What’s Race Got to Do with It? Race, Gender, and Sexual Politics in East Asian Americans’ Interracial/-Ethnic Relationships

This dissertation examines how East Asian Americans in heterosexual interracial/-ethnic romantic relationships navigate their unions’ mixed-race status across various social contexts—in natal families, among East Asian communities, and within their own relationships. Drawing on 163 in-depth interviews with 1.5- and later-generation East Asian Americans with White, Black, and different-ethnicity Asian partners, I center interracial/-ethnic unions as a critical site where racial meanings are experienced and (re)produced. Chapter 1 analyzes East Asian immigrant families’ responses to East Asian/Black unions, revealing how anti-Black racism, gender ideologies, and class anxieties structure familial acceptance and disapproval. Chapter 2 investigates the cultural logics and subjective experiences underlying some U.S.-born/-raised East Asians’ stigmatization of White Male/Asian Female (WMAF) unions, ultimately arguing that these interracial dyads constitute a politically significant symbol for those grappling with issues of race and gender. Chapter 3 explores how interracial relationships shape East Asian women’s understandings of race and racism, revealing that mixed-race/-ethnicity unions can facilitate both the adoption and dislodgement of ideologies that buttress the racial status quo. Together, these chapters reveal how the private realm of romance is deeply imbricated in public struggles over race, gender, and power.