A map of the world: charting sex, race, and ethnicity

Journal of Sex Research, Nov, 2003 by Marcelle Christian Holmes

Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality: Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers. By Joane Nagel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 308 pages. Cloth, $49.95; Paper, $25.00.

During the 1950s, Joane Nagel, the author of Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, attended Cleveland public schools. Most of the schools in this urban school system were showing signs of tentative racial integration. She had several African American classmates in her accelerated classes, for example. When she was in the 6th grade, however, her family decided they had to move to the suburbs because, as the author wrote, "My parents did not want me to go to school with 'too many' blacks" (p. 2). Nagel, a White woman, recalls that this urgent decision came at a crucial time: around puberty and her sexual development.

As Nagel began developing breasts and menstruating, her family focused on fleeing to the (White) suburbs. Nagel uses this story to illustrate how decisions to retreat into ethnic enclaves and neighborhoods are often driven by the fear that proximity to the ethnic or racial "other" will lead to interethnic or interracial sexual relationships. The boundaries that ethnic and racial groups erect around themselves, she argues, are often intended to prevent these sexual liaisons from occurring. How do ethnic groups construct these boundaries? What kinds of stories do they tell themselves about the sexual prowess or weakness of other groups to keep their members away or to legitimize violence against them? Further, what about those who traverse these racialized and sexualized boundaries through marriage or other means? How can we categorize them, what motivates them, and what do they say about their own experiences?

These are some of the questions generated by this impressive work. By examining the terrain of the sexual borders that ethnic and racial communities create to keep insiders in and outsiders out, Nagel is able to make a strong case for the profound implications of these border crossings. This interesting collection of visual images, poetry, census data, interviews, and Internet postings deftly explores both the fluidity and the fixedness of ethnic, racial, and sexual identities throughout history and around the world.

Early in the book, Nagel introduces the concept of ethnosexual ventures and adventures. She defines ethnosexual as "the intersection and interaction between ethnicity and sexuality and the ways in which each defines and depends on the other for its meaning and power" (p. 10). This book is about the ways in which sexual stereotypes are used to construct notions about the ethnic "other" and the ways in which sexual liaisons between ethnic and racial groups are used to exploit, conquer, entertain, and create meaningful dialogue. Nagel's scope is broad and she employs a variety of data collection procedures, which makes this a fascinating read. However, her reluctance to entertain other, perhaps contradictory, interpretations of her data is a weakness.

In her introduction, Nagel declares that this work is not a search for evidence that contradicts her main thesis, but this disclaimer does not feel sufficient to me. Although Nagel need not actively search for additional examples where race and sex do not intersect, the book would have been greatly enhanced by considering alternative interpretations of the data she does present. For example, in the opening story, Nagel explains that her parents' wish to move out of the city was motivated by their desire not to live and raise their daughter around so many African Americans. She then states that these conversations were happening as she moved from the 6th to the 7th grade and began developing sexually. Has Nagel presented clear evidence that the desire to move was caused by fears of interracial sexual relations, or has she merely shown a temporal coincidence? Without interview data from her family, we can never really know quite what they were thinking and have to rely exclusively on the perspective Nagel wishes to show us. Unfounded fears of violence or similar fears that integration would alter the intellectual environment surrounding their White daughter also could have motivated the move. Without a careful consideration of alternative interpretations, Nagel's analyses sometimes feel forced.

Such is the case with another example Nagel presents. She describes the war zone of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the ethnosexual violence by Serbian men against Muslim and Croatian women. She returns to these horrific and violent accounts of rape and torture throughout the book. Nagel uses these accounts to illustrate how men from one ethnic group use sexual violence to reinforce the borders that divide them from the ethnic other. For Nagel, crossing an ethnic border through sexual violence is, paradoxically, a way of reinforcing these borders and asserting dominance over another ethnic group. This explanation is sound. However, other plausible interpretations of the data exist. One of the women featured in the text recalls that while she was being raped, the Serbian men shouted that she would have a Serb child. In fact, Nagel states that these widespread rapes were partly intended to force women to bear Serbian babies. Instead of reinforcing ethnic borders, this sexual violence might be interpreted as a way of violently tearing them down, of conquering by diluting the ethnic differences. Wartime sexual violence can create multiracial and multiethnic hybrid identities that can ultimately serve to blur the borders separating ethnic and racial groups in future generations. A thoughtful presentation of alternative interpretations and implications of the material would have offered the reader a broader context in which to evaluate her theses.