Sexual Racism and the Puzzle of Interracial Relationship Rates in the Internet Age

• In Event: 205 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. Race and Ethnicity in Everyday Encounters

Abstract

Americans increasingly meet their new partners on the internet. Yet, interracial relationship rates have remained steady despite this break from traditional venues of social control. Rather than a barometer for race relations, I argue interracial relationship rates correspond to an underlying system of sexual racism, a system of sexual stratification by race with structural, cultural, and interactional components. I use the case of gay men’s sexual field in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood, including ethnography online on applications and offline in bars. Sexual and romantic relationships form within the context of Chicago’s significant segregation by neighborhood, venue, and within venues. Participants identify and use a racial hierarchy that provides methods to accrue erotic capital, manipulating their racial presentation to find partners. At the interactional level, methods of searching for and responding to partners allow for both racist exclusion and fetishism. Viewed through this integrative theory of sexual racism, interracial relationships become a red herring. Interracial relationship rates remained steady because the underlying system of sexual racism has not changed with the advent of the internet.

Author

• Jason Ronald Orne, University of Wisconsin-Madison