In 1999, AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY was shown on PBS stations around the country. This acclaimed 10-hour documentary told the story of the successes
and struggles of a multiracial family-Bill Sims, a black man, Karen Wilson, a white woman, and their daughters Cicily and Chaney. The film was noted to contain a lot of mundane details showing that an interracial marriage is much like a same-race marriage-filled with challenges and joys and grocery shopping, bill paying, and the like. Rachel F. Moran's book INTERRACIAL INTIMACY: THE REGULATION OF RACE AND ROMANCE makes clear just how unusual the Wilson-Sims family is.

More than 95 percent of American marriages are between partners who subscribe to the same racial identity category. Despite our social rhetoric of color-blindness, when it comes to choosing a spouse we seem to be remarkably color-keen. Law professor Moran examines the issue of interracial intimacy-sexual, romantic, marital, and parental-and makes the argument that the promise of racial justice is related to integration in our most personal relationships. It isn't that interracial marriages will solve the race problem. However, Moran argues that their scarcity is a symptom of the depth of that problem. Although race may not matter in the minds of many, evidence of overwhelming preponderance of same-race marriage leads us to believe that it matters more than we will admit. "Those who choose love across the color line challenge the conventional wisdom that racial equality can be achieved in the absence of a rich network of interracial relationships and that love
is truly free when it is cabined by pervasive segregation" (p. 16).

This book is good introduction to an issue too often overlooked. Moran provides a history and context for antimiscegenation laws leading up to the landmark decision in LOVING v. VIRGINIA (1967). Her history depends both on doctrinal development and on specific instances in which state power was used to interfere in interracial relationships-often with disastrous results. In the second part of the book she explores some related issues, including the propriety of transracial adoption and the politics of official recognition of multiracial identity. Although the focus is often on black-white relations filtered through the experience of black chattel slavery, Moran also discusses in detail the legal treatment of Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans who transgressed the color line. Even readers well versed in the legal history of racial categorization will learn from the variety of cases Moran presents. Moran explains that she is herself the daughter of an
interracial marriage, and the depth of her engagement

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with this issue permeates the book and enriches an already thorough account.

Moran identifies interracial intimacy as a crucial site for the creation of and perpetuation of racial categories and hierarchies. She notes that intimate relationships between people of different races reveal our institutional unease with both color-blindness and color-consciousness. We want government to ignore race in order to do justice, as we insist that race must be noticed to remedy injustice. Moran assumes both that race shouldn't matter and that race DOES matter. And she argues that distinctions between political equality and social (sexual) equality (including those made during Reconstruction and the later Civil Rights Movement) have threatened both. Furthermore, different racial categories have been treated very differently. Although penalties for black-white transgressions were often violent,
officially, Latinos and Latinas were never subject to antimiscegenation regulations and in Virginia the "Pocahontas exception" meant that some families with Native American ancestry were considered white.

In colonial times black slaves and white indentured servants often worked side by side, and interracial sex was not rare. Regulations arose to reinforce the boundary between free and unfree. This motivation impelled the many variations in antimiscegenation laws over subsequent years-including those directed at minimizing the number of runaway slaves (mulatto slaves were thought to be particularly likely to succeed because some could pass for white), those aimed to consolidate inherited property (thereby banishing the fears of slave-owners' white heirs, who did not want to share a legacy with interracial, illegitimate siblings), and the infamous "one-drop" rule. (In this discussion it is important to note, which Moran does only sometimes, that interracial relationships were almost never "relationships" in any
meaningful sense. Particularly when the liaisons were between white slave owners and their black slave women, sexual access was not romantic-it was a benefit of ownership.) Moran also offers a good description of the many ways antimiscegenation laws were used to curtail the private and political activities of Asian immigrants.

Multiracial individuals have typically been urged to choose a side with which to identify. However, sometimes interracial identities were created and used to subvert racial boundaries. Many individuals with light-enough skin chose to pass as white, living on the other side of the color line. Others discovered their ancestry was used to differentiate them from ordinary non-white people, instituting further stratifications based on color. "In sum, mixed-race identity became a convenient mechanism for whites to manage relations with nonwhite populations. Partial white ancestry became a proxy for competency, trustworthiness, and receptivity to the cultivation of white social ties" (pp. 55-56).

