One Flesh and the Insignificance of Interracial Intimacy

Clarence Major’s One Flesh (2003) is a response to the anxieties surrounding interracial intimacy (e.g., interracial dating, sex, or marriage) in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This article argues that Major’s novel is a call to reject the notion that interracial intimacies, especially those involving Black people, are signs of racial progress. As this article attempts to demonstrate, interracial intimacies in One Flesh are not inherently controversial or politically significant; rather, the race myth, particularly its anti-Blackness version, makes them so.