ABSTRACT

Contrary to assumptions about the Deep South in general and Alabama in particular, interracial couples there have consistently maintained a sense of agency and resilience. Their French counterparts have evolved in a society where the humanist proclamation of colorblindness is increasingly belied by evidence of superimposed White racial frames, while national anxieties over the future of the country’s cultural exceptionalism have led more voters to embrace racialized self-identifications, often combined with renewed pride in religious markers of identity. In many ways, the transformations of the African American middle class have modified the tenets of gender and race loyalty, so that the millennial generation—women in particular—often voice the desire to be viewed beyond the constraints of assigned identities. In France, partly because Blacks have lacked political representation as a single group to this day, they place less emphasis on preserving cultural authenticity and unity as a racial group, even among West Indians, whose historical legacy is closer to African Americans’.