Crossing the color line : race, parenting, and culture / by Maureen T. Reddy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reddy, Maureen T.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Multiracial children--United States--Case studies.

Multiracial children.

United States.

Parent and child--United States.

Parent and child.

Racism--United States.

Racism.

Physical Description:

xvi, 193 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [1994]

Summary:

"Why do white people have vaginas?" asks Maureen Reddy's two-year-old son. "Why do boys have curly hair?" These are the questions Reddy grapples with on her journey, as a white mother of black children, toward an internalized understanding of race - particularly whiteness - and of racism. Moving from memoir to race theory, to literary analysis, to interviews with friends, Reddy places this personal journey in a broad cultural context. Reddy writes as a racial "insider" who stands outside accepted racial arrangements, a position that can afford unique insight into the many contradictions of those arrangements. She addresses attempts to cross the color line that divides blacks and whites; the meeting points of whiteness and blackness; the politics of feminism and anti-racism; loving blackness; mothering black children; racism in schools; and relationships among black and white women. Our culture is permeated by color. And whether we can sort out racial divisions will, Reddy feels, determine whether we survive as a society.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

081352105X :

OCLC:

29792516