This research examines how same-sex and heterosexual Black/White interracial couples negotiate racial difference in their relationship. It builds upon recent scholarship on interracial couples and families as sites where racial meanings and identities are negotiated by introducing sexuality as a critical mediating force. Black/White heterosexual relationships have historically been stringently surveilled and policed because they have threatened to blur racial lines of genealogy whereby property and White privilege are transmitted. Yet, scholarship on interracial intimacy has failed to problematize heterosexuality itself or to examine how racial difference is negotiated outside of a heterosexual context, in lesbian and gay relationships. Using in-depth interviews with each member of 40 interracial couples and ethnographic fieldwork with four couples, I respond to these theoretical and empirical gaps by investigating the following questions: How does sexuality influence the manner in which interracial couples interpret and negotiate their racial difference? How does sexual identity mediate the influence of interracial intimacy on racial identities? How do lesbian and gay couples navigate social landscapes that are structured by norms of White supremacy and heteronormativity?

Focusing on intersections of race, sexuality, and gender, this research advances sociological understanding of how individuals negotiate disparate social locations and power differentials within intimate relationships. The shape and intensity of these interactions varies across three levels—public spaces, relationship dynamics and identity. In navigating public spaces and constructing racial identities vis-à-vis interracial intimacy, heterosexual couples are particularly stigmatized by interraciality, yet they also have access to symbolic and material privileges to buffer its effects. In contrast, for same-sex couples, racial difference interacts with sexuality to further marginalize lesbian and gay interraciality, positioning these couples even farther from normative ideals of romantic intimacy. While sexuality and gender influenced the ways in which racial difference emerged in daily life, they had only a partial influence on the particular strategies partners employed to negotiate racial difference.