For the Duration Only: Interracial Relationships in WWII Britain
Abstract
When African American GIs arrived in England alongside the influx of soldiers from abroad, their impact on British discourses on race, gender, and sexuality far exceeded their relatively low numbers. Despite only comprising ten percent of the American forces in Britain, African American GIs dramatically changed the landscape of wartime Britain. As they drew increasing attention from white British women, public reaction to African American soldiers was transformed in complex ways. As the war continued, tensions in mixed-race public spaces escalated and the policing of women’s behavior grew. This paper will explore the multifaceted and changing nature of British attitudes on race and explore the nuances in the construction of a “good” British woman in wartime culture. British acceptance of men of color was conditional based on time and space and waned throughout the duration of the war. Female appeal and desire served a pivotal function in national and racial pride even as sexualized women were objects of anxiety in British culture. In shining a spotlight on interracial relationships, we can better understand the policing of women’s sexuality, the elements of national and racial pride exposed by female desire, and the delicate balancing act Britain tried to maintain between its wartime needs, its national identity, and its hopes of returning to the status quo after the war.References
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Collins, M. “Pride and Prejudice: West Indian Men in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain.” Journal Of British Studies 40, no. 3 (2001): 391–418.
Cowans, Jon. Empire Films and the Crisis of Colonialism, 1946-1959. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
Fisher, Kate. Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
“Going to the Palais: A Social And Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 - Oxford Scholarship,” September 1, 2015.
Groot, Gerard J. De, and C. Peniston-Bird. A Soldier and a Woman. Routledge, 2014.
Hachey, Thomas E. “Jim Crow with a British Accent: Attitudes of London Government Officials Toward American Negro Soldiers in England During World War II.” The Journal of Negro History 59, no. 1 (1974): 65–77.
Haste, Cate. Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain : World War I to the Present. Vintage, 2002.
Levine, Philippa, and Susan R. Grayzel. Gender, Labour, War and Empire: Essays on Modern Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Mccormick, Leanne. “‘One Yank and They’re off’: Interaction between U.S. Troops and Northern Irish Women, 1942-1945.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 2 (2006): 228–257.
Murphy, Andrea. From the Empire to the Rialto: Racism and Reaction in Liverpool, 1918-1948, 1995.
Nava, Mica. “Wider Horizons and Modern Desire: The Contradictions of America and Racial Difference in London 1935-45,” 1999.
Nassy Brown, Jacqueline. Dropping Anchor, Setting Sail: Geographies of Race in Black Liverpool Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Reynolds, David. Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945. 1st ed.. New York: Random House, 1995.
Rose, Sonya O. “Girls and GIs: Race, Sex, and Diplomacy in Second World War Britain.” The International History Review 19, no. 1 (1997): 146–160.
———. Which People’s War?: National Identity and Citizenship in Britain 1939-1945. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Schaffer, Gavin. “Fighting Racism: Black Soldiers and Workers in Britain during the Second World War.” Immigrants & Minorities 28, no. 2–3 (2010): 246–265.
Smith, Graham. When Jim Crow Met John Bull: Black American Soldiers in World War II Britain. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
Summerfield, Penny. Reconstructing Women’s Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester, UK ; New York, NY: Manchester University Press ; Distributed in the USA by StMartin’s Press, 1998.
Timm, Annette “The Challengers of Including Sexual Violence and Transgressive Love in Historical Writing onf World War II and the Holocaust” Journal of the History of Sexuality 26, no. 3 (September 2017): 351-365.
Topping, Simon. “‘The Dusky Doughboys’: Interaction between African American Soldiers and the Population of Northern Ireland during the Second World War.” Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (November 2013): 1131-1154.
Webster, Wendy. “‘Fit to Fight, Fit to Mix’: Sexual Patriotism in Second World War Britain.” Women’s History Review 22, no. 4 (2013): 607–624.
———. “‘There’ll Always Be an England’: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, 1948-1968.” Journal of British Studies 40, no. 4 (2001): 557–584.
Wynn, Neil A. “‘Race War’: Black American GIs and West Indians in Britain During The Second World War.” Immigrants & Minorities 24, no. 3 (2006): 324–346.
———. The African American Experience during World War II. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 16.
Young, Lola. Fear of the Dark: “Race,” Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. Gender, Racism, Ethnicity. London ; New York: Routledge, 1996.
Published
2020-02-19
Issue
Section
Studies
