Racial Bias and Interracial Relationships
How the Research Was Done
Feeling Ordinary in a Relationship Others See as Unusual
In the Beginning
The White Partner¿s Family
The African American Partner¿s Family
Societal Racism
Defending against Racism
Identity
Children
Learning from Each Other
Race in the Couple Relationship
The Special Blessings
Finding Support
No More Racism!
Paul C. Rosenblatt has a doctorate in psychology from Northwestern University and is Professor Emeritus of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. He has taught in university departments in family social science, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. His multidisciplinary background enables him to offer a substantial range of examples and illustrations in the book. He has advised 36 students through to the PhD and served on roughly 450 other doctoral committees. He has been a research consultant to university-based, government-based, medical-based, and industry-based research projects. Dr. Rosenblatt has mentored dozens of faculty members at his university and at universities around the world. He has fellow status in national professional organizations in psychology, anthropology, and the family field and has been and/or is on editorial boards of scholarly journals in psychology, sociology, anthropology, the family field, and the field of dying, death, and bereavement. He has published 13 books, including The Impact of Racism on African American Families: Literature as Social Science; Knowing and Not Knowing in Intimate Relationships (with E. Wielding); Shared Obliviousness in Family Systems; Two in a Bed: The Social System of Couple Bed Sharing; and African American Grief (with B. R. Wallace).
The problems of mixed race families in a racist society are fully explored in this qualitative, narrative study. Interviews with 21 biracial couples offer deep insights into their relationships and how they perceive society has viewed their marriages. The interviewers, a biracial couple themselves, ask their subjects such questions as how their churches, families, friends and community treat them and their partners. They also examine the interactions between spouses in biracial marriages and relationships between these couples and their parents and children.