E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India: A Tragedy of Cultural Conflicts and Distorted Interracial Relationships

E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, hereafter (API), offers us an opportunity to realize the mentality of the white imperialist and the grotesque picture of the colonizer-colonized relationship; this picture implies multiple facets of racial vituperations, brutality, and prejudice perpetrated on Indians in the colonial period. In the novel, Forster explores the colonizers’ racist attitudes, and he brings out the racial and interracial conflicts as well as the cultural and ethnic traumas between the colonizer and the colonized. This study is primarily concerned with exploring the cultural clashes and the problematic, deformed interracial relationships, established between the Indians and the Anglo-Indians in a colonial context. The analytical approach and the Postcolonial Theory will be adopted throughout the paper as a framework. A postcolonial reading of the novel debunks the colonizer’s racist ideology and reveals various motifs of partitions, fences, interracial conflicts and gulfs. The article reveals that the different racial, cultural, and social backgrounds of the English and Indian communities create bitter differences and significant gaps that cannot be bridged. The study concludes that the ramifications of the interracial clashes and racial intolerance have a vehement impact on both the colonized and the colonizer alike; however, mutual and interracial love, respect, and understanding are robust solutions that can relatively open the ideological closure of racism, lessen the racial tensions and thus bring people of different racial backgrounds together.

White Women Mothering Mixed-Race Children in a Black-White Interracial Relationship

It is over five decades since ‘River of Blood,’ the speech about race in Britain, has been acknowledged as the symbol of discrimination towards immigration and minorities like Black British. Meanwhile, America, as another traditional western cultural center, has faced more serious issues during the process of human equality. Loving. V. Virginia, as a legal milestone of Civil Rights in the US, has influenced the public attitude of the majority towards interracial union; however, the discrimination and prejudice have become more invisible via the changing of societal environment. Although the anti-miscegenation movement has been treated as the big step of human rights, the union between black and white faces misunderstanding, even stigmas in their daily lives. Hence, taking black-white interracial relationships as examples, from white women’s perspective, this essay will examine the dilemma between their own cognition of cultural identities and being partially embedded into a different culture when ‘marrying-out’ and raising mixed-race children.

“Light cleaveth unto light”: Intermarriage discourse, LDS women of color, and the new racism

Fifty years after Loving v. Virginia, oppositional attitudes toward interracial relationships are still advanced by religious institutions in the United States. Extant social science literature characterizes these attitudes as generated largely by Evangelical and Christian nationalist traditions where members harbor negative attitudes toward interracial relationships. Hidden behind this characterization are the significant, but less obvious ways in which non-Evangelical denominations construct and disseminate similar attitudes. Through discourse analysis and digital interviews with LDS women of color, this study uses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon) as an entry point for examining intermarriage discourses in other faith traditions. Findings highlight that LDS messaging about interracial relationships shifted over time, integrating multiple racial frames in ways that expanded the scope of LDS racism with especially harsh implications for LDS women of color. Broader theoretical implications for the study of race, gender, and religion are discussed.

The influence of perspective-taking on stress during discrimination in interracial relationships

Interracial couples experience stressors that can negatively impact their relationship quality, such as racial discrimination. In dyads in which one partner identifies as White and the other identifies as Black or Hispanic, the stress due to racial discrimination is associated with differential alternatives: The White partner can end the relationship to stop their experience with the stress of racial discrimination, but Black or Hispanic partners cannot. As such, the White partner is a “weak link” in such relationships, and understanding processes that can mitigate discrimination-induced stress for White partners could be beneficial for interracial relationship longevity. In this study, we examined perspective-taking as a process to reduce momentary, discrimination-based stress. White partners in interracial relationships ( N = 292) were randomly assigned to engage in perspective-taking (or remain objective) when imagining their partner experiencing discrimination (or a common aversive situation). We predicted, and found, that momentary stress was lower for White partners who took their partners’ perspectives while thinking about them experiencing racial discrimination than for those who objectively recounted the details of their partners’ experiencing racial discrimination. In turn, lower momentary stress predicted greater commitment and relationship satisfaction. This indicates that perspective-taking can reduce the momentary stress a White partner experiences during an event of racial discrimination, which may strengthen interracial relationships.