Notions of sexual propriety often depended on maintaining strict separations between people of different races. "Whenever racial and sexual boundaries were contested, antimiscegenation doctrine provided a way to reassert the propriety of same-race sex and marriage. By criminalizing interracial relations, the law signaled the debauched and depraved nature of those who crossed the color line. Race-mingling meant ruin, not romance" (p. 75). Moran uses several striking examples to illustrate that the implementation of antimiscegenation regulations was not just

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about forbidding interracial intimacy-it was about punishing the transgressors. Some were killed, others lost their property, but all were warned. Because of racialized, sexualized stereotypes of non-white sexual profligacy, any interracial couple was seen to threaten marital values of stability, reserve, and decency.

Moran's discussion in chapter 5 of the cases leading to the LOVING decision is useful, and would work well in an undergraduate civil liberties class. She introduces several related cases, which in turn raise normative issues (is marriage a private contract between individuals or the proper concern of state policy?) and constitutional questions (do harsher penalties for interracial fornication and adultery than for same-race offenses raise equal protection issues?). She concludes that, "Because the Court envisioned race as a biological irrelevancy but was unwilling to coerce intimacy, it has never been clear whether Loving succeeded because official behavior changed or whether it failed because marital behavior remains substantially unchanged" (p. 101).

The persistence of same-race marriage troubles Moran greatly, and provides the focus for chapter 6-one of the strongest chapters of the book. "The most striking feature of the aftermath of LOVING v. VIRGINIA is how readily people have accepted segregation in marriage, so long as it is not officially mandated" (p. 124). She presents much data to show that "marrying-out" rates are still quite low-93 percent of whites and blacks marry within their own racial category, as do 70 percent of Asians and Latinos and 33 percent of Native Americans. She comments on the gender disparities-fully 70 percent of black-white marriages are between black men and white women, whereas the majority of Asian-white marriages are between Asian women and white men-and suggests that sexual stereotypes may be to
blame.

However, rather than focus on the exceptions, Moran examines the vast majority of Americans who do not choose interracial intimacy. Their proffered explanation of "cultural compatibility"-shared values, background, experiences-is not persuasive. Moran urges us to look beyond idyllic love:

"The choice of a mate is not entirely individual because romantic preferences are highly contextualized. While love itself may seem like an irrational impulse, the most intimate of feelings is a product of social forces that transcend the individual. ... For Loving's promise of marital freedom and racial equality to be realized, Americans must confront the ways in which race has distorted social boundaries rather than retreat into the easy and unreflective innocence of romantic individualism" (p. 125).

Similarly, the solution doesn't depend on a surge in interracial relationships. Moran cautions us not to assume that a growing number of multiracial babies will eventually eliminate racial divides. Her solutions are institutional. She advocates policy changes to make U. S. society more cohesive (zoning changes, mortgage programs, affirmative action in education and employment, integrated schools, etc.).

Moran's book makes some broad and important claims about the relationship between the personal and the political, showing how romance and policy are entangled. In her discussion of the conflicts between political and social equality she notes the tension between autonomy and

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equality-a keen insight that I wish had been more fully developed. In addition, nonmarital intimate relationships need more attention. Moran's argument would benefit from a discussion of interracial concerns in gay and lesbian partnerships and in cohabiting or common law arrangements. Perhaps there is a correlation between a willingness to seek out a partner from a different background and involvement in relationships other than state-sanctioned marriage.

The book does, however, contain two chapters that seem misplaced. In chapter 7, she discusses the politics and law of transracial adoptions, and concludes that courts should pursue the best interests of the child, balancing color-blindness (not eliminating prospective parents from consideration because of their race) and color-consciousness (recognizing that race affects and is affected by experience). In chapter 8 she discusses the 2000 Census and its expanded menu of racial categories from which we get to choose. Although the chapters themselves are fine, they distract from the central arguments of this otherwise very good book.

INTERRACIAL INTIMACY would work well for undergraduate public law courses. The writing is clear and accessible, the evidence is evocative, and
the ideas are challenging.

REFERENCES:

Fox, Jennifer, director. 1999. AN AMERICAN LOVE STORY. Public Broadcasting System, telecast.

LOVING v. VIRGINIA, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

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Copyright 2001 by the author, Beth Kiyoko Jamieson.