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Article: Double lives: negotiating the private and the public in an interracial relationship.(Love and Feminism)
- Article from:
- off our backs
- Article date:
- May 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Off Our Backs, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Being a white woman in a relationship with a black man is a schizophrenic experience. On the one hand, my relationship with my boyfriend is as personal and unique, nuanced and inimitable, as any human relationship rife with the complexity of love. When I wake up, tangled in a mess of his limbs and listening to his heavy breathing on a lazy Sunday morning, I do not notice that the chest that heaves up and down is black. Likewise, when we fight about his never-ending lateness or my propensity to grow unnecessarily anxious, our anger is colorless. When we make love, it is deep blue, not black and white.
But, when it comes time for us to leave our own personal ...