Cultural Mistrust and Social Media Relationships

This study sought to examine the suitability of the Cultural Mistrust Inventory (CMI) items for contemporary interracial social relationships on social media. The study employed qualitative cognitive interviews with 28 persons of color in the U.S. Findings suggest that the CMI may not be a suitable measure for accurately assessing relational trust across different racial groups on social media due to generational change in consciousness about race relations, and the perceived ambiguity of the CMI items. Findings also reveal that the CMI is limited in its ability to assess racial trust on social media and may not account for how trust manifests across different social media platforms. These findings suggest that the continued use of the CMI to assess contemporary interracial relationships is not recommended.

Interracial Comparisons of Intimate Partner Violence Among Military Perpetrators

Interracial violence is a high-profile issue in the United States; however, there is little empirical research on interracial intimate partner violence (IPV). Interracial relationships are becoming more common. However, interracial couples continue to face stressors (e.g., discrimination) that likely impact the relationship (e.g., IPV) than their monoracial counterparts. Research indicates that military populations more likely oppose interracial marriages than nonmilitary counterparts. Yet, no study to date has investigated IPV within military monoracial and interracial couples. To understand the intersecting effects of race/ethnicity among military couples, this study investigates male perpetrated IPV in interracial and monoracial relationships. Using structural equation modeling, this study sample contains information about 449 male veterans from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (1994-2008): Waves I and IV. Findings indicate that (a) White and Black veterans are more violent in monoracial relationships, meanwhile, Latino veterans have a higher IPV prevalence in interracial relationships; (b) Black and White veterans were more likely to use alcohol and other drugs (AOD) after IPV perpetration in interracial relationships, in contrast to Latino veterans’ post IPV perpetrations AOD use in monoracial relationships; (c) veteran mental health status was affected after perpetration of IPV, similar to the effects experienced after combat. In an attempt to address the lack of research on the characteristics associated with interracial violence this study addresses the following questions: (a) Are veterans in interracial families more likely to commit IPV and use of alcohol and other drugs (AOD) than in monoracial families? (b) Among the military samples, is AOD a facilitator for IPV? (c) How does mental health status affect IPV perpetration?

Annihilation as Segregation Philosophy: White Spaces of Law/Power/Desire

In this article, I investigate the spatial dimensions of the law and their relationships with desire and power. Annihilation, in my view, presents conceptions of white spaces of Law/Power/Desire that are threatened by interracial relationships associated with nightmare spaces of difference. I examine strategies of how space is conceived of and controlled in this white supremacist mindset and how categories of bodies that move through areas to form relationships are controlled. In particular, I expose how the segregation philosophy of the film relies on the control of white women and the prohibition of their connection with black men.

Race talk: How racial worldview impacts discussions in interracial relationships

Using a mixed-method approach, this study investigates how individuals believe race impacts their interracial relationship. Two-hundred and three individuals representing diverse racial-gender compositions of relationships responded to a series of measures to assess their Racial Worldview—a collective of notions about racial/ethnic identity, intergroup relations, and recognition of racist hegemony—before indicating the ways in which race or racial issues affect their romantic partnership. Results revealed four distinct types of Racial Worldview through K-means cluster and four broad themes of influences on relationship communication and functioning. Cross-tabs analyses indicated that Racial Worldview and participants perceptions of the impact of race were related with statistically significant differences between those who acknowledge racism and valued group differences reaching different conclusions than those who do not. The results add to existing research by drawing attention to the heterogeneity of thought and understanding within interracial relationships. The promise of using Racial Worldview in future research is discussed.