Loving: Interracial Intimacy in America and the Threat to White Supremacy
by Sheryll Cashin

The landmark story of how interracial love and marriage changed American history—and continues to alter the landscape of American politics When Mildred and Richard Loving wed in 1958, they were ripped from their shared bed and taken to court. Their crime: miscegenation, punished by exile from their home state of Virginia. The resulting landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage and remains a signature case—the first to use the words “white supremacy” to describe such racism. Drawing from the earliest chapters in US history, legal scholar Sheryll Cashin reveals the enduring legacy of America’s original sin, tracing how we transformed from a country without an entrenched construction of race to a nation where one drop of nonwhite blood merited exclusion from full citizenship. In vivid detail, she illustrates how the idea of whiteness was created by the planter class of yesterday and is reinforced by today’s power-hungry dog-whistlers to divide struggling whites and people of color, ensuring plutocracy and undermining the common good. Not just a hopeful treatise on the future of race relations in America, Loving challenges the notion that trickle-down progressive politics is our only hope for a more inclusive society. Accessible and sharp, Cashin reanimates the possibility of a future where interracial understanding serves as a catalyst of a social revolution ending not in artificial color blindness but in a culture where acceptance and difference are celebrated. “White supremacy has long foiled love, and love has long foiled white supremacy. Sheryll Cashin offers us this essential historical revelation in Loving. This fascinating and accessible story puts the fifty-year-old Loving v. Virginia decision in much-needed historical perspective and shares its unknown post-history. In the end, Loving offers an optimistic showpiece of the possibilities of an antiracist America divorced from white supremacy where ‘dexterous’ acceptors of difference can marry, can befriend, can love the identical hearts under our different-looking skins. Loving gives us the historical tools and urges us to renew our old fight for the human right to love.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America “Cashin makes a compelling argument that interracial intimacy, though in and of itself inadequate for eradicating white supremacy, contributes to a racial dexterity the likes of which will be crucial to that task in years to come. With rich historicity and sharp analysis, she explores the ways in which interracial romance has long served as a bogeyman for racists but is now helping to create a critical mass of whites who may, finally, see fit to join with their black and brown partners, lovers, friends, and colleagues to forge a new and better nation.” —Tim Wise, author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son and Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority