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The growing population of the United States is linked to the increasing migration of individuals from other countries. With migration comes the development of cross-cultural and interracial romantic relationships, many leading to marriages. This qualitative grounded theory study sought to understand how a migrant partner's adjustment process, acculturation, contributes to cross-cultural marriages. The main research question and purpose of this study was to investigate the role of acculturation in marital satisfaction among mixed Caucasian and Asian American heterosexual couples. This study utilized multiple data sources and a purposive sampling of 11 mixed Asian and Caucasian heterosexual married couples, with one partner who identified themselves as being Caucasian and U.S. born, and the other as Asian American and an immigrant to the United States. Data were coded and analyzed to identify themes and patterns that emerged from the participants' experiences. The study revealed the following emergent themes representing the couples' common acculturative stressors: (a) challenges related to English language proficiency, (b) communication styles differences, (c) cultural learning, and (d) difficulties due to the lack of social support. The findings of this study provide marriage and family counselors with important data related to how married couples experience acculturation as well as the unique stressors associated with a migrating partner's process. Implications for positive social change include information related to the development of interventions to address common acculturative stressors identified during this study, as well as data to support clinicians and clients when identifying appropriate coping strategies.

This diploma thesis focuses on the analysis of the conditions of lighter-skin black women of mixed ancestry, both free and enslaved, before and after emancipation, as related in four novels written by the 19th century African-American novelists: Hannah Crafts, Harriet E. Wilson, Julia C. Collins and Frances E. W. Harper. The work especially deals with the main motifs appearing in their novels, such as the interracial relationships, variations of racism toward mulattos, the problematics of ``passing{\crqq} for white and the issue of ``racial uplift{\crqq}. The analyses of the novels themselves are preceded by a survey of the authors´ lives since they drew inspiration from their own personal experience. This is followed by a brief conclusive comparison of their novels.

Leaning on the framework of Critical Race and Whiteness Theory, this qualitative study draws on semi-structured interviews with second-generation Mexican Americans and White Americans to offer a yet untaken perspective on the fragmented nature of identity. It also sheds light on the ways racism and interracial relationships shape individuals’ notions of race and privilege. The study’s findings indicate that Mexicans perceive themselves as a distinct racial group situated in a “third space,” marked by a dialectic between externally ascribed and internally attributed racial identity categories. White individuals use color and power-evasion strategies to avoid cognizance of their own racial identities. However, their interracial relationships provide a meaningful premise altering the ways they perceive notions of race and White privilege. Shifts in White individuals’ perspectives occur in relation to heightened race consciousness, acknowledging White privilege, and racial inequality and includes behavioral changes resulting from their interactions with their significant others.

Although the number of black/white marriages has significantly increased since the 1970s, interracial marriage is far more common between whites and members of other minority groups, making black/white pairing still rare (Carolyn, Sitawa, & Murray, 2013). As Rockquemore and Brunsma (2001) argued, blacks and whites continue to be the two groups with the most spatial separation, the greatest social distance, and the strongest taboos against interracial marriage. In this qualitative study, common themes will be analyzed to contribute to literature regarding black/white interracial romantic relationships. The research question guiding this exploratory qualitative study will be to explore how black/white couples describe their experience and what these pairings reveal about black/white race relations presently. Grounding the research in the bioecological theory, this study allows for an intimate portrayal of the two races as they navigate interacting systems.

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This study examined how racism and racial tensions potentially threatened the face needs of Black and White interracial couples. Specifically, this study investigated the benefit of family approval of one's interracial relationship. Couples use of corrective face work in response to prejudice was also examined. This research used a qualitative, interpretive method to gather and analyze data from 14 personal interviews. The interview schedule enabled interviewees to use storytelling to share their experience of being in a Black and White interracial relationship. Interviewees were asked questions surrounding their experience as the partner in an interracial relationship. Couples shared how they told their family that their romantic partner was a different race and shared how they encountered prejudice when they are out in public. Further, they spoke about how people stare at them and make comments about their interracial relationship. The data underwent a thematic analysis (Owen, 1984) where I reviewed the data and searched for themes that were recurrent and repeated by interviewees. There were several themes that emerged. First, the very presence of racial tensions and racism affects interracial couples. Second, family support seemed to mitigate threats to couples' positive and negative faces and enabled couples to engage in open and honest dialogue with their family and their significant other. Finally, even couples with family support, engaged in corrective face work to respond to the face threats posed by racism and racial tensions.

