Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America

Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America. By Renee C. Romano. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp. xvi, 368. $35.00, ISBN 0-674-01033-7.)

Renee C. Romano's Race Mixing is an imaginative "marriage" of sociology and history. The book argues that mainstream America has shifted its position on interracial marriage from overt hostility to benign tolerance over the past sixty years. She analyzes the major public events that altered the racial landscape in the United States since World War Il through the private experiences of the individuals most affected by these changes: black and white interracial couples. By placing interracial marriage at the center of the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement, Romano offers a fresh interpretation not only of these developments but also of the social and cultural changes that contributed to the...