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Advance Praise for Black Women in Interracial Relationships: In Search of Love and Solace:

In this probing and path-breaking book, Craig-Henderson goes where few scholars have gone before, to a deep examination of daring interracial relationships black women have with white men. Using in-depth interviews, she shows that even in the midst of omnipresent racism and internal community critiques, black women increasingly break out of racist stereotypes and expectations to cross the intimate color line. While small in number, they are bold pioneers living the halting racial changes of a still white-dominated society. In poignant stories of cross-racial relationships, we feel their uncertainties, fears, pain, as human beings caught between two racial worlds. We see how they initiate intimate relationships, what other people's reactions are, and how such relationships shape their lives. The interviews reveal how racism crashes into daily worlds, but also how intimate relationships across the color line can provide personal respite and resistance.

—Joe R. Feagin, the Ella C. McFadden Professor of Liberal Arts, Texas A & M University


Black Women in Interracial Relationships seeks to close the gap in our understanding of these cross-race intimate relationships; rather than limiting her analysis to the configuration that receives the most public attention: African American Men and White Women, she focuses instead on the least common configuration: African American Women and White Men.

In Black Women in Interracial Intimate Relationships, Dr. Craig-Henderson using a mixed methods approach provides convincing data to support her large-scale claims that since the 1960, 1970 and 1980 US Census counts there has been a 100% increase in interracial relationships for African American women, mostly partnering with White men.

The questions posed are complex as they force the reader to grapple with questions like: do these rates of increase mean that America is now a racial paradise (the 44th President of the US is an African American) or, rather, does this trend reflect a significantly stressed marriageable pool that is severely impacted by underlying, often hidden major social problems plaguing African American men?

Readers of Black Women in Interracial Intimate Relationships: In Search of Love and Solace will surely be intellectually challenged as they interrogate this new, exciting text.

— Earl Smith, PhD
Rubin Distinguished Professor
Wake Forest University
Author: Interracial Intimacies: An Examination of Powerful Men and Their Relationships Across the Color Line and Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century



Review of previous book: Black Men in Interracial relationships: What's Love Got to Do With it?

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