Inheriting Racial Privilege and Oppression Through Proximity: Evidence from the Everyday Lives of Mixed-Race Couples in Australia

Natascha Klocker and Paul Mbenna

Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2025, vol. 115, issue 5, 1125-1145

Abstract: White privilege is typically understood as the advantages, resources, and opportunities available to White people based on color. The lines connecting individuals’ Whiteness with privilege, however, become tangled in mixed-race families. This article draws on interviews with eighty-six adult members of mixed-race families in Australia. Insights from White and racial minority interviewees expose how racial privilege moves between family members. Privilege often flows in the expected direction—from White to racial minority partners—but sometimes travels in reverse. Through lived experience, some couples become experts in the patterns by which racial logics operate, developing an intimate awareness of intersections between gender and racism. Participants’ narratives show that racial minority women often lose out in the interplay between race, status, and privilege, whereas White men retain significant privilege irrespective of their mixed-race relationships. Some mixed-race couples actively maneuver to make the most out of partners’ discrepant power and status, depending on the time and place. The benefits they derive from deploying partners’ respective racial capital underscore the ongoing salience of racial boundaries and demonstrate that racial privilege needs to be understood in familial—not just individual—terms.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2025.2475132

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