Black Brides, White Weddings: How Race and White Privilege are Constructed in the Wedding Ritual

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. RGC, Representations, and Inequality

Abstract

Representations of weddings in mainstream popular culture offer the traditional white wedding as the sole depiction of a legitimate ceremonial model. This imagery validates and naturalizes whiteness as normal. Drawing from in-depth interviews with African American brides, wedding planners and wedding content writers, I argue that black women are symbolically and sometimes materially marginalized in what remains a culturally white and materially privileged institution. Despite the marginalization of women of color in the bridal industry, I find that some brides saw participation in the traditional wedding as resistance to representations that exclude black women from the role of the bride, and discourses that marginalize black marriage. Others contested dominant traditions through varied processes of resistance that involved drawing on black cultural tropes or reinscribing African history within the wedding. These findings point to the significance of the cultural work done to construct meaning in opposition to symbolic and material inequality.

Author

• Amberia Sargent, University of California-Los Angeles