Journal of Education & Social Policy

Race and Gender at the Crossroads: Black Men and White Women in Cross-Racial Relationships--an update
Tonya Huber, Linda Bakken

Abstract
A study of relationships in America between Black men and White women was the focus of study during four years of open-ended recursive interviews, focus groups, and self-assessments involving 45 participants and an interview research team of 7 University professors and graduate students. Black men and White women expressed a belief that they have a different set of challenges that need to be accepted in the process of crossing the color line in relationships and in raising children. Both genders expressed knowing the experience of loving, caring, committed relationships with partners from across the color line--a line many expressed was often indiscernible to them. Yet, the contradictions of perceptions are blatant--how people perceived themselves as Black men, White women, or Black women; how they perceived members of the other groups; and how they believed they were perceived. In the ongoing struggle to understand racism and the impact on a new generation of interracial, multiracial children, the social, emotional, and experiential factors influencing these perspectives require further analysis.

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