Of Bridge Parties, the Dating/Marriage Market, and Intimate Racism: Putting the Architecture of Desire and a Passage to India into Conversation
Document Type
Blog Post
Publication Date
7-19-2024
Language
en-US
Abstract
By coincidence, I read E. M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India (1924), while reading Solangel Maldonado’s The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality (2024). The coincidence proved to be a productive one. Consider that in 1924, the year Forster published A Passage to India, with its depiction of how British colonial rule in India distorted human relationships, the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted its Racial Integrity Act (a “modern” version of its centuries old antimiscegenation law), struck down four decades later in Loving v. Virginia (1967). Published one hundred years apart, Forster’s and Maldonado’s books have striking resonances in addressing cultural, political, and legal barriers to interracial intimacy. The first focuses more on barriers to friendship and the second, on barriers to dating and marriage, but both powerfully examine how social distance hinders social contact on terms of equality.
Recommended Citation
Linda C. McClain,
Of Bridge Parties, the Dating/Marriage Market, and Intimate Racism: Putting the Architecture of Desire and a Passage to India into Conversation
,
Balkinization
(2024).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/shorter_works/279
Publisher URL
https://balkin.blogspot.com/2024/07/of-bridge-parties-datingmarriage-market.html
