Psychotherapist Dr. Shirley Glass
Dr. Shirley Glass discusses "the new infidelity crisis." She's studied extramarital affairs since the mid 1970's and has written a new book called "NOT Just Friends: Protect Your Relationship from Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal." She says that the workplace has become the new breeding ground for extramarital affairs. GLASS is, by the way, the mother of Ira Glass, of public radio's "This American Life."
Other segments from the episode on February 17, 2003
Transcript
DATE February 17, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A⨠TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A⨠NETWORK NPR⨠PROGRAM Fresh Airâ¨â¨Interview: Shirley Glass discusses her book, "Not `Just Friends':â¨Protect Your Relationship From Infidelity and Heal the Trauma ofâ¨Betrayal"â¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.â¨â¨Good people in good marriages are having affairs. That's the newsâ¨psychologist Shirley Glass delivers in her new book "Not `Just Friends.'"â¨She's a marriage and family therapist and estimates that in two-thirds of theâ¨couples she's treated over the past 20 years, either the husband, the wife orâ¨both were unfaithful. Glass has been studying infidelity since 1975. Anâ¨accomplishment that is probably not mentioned on her resume is that she's theâ¨mother of Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life." In examining changesâ¨in the nature of infidelity, Shirley Glass has found that today's affairs areâ¨more frequent and more serious than they used to be because more men areâ¨getting emotionally involved and more women are getting sexually involved.â¨Many affairs get started in the workplace, but they don't usually fit the oldâ¨stereotypical relationship of the boss and his secretary.â¨â¨Dr. SHIRLEY GLASS (Psychotherapist): What I see happening in the contemporaryâ¨workplace is that men and women are working together as equals. They areâ¨colleagues because women have entered what were formerly male-dominatedâ¨professions. And so these men and women get to know each other very well.â¨They have a lot of respect for each other, and they're working in anâ¨environment where there's a lot of excitement, there's a lot of pressure. Andâ¨so they become very bonded, and they form deep friendships.â¨â¨Unfortunately, because many people think that they're invulnerable to havingâ¨an affair unless they're in an unhappy marriage, they begin to imperceptivelyâ¨cross these thresholds that lead them from a platonic relationship into anâ¨emotional affair, and then that emotional affair often becomes sexualized, andâ¨then you have something that's very threatening to the primary relationship.â¨â¨GROSS: Now you write that there's a new kind of affair in which there isn'tâ¨necessarily even any sex. You call this, like, the new infidelity, affairsâ¨that aren't even sexual. Well, how can that really be an affair?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Well, I think the epitome of that is the Internet affair. Andâ¨when we say that there isn't any sex, what we really mean is there isn't anyâ¨physical contact, but there is a lot of sexual tension and sexual chemistry orâ¨sexual sharing of fantasies or sharing of sexual attraction. So that thisâ¨emotional affair that doesn't have physical contact consists of an emotionalâ¨intimacy that is often greater than in the committed relationship. And onceâ¨that relationship becomes secret, then you have something that is muchâ¨different than a platonic relationship, because platonic relationships areâ¨open to the committed relationship.â¨â¨So, for example, somebody will come home from work or from school or from theâ¨gym and they'll be talking about some new person that they've met, and they'llâ¨share lots of information about this person and the fact that they went toâ¨lunch together and they talked about the schools that they went to or whateverâ¨their common interests are. And then it's as though this person disappearedâ¨from the face of the Earth, because they stop talking about them and they stopâ¨mentioning that they saw this person today or that they had lunch with thisâ¨person or they stopped after work and had a drink with this person. And onceâ¨that wall of secrecy goes up, that is a very important danger sign that you'veâ¨entered a very unsafe zone for your committed relationship.â¨â¨GROSS: You know, when more women started working, a lot of people wereâ¨afraid, `Well, does that mean my husband will meet a woman in the office andâ¨fall in love, and that will spell doom for the marriage?' and you're sayingâ¨maybe.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Yes, I am...â¨â¨GROSS: That's a kind of scary thing to hear.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I am saying that. In fact, in the clinical couples that I treat,â¨62 percent of the unfaithful men and 46 percent of the unfaithful women had anâ¨affair with somebody they met at work. And a very interesting side piece ofâ¨that is that for women, from 1982 to 1990, 38 percent of the unfaithful womenâ¨met their partners at work, but from 1991 to 2000, it was 50 percent of theâ¨unfaithful women who met their affair partners at work.â¨â¨GROSS: OK. So you've established that a lot of infidelity starts at theâ¨office, where two people are working together, they're very involved with eachâ¨other, and that develops into an emotional and then into a physicalâ¨relationship. Are there certain types of people who are most likely to getâ¨involved in this kind of affair at work or with a friend?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: That's a very good question because what I see is that these areâ¨not the typical philanderers. These are not people who believe that it's OKâ¨to have a little bit of sex on the side, and these are not people who areâ¨consciously looking for a relationship outside of their marriage becauseâ¨they're so unhappy. And so these are pretty average people. In goodâ¨marriages, perhaps the marriages are stressed, perhaps they don't have a lotâ¨of time to do fun things together, but you certainly wouldn't call theseâ¨marriages distressed or unhappy. I would say that many of these people areâ¨naive. They're naive because they think they're immune to getting involved inâ¨an extramarital relationship because they love their partner, they're goodâ¨people, and it's the naivety that keeps them from being alert to those dangerâ¨signs.â¨â¨And the step into an affair from this platonic friendship is so subtle and canâ¨take place over months or even over years that the person doesn't reallyâ