Interracial Intimacy as a Family Affair: Examining East Asian Families’ Responses to East Asian/Black Unions

• In Event: Family Formation and Dynamics

Abstract

This study draws on 42 qualitative in-depth interviews with 1.5- and second-generation East Asian men and women in heterosexual relationships with Black people. I ask: (1) How do participants understand their immigrant parents’ responses to their interracial unions? and (2) What do these patterned familial reactions tell us about East Asian immigrants’ strategies for social mobility, as well as their role in racial hierarchy maintenance? I find that East Asian immigrant families’ responses to Black partners are highly patterned by gender. For example, nearly all East Asian women in this study experienced intense familial pushback in the form of questioning, counseling, denial, concealment, and estrangement. Virtually all who encountered such boundary-policing also reported that their parents invoked controlling images of Black men as violent or economically irresponsible to justify their disapproval. In contrast, East Asian men with Black partners reported relatively little pushback from their parents and extended family members. These divergent experiences reflect broader intersectional dynamics. First, male respondents described their parents as generally “hands off” about their private lives, while female respondents reported significantly more surveillance. Second, immigrant parents’ adherence to dominant gender ideologies meant they held more achievable class expectations for daughters-in-law than for sons-in-law. Taken together, the findings from this paper highlight the ways in which East Asian immigrant families’ assimilation strategies are influenced by intersecting race, gender, and class considerations. Anti-Black racism—and a corresponding openness to, and reverence of, Whiteness—undergirds nearly all participants’ parents’ views on East Asian/Black relationships; however, gendered parenting styles and class expectations modify the way that parents and extended family members conceptualized the role of East Asian/Black unions in their families’ quests for social mobility.

Author

• Olivia Hu, University of Pennsylvania