Crossing the Color Line

by Reddy, Maureen T.

• ISBN13: 9780813521053
• ISBN10: 081352105X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-09-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xv
On Lines and Bridges	1	(18)
Starting Out	19	(22)
``Why Do White People Have Vaginas?''	41	(24)
``One Drop of Black Blood''	65	(40)
The Fourth R	105	(38)
Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Comrades	143	(32)
Notes	175	(10)
Bibliography	185	(6)
Index	191