Introduction

During a unit on race and ethnicity in the Life and Health course, Ms. Stein asked her students if they had ever been in an “interracial romance.” Based on the racial divisions I had observed at the school, I was not surprised that relatively few students of any race reported that they had ever been or were currently in an interracial relationship. In sixth period, however, Lauren, a quiet, rather mousy white girl, volunteered that she had a black boyfriend. Heads swiveled sharply to stare at her. To her classmates of all races, this otherwise nondescript student had suddenly become much more interesting.

Interracial dating at Bay City High – especially between African Americans and European Americans – could be controversial, and most white teenagers in my study dated only within their own racial category. This was an issue especially for white hip hop fans, several of whom told me that they found black or Asian girls more attractive than white girls. Yet I knew only one white boy with a hip hop style who had a girlfriend of color, a Latina. This may have been due to the perceived risks of cross-racial dating: one European American hip hop fan expressed the fear that if he pursued an African American girl he was interested in, African American boys would beat him up. Although this perception was based more in ideology than reality – there were in fact a number of interracial relationships at the school, including several involving white boys and black girls – it may have kept some European American students from entering into such relationships.