Research Catalog

Title

Loving : interracial intimacy in America and the threat to white supremacy / Sheryll Cashin.

Author

Cashin, Sheryll

Publication

• Boston : Beacon Press, [2017]
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 237 pages; 24 cm

Summary

Loving beyond boundaries is a radical act that is changing America. When Mildred and Richard Loving wed in 1958, they were ripped from their shared bed and taken to court. Their crime: miscegenation, punished by exile from their home state of Virginia. The resulting landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage and remains a signature case--the first to use the words "white supremacy" to describe such racism. Drawing from the earliest chapters in US history, legal scholar Sheryll Cashin reveals the enduring legacy of America's original sin, tracing how we transformed from a country without an entrenched construction of race to a nation where one drop of "nonwhite blood" merited exclusion from full citizenship. In vivid detail, she illustrates how the idea of whiteness was created by the planter class of yesterday and is reinforced by today's power-hungry dog-whistlers to divide struggling whites and people of color, ensuring plutocracy and undermining the common good. Cashin argues that over the course of the last four centuries there have been "ardent integrators" and that those people are today contributing to the emergence of a class of "culturally dexterous" Americans. In the fifty years since the Lovings won their case, approval for interracial marriage rose from 4 percent to 87 percent. Cashin speculates that rising rates of interracial intimacy--including cross-racial adoption, romance, and friendship--combined with immigration, demographic, and generational change, will create an ascendant coalition of culturally dexterous whites and people of color. Loving is both a history of white supremacy and a hopeful treatise on the future of race relations in America, challenging the notion that trickle-down progressive politics is our only hope for a more inclusive society. Accessible and sharp, Cashin reanimates the possibility of a future where interracial understanding serves as a catalyst of a social revolution ending not in artificial color blindness but in a culture where acceptance and difference are celebrated.

Subjects

• Interracial marriage > United States > History
• Interracial friendship > United States > History
• White supremacy movements > United States
• Racially mixed families > United States > History
• Intimacy (Psychology) > Social aspects > United States
• United States > Race relations
• Miscegenation > United States > History
• Black author
• Loving, Richard Perry > Trials, litigation, etc
• Interracial dating > United States > History
• Loving, Mildred Jeter > Trials, litigation, etc

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Part One. Before Loving, 1607-1939 -- Going Native : Virginia's First Lovers and Haters -- Sex, Love and Rebellion in Early Colonial Virginia -- Slavery Begets Anti-Miscegenation and White Supremacy -- Miscegenation, Dog-Whistling and the Spread of Supremacy -- Part Two. Loving -- Loving v. Virginia (1967) -- Part Three. After Loving -- 2017 : Interracial Intimacy and the Threat to and Persistence of White Supremacy -- More Loving : Families and Friendship -- The Future : The Rise of the Culturally Dexterous.

Call Number

Sc E 17-839

ISBN

• 9780807058275
• 0807058270

LCCN

• 2016055091
• 40027280717

OCLC

965617487

Author

Cashin, Sheryll, author.

Title

Loving : interracial intimacy in America and the threat to white supremacy / Sheryll Cashin.

Publisher

Boston : Beacon Press, [2017]

Copyright Date

©2017

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Subject

Black author.

Other Standard Identifier

40027280717

Research Call Number

Sc E 17-839

JFE 17-7828