRAS, MRS, SDS, and SDO, significantly negatively correlated with diversity exposure and interracial/interethnic exposure); and the need for further refinement for acknowledging social disapproval (α = .686; significantly negatively correlated with CoBRAS, MRS; significantly positively correlated with SDS, and diversity exposure). Cross-validation results indicate that social desirability and political correctness may be concerns for both subscales and the total score, while the exploratory data only showed issues for the social disapproval subscale. Overall, the development of a Prejudice towards Interracial/Interethnic Couples Scale (PTICS), with two subscales, is an important contribution to the field; and takes a critical step in deepening our understanding of interracial/interethnic romantic relationships and facilitating quantitative research in this domain.

Research shows that interracial relationships are more likely to dissolve than same-race relationships (Bratter and King, 2008), with evidence suggesting social disapproval may play a role (Lehmiller and Agnew, 2006). However, people seem to overlook external attributions for failures and minimize internal attributions for successes when judging interracial relationships (Ellithorpe, Colvin, Missel, and Sinclair, 2012), thus making the ultimate attribution error. To test whether individuals make this error, 642 participants read one of 16 vignettes manipulating the race (Caucasian vs. African American) of relationship partners and the opinions of their parents (Approving vs. Disapproving). Participants predicted the likelihood of relationship success and indicated reasons for potential relationship outcomes. Participants were more likely to predict success for relationships that had approval, but were significantly more likely to predict failure for interracial relationships. Consistent with ultimate attribution error theory, individuals scoring high in prejudice were more likely to make these attribution patterns.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, General Literature and Rhetoric, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

In the midst of increasing multiracial identification and diversity in the United States, I examine whether White and Black military veterans hold different attitudes toward interracial marriage than those held by their coethnics in the general population. Using the General Social Survey, I examine the likelihood of military members opposing marriage between a close relative and a partner of a race different from the respondent’s own, and whether their views are significantly different from their non-military coethnic counterparts. I use binary logistic regressions to assess whether opposition toward interracial marriage varies by military status and race. Results indicate that Whites are more opposed to interracial marriage than Blacks, and Whites with military service are more likely to oppose than their non-military counterparts. However, there was no difference among Blacks. In addition, age mediates the relationship between veteran status and attitudes among Whites, with younger people showing less opposition.

This is the beginning of a historical novel set in 1960’s Little Rock, Arkansas. The main character, Elsie Robinson, is forced to come home from her life in New York because of the sudden death of her father. She stays to look after her mother. She then meets Freddie, a white man, who somehow feels completely comfortable in her black community. In a time when everything seems to be falling apart, Freddie is a beam of light. If only their relationship weren’t illegal.

This thesis examines abolitionist support for interracial marriage. It demonstrates that far from being a marginal viewpoint within the movement, support for interracial marriage was widespread among both black and white abolitionists. Many abolitionists stated they personally did not recommend interracial marriage at present due to the backlash couples would face, while also denying that it was unnatural or immoral. A few abolitionists eschewed such a disclaimer. A few also married people of different races themselves. To a considerable extent, defense of interracial marriage was part of a larger push for racial integration and equality. This thesis also looks at British abolitionists who criticized the American stigma against interracial marriage, and children and grandchildren of abolitionists who defended interracial marriage, the most prominent being the famous, controversial lawyer, Clarence Darrow.

Nest Morale is a collection of personal essays that explores race through the lenses of education, marriage, homeownership, and parenthood.

An Examination of Perceived Discrimination and Stress in Interracial Relationships by Sharon Sirmons Conger MS, Troy University, Florida Campus, 2006 BA, Baptist College of Florida, 2003 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy General Psychology Walden University February 2015   There is a potential increase in stress for White women in interracial relationships with Black men due to perceived racial discrimination that may not have been previously experienced. The purpose of this quantitative study was to measure stress before and after the relationship due to perceived racial discrimination for these women. Guided by the status exchange theory and the stress process model, it was hypothesized that White women in interracial relationships with Black men would not experience stress due to racial discrimination prior to the relationship but would experience stress once in the relationship. Paired-sample t tests were used to measure the statistical significance between the mean scores from the General Ethnic Discrimination Scale (GED, before the relationship) to the corresponding questions on the GED-Revised (after involvement in the relationship) and the level of stress experienced due to perceived racial discrimination among a sample of 39 White women. A standard multiple regression was used to examine whether the perpetrator (family, friends, or strangers) of the perceived discrimination affected the amount of total stress experienced. The results indicate that the participants experienced an increase in perceived racial discrimination after their involvement in an interracial relationship in most areas identified in the study with a significant increase in stress; family was the most stressful. The results of the study could be used by members of interracial relationships and by counselors who work them to facilitate social change by offering more effective coping skills on how perceived racial discrimination affects stress for White women in interracial relationships.