A White Side of Black Britain Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy

A White Side of Black Britain explores the racial consciousness of white women in the United Kingdom who have had children with black men, primarily British-born men of Caribbean heritage. Contending that social scientists do not adequately understand how white members of black families negotiate race, France Winddance Twine describes the everyday lives of white women raising children of African Caribbean descent in a racially diverse mid-size British city. Varying in age, income, and education, the women at the centre of Twine's ethnography share moving stories about how they met the fathers of their children, how they incorporate ideas about race and racism into their parenting, and how their thinking about race and social relations changed over time. Interviewing and observing more than forty multiracial families over the span of a decade, Twine discovered that the white women's sense of belonging and racial consciousness was derived as much from their interactions with their partner's family and friends as it was from their romantic relations with black men. In addition to the white birth mothers, Twine interviewed their children, partners, and extended families, and her book can be read in part as a dialogue about race among black and white members of the same families. It includes intimate photographs of the women and their children, partners, extended families, and community.