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“Arm and Arm”: Racialized Bodies and Colored Lines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2001

EILEEN BORIS
EILEEN BORIS
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
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Abstract

Commenting on the flap over George W. Bush's visit to Bob Jones University during the 2000 primary election campaign, journalist Hendrik Hertzberg claimed that even staunch conservatives decried the South Carolina college's ban on inter-racial dating as “indefensible.” “This may seem unremarkable,” he noted, ”until one reflects how far it was from being the case a generation or two ago, when miscegenation was racism's trump card and even the most enlightened Americans, black and white, took it for granted that sexual fear was its unkillable heart.” Hertzberg seems unduly optimistic - violence against the bodies of racial “others’ continues to splatter across the American landscape, from the Rodney King beating to the Amadou Diallo shooting. The police rape of Abner Louima illuminates how power, not sexuality, informs such assaults.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , April 2001 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Eileen Boris is Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. This article is a revised version of a keynote address given at the British Association of American Studies annual meeting, Swansea, April 2000. Eileen Boris would like to thank Richard Gray and Jay Kleinberg.