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Regulating Intimate Relationships with Blacks
"You shouldn't hang around with Black people because they're blah, blah, blah." Your parents would tell you that? Yeah, I don't know if they would exactly tell me but you always knew. I don't remember it ever being spoken but you always knew that you couldn't ever really date Black people... - Denise
In this excerpt, Denise, a young Latina, is keenly aware of her parents' rule not to date Blacks. It became the boundary line that she knew she must never cross for fear of her parents' disapproval. This disapproval is conveyed to Denise through racialized messages about Blacks. In this case, Denise's parents emphasize the racial differences that they see between themselves and Blacks as a means of deterring her from dating them. These messages can create racial boundaries between Latinos and Blacks. Moreover, Denise's gender may also play a role in her parents' assertion of this racial boundary line. Denise's parents may regulate her intimate relationships in more explicit ways than they would if she were male, marking this boundary-making process as gendered.
Intimate relationships between Latino and Black young adults are becoming increasingly possible due to the larger number of Latinos in the United States and their settling in predominantly Black neighborhoods (Chapa and De La Rosa, 2004; Camarillo, 2007). As a result, the children of these immigrants have grown up in neighborhoods where they interact with Blacks on a regular basis. The interactions can lead to the formation of more intimate relationships between Latinos and Blacks. However, Latino parents may attempt to block these relationships from forming by expressing their disapproval toward the idea of their children dating Blacks. Prior studies have focused on family disapproval toward existing relationships between Whites and Blacks (Rosenblatt et al , 1995; McNamara et al , 1999; Harris and Kalbfleisch, 2000; Childs, 2002). Few studies have examined the types of parental messages about dating Blacks that Latino young adults encounter before they start to date. However, research in this area is important because it reveals how, from early on, racial boundaries are constructed through the regulation of intimate relationships in the lives of Latino young adults.
Moreover, research has found that White women receive some of the harshest messages...