Interracial Relationships and the Black Gothic

  Caleb Pogue

Professor Harris

English 2016-44378

November 15,2022

Interracial Relationships and the Black Gothic


This semester, when reading “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” I found myself relating to a section of Equiano's story. Equiano, a slave, had formed a bond with the man who bought him, Pascal. Pascal treated Equiano with more kindness and respect than his previous enslavers, and Equiano considered Pascal, a friend. Pascal then betrays Equiano and sells him to another master (Equiano 76). As a resident of a small town in Louisiana, and a student of a K-12 school, I watched as the white people I socialized with adopted confederate flags, made insensitive jokes, and threw around racial slurs. I decided to base my project around this phenomenon, questioning the nature of interracial relationships.

The first area I decided to focus on was romantic relationships. This was influenced by the “Willie” chapter in  Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, as even though the black woman Willie and her White passing husband was not an interracial relationship in that story, it still suffered from the perceptions of interracial relationships (Gyasi 201). The article “Before Loving”” gives insight into how white people viewed interracial marriage before the passing of Loving V. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that prohibit discriminatory practices concerning interracial marriage. This article cites a 1958 Gallup poll that white Americans in the south had a 1 percent approval rate of interracial marriage, with Americans outside the south holding a 5 percent approval rate (West).  Another study by the Pew Research center looks at the statistics of interracial marriages in more recent times. “The share of new marriages between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from each other increased 15.1% in 2010, and the share of all current marriages that are either interracial or interethnic has reached an all-time high of 8.4%.” (“The Rise of Intermarriage”). While the number of interracial marriages is increasing, black people marry outside their race the second least out of all the racial groups studied, at 17.1 percent (when compared to Asians, Hispanics, and Whites, at 27.7,25.7, and 9.4, respectfully). Interracial marriages also tend to end in divorce at a higher rate than within-race marriages, with 41% of interracial marriages ending in divorce when compared to 31% of same race marriages (“The Rise). This suggests that interracial marriages may suffer from instability. The same may be true for interracial friendships.

  In 1987, Michae Hanlin and Richard A Williams conducted a stud on interracial friendship dynamics. In this study, they pulled from a sample of elementary and middle-grade classes to assess the formation and stability of interracial relationships. What they found was that same-race friendships amongst these students tended to last longer and had stronger bonds, while interracial friendships did not last as long. The study also found that black students who initiated friendships with white students had a lower rate of reciprocation than white students who initiated friendships with black students (Hanlin 12). When I read this study, it made me question the effects that interracial relationship dynamics have on black people. With lower rates of stability and reciprocation and lower rates of relationships formed outside of race, it’s clear that there are factors preventing black people from forming and maintaining interracial relationships. In a way, these factors can form a sort of emotional segregation, preventing interaction between the two races. 

In conclusion, interracial relationships can be complicated, especially in the current climate. Nearly 7 in 10 Americans believe race relations are getting worse (“Race Relations). These factors contribute to the anxiety black people hold about interracial relationships.  This is evident in popular films like Candyman (2018), Get Out, and The Hate A U Give. All of these films revolve around the mistrust of white people whom the black protagonists have formed relationships with. When describing the new black gothic, writer Sheri Mae Wilson says this: “this black gothic revival includes tropes of darkness, madness, ghosts, and isolation to create unease and invoke fear and terror.” (Wilson). The instability of interracial relationships creates isolation and distrust, which feeds into these themes. This phenomenon serves as an example of how black experiences and fears create and inform the black gothic.














Works Cited

Gyasi, Yaa. “Willie.” Homegoing, Penguin Books, London, 2022. 


Hallinan, Maureen T, and Richard A Williams. The Stability of Students Interracial Friendships. University of Notre Dame, Oct. 1987, https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Williams-28. 


Equiano, Olaudah. The interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Norwich, The author, 1794. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/44015764/>.


Harrison, Sheri-Mae. “New Black Gothic.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 23 June 2018, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/new-black-gothic/. 

Mitchell, Travis. “How Americans See the State of Race Relations.” Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 22 Sept. 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/04/09/how-americans-see-the-state-of-race-relations/. 


“The Rise of Intermarriage.” Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project, Pew Research Center, 31 Dec. 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2012/02/16/chapter-1-overview/. 

West, Ella-Marie. “Before 'Loving'.” Arts & Sciences, University of Washington in St Louis, 1 Dec. 2017, https://artsci.wustl.edu/before-loving. 

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