Mixed Race Studies

Loving vs. Virginia in a Post-Racial World: Rethinking Race, Sex, and Marriage

Cambridge University Press
June 2012
300 pages
Hardback ISBN-13: 9780521198585
Paperback ISBN-13: 9780521147989

Edited by

Kevin Noble Maillard, Professor of Law
Syracuse University

Rose Cuison Villazor, Professor of Law
University of California, Davis

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial marriage were unconstitutional in Loving vs. Virginia. Although this case promotes marital freedom and racial equality, there are still significant legal and social barriers to the free formation of intimate relationships. Marriage continues to be the sole measure of commitment, mixed relationships continue to be rare, and same-sex marriage is only legal in 6 out of 50 states. Most discussion of Loving celebrates the symbolic dismantling of marital discrimination. This book, however, takes a more critical approach to ask how Loving has influenced the “loving” of America. How far have we come since then, and what effect did the case have on individual lives?

Table of Contents

• Introduction Kevin Noble Maillard and Rose Cuison Villazor
• Part I: Explaining Loving v. Virginia
  • 1. The legacy of Loving John DeWitt Gregory and Joanna L. Grossman
• Part II: Historical Antecedents to Loving
  • 2. The ‘love’ of Loving Jason A. Gillmer
  • 3. Loving in Indian territory: tribal miscegenation law in historical perspective Carla Pratt
  • 4. American mestizo: Filipinos and antimiscegenation laws in California Leti Volpp
  • 5. Perez v. Sharp and the limits of Loving: race, marriage, and citizenship reconsidered R. A. Lenhardt
• Part III: Loving and Interracial Relationships: Contemporary Challenges
  • 6. The road to Loving: the legacy of antimiscegenation law Kevin Noble Maillard
  • 7. Love at the margins: the racialization of sex and the sexualization of race Camille A. Nelson
  • 8. The crime of Loving: Loving, Lawrence, and beyond I. Bennett Capers
  • 9. What’s Loving got to do with it? Law shaping experience and experience shaping law Renée M. Landers
  • 10. Fear of a ‘Brown’ planet or a new hybrid culture? Jacquelyn Bridgeman
• Part IV: Considering the Limits of Loving
  • 11. Black pluralism in post-Loving America Taunya Lovell Banks
  • 12. Multiracialism and reparations: accounting for political blackness Angelique Davis
  • 13. Finding a Loving home Angela Onwuachi-Willig and Jacob Willig-Onwuachi
• Part V: Loving outside the United States Borders
  • 14. Racially inadmissible wives Rose Cuison Villazor
  • 15. Flying buttresses Nancy K. Ota
  • 16. Crossing borders: Loving v. Virginia as a story of migration Victor Romero
• Part VI: Loving and Beyond: Marriage, Intimacy and Diverse Relationships
  • 17. Black vs. gay: centering LBGT people of color in civil marriage debates Adele Morrison
  • 18. Forty years after Loving: a legacy of unintended consequences Rachel F. Moran
  • 19. The end of marriage Tucker Culbertson
  • 20. Afterword Peter Wallenstein