Interracial couples have different experiences compared to their intraracial counterparts. Interracial couples and their relationships (particularly their marriages) have been studied to see whether there are any effects on the relationship due to the couple’s inherent differences. However, the literature heavily focuses on interracial marriages while only touching on interracial relationships in general, with a primary focus on interracial couples of all kinds. With the tension between White and Black Americans over the years, one can wonder if there would be any noticeable differences within Black/White interracial couples with regard to racial identification and experienced discrimination due to the Black-White racial disparity. This study tested whether these factors contribute to the overall relationship satisfaction in Black/White interracial couples. Data were collected via MTurk and participants completed three assessments to capture how racial identity and experienced discrimination impact their relationship. Racial identity was assessed using Worrell, Mendoza, and Wang’s (2019) Cross Ethnic-racial Identity Scale- Adult (CERIS-A); perceived racial discrimination was assessed Conger’s (2006) revised version of Landrine et al.’s (2006) General Ethnic Discrimination Scale; and relationship satisfaction was assessed using Funk and Rogge’s (2007) Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI-16). It was predicted that experienced discrimination and racial identity would impact the relationship satisfaction of Black-White interracial couples. The results showed that experienced discrimination did significantly impact relationship satisfaction and racial identity, however, racial identity did not significantly impact relationship satisfaction in Black-White interracial couples. The lack of research on the CERIS-A’s validity when interacting with other constructs, a missing question on the CSI-16, and not accounting for biracial participants and their experiences with racial identity development are all limitations that should be considered when reviewing the results. Clinicians can use the information from this study to assist clients in having more conversations about their experiences of discrimination with one another and having them create their own meanings around interracial dating and racial identity.

Autoscopy is a poetry collection that constellates together the speaker's ancestral experience of Jewish diaspora and genocide, the ongoing oppression and genocide of Palestinians, and the anti-Black racism that led to the police-murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In all, the speaker is at once close and far from what they witness, both personally impacted and implicated by their witnessing. In documentary, translation, prayer, elegiac, confessional, and experimental modes, these poems locate the possibility and need for a reimagined mode of kinship, using diasporic and queer desire as a means of reparation. / Master of Fine Arts / Autoscopy is a poetry collection.

In this study the experiences, perceptions and challenges of being in a mixed-race relationship (M-R) were explored against the backdrop of previous South African pieces of legislation meant to keep the various race groups apart. The study was located within a conceptual framework predominantly informed by a constructivist approach, as well as some tenets from the social constructionist approach. This study focused only on M-R relationships consisting of black and white partners. The couples were recruited through the use of a snowball sampling method. In-depth interviews were used as the primary tool for collecting data. All participants were interviewed by the researcher either at their own homes or in the researcher's office. The collected information was later transcribed and qualitatively analysed. The results of the study indicate that individuals found their involvement in M-R relationships to be a positive experience, and thus resulting in a positive attitude change and a sense of personal growth. M-R couples and their extended families experienced cognitive dissonance which required them to discard their previously internalised racial stereotypes, using strategies such as cognitive differentiation, re-categorization and de-categorization, allowing shifts toward non-racial socially constructed categories. Most of the challenges of being in M-R relationships were experienced on interpersonal and inter-group levels. The losses, disadvantages, challenges, concerns and pains experienced by M-R couples were mainly related to family and social disapproval of the relationship as well as efforts to discourage race mixing. The study concludes that the non-conformist nature of M-R relationships requires from the participants a high level of self-differentiation and individuation that challenges racial norms and cultural collectivism. Albeit being a personal or private matter, a M-R relationship carries the burden of easily being the subject of public discourse. It is in this sense that M-R relationships cannot be understood without taking the socio-political context within which they occur into consideration. / Psychology / D.Phil. (Psychology)