Interracial Sex in Classic Literature

Sexual intercourse between people of different races has occurred for centuries, even though it took the United States over 230 years to choose a bi-racial President. Barack Obama and those of his generation probably listened to popular 70s songs about interracial relationships, including Brown Sugar by the Rolling Stones, Brother Louie by The Stories, and China Girl by David Bowie.

Before the advent of rock radio, people were exposed to interracial sex through popular literature. Some of the best known works of fiction involve sexual intercourse between characters of different races.

Perhaps the most famous literary example of interracial sex is Shakespeare's Othello. The title character, a Moor, has married Desdemona at the time the play begins. Much of the action thereafter results from the racist Iago's scheme to break up the Moor and his young wife, beginning with Iago's Act I meeting with Desdemona's father, Brabantio. "An old black ram is tupping your white ewe," Iago informs Brabantio, prompting the father the attempt to have the marriage annulled. More violence and even murder are the consequences of further plotting by Iago.

Interracial sex is also a main plot line in Harriett Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The slave Cassy has been repeatedly raped by her master, Simon Legree. She had been in an interracial relationship with her previous master, though she did admit that she had willingly participated with him. In chapter 34 she says, "I became his willingly, for I loved him! Loved!"

Nearly half a century later, Sinclair Lewis wrote Kingsblood Royal, in which the bigoted main character discovers he has a small percentage of African blood. Neil Kingsblood then embarks on an affair with a new black friend, Sophie. In chapter 27 the narrator says that Neil "held her hand, warmer than any hand he had ever known." A few lines later, "She kissed him. He had not known a kiss like that, the closeness of it and the softness and the frankness of what it said."

A contemporary of Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, also describes an interracial affair in Tender Is the Night. Nicole Diver, the wife of main character Dick Diver, finally yields to her persistent friend, Tommy Barban. Fitzgerald describes the jilted husband in chapter twelve of book three, after learning that his wife was leaving him for the black man: "Then he would not have to look at those two other figures, a man and a woman, black and white and metallic against the sky."

Somerset Maugham tells the story of an interracial relationship between an Englishman and a Tahitian girl in his novel The Moon and Sixpence. Conservative business man Robert Strickland leaves his family and career to become a painter in Tahiti. There he weds Ata, the teenage daughter of an acquaintance. In chapter 53 their relationship is summed up by Strickland when he says, "She cooks my food and looks after her babies. She does what I tell her. She gives me what I want from a woman."

Interracial relationships have formed plot lines in some of the best works in literary history. The most famous writer of all time, William Shakespeare, based one of his best plays on a marriage between a black man and white woman. Some of America's most famous authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harriett Beecher Stowe, have addressed interracial sex in their novels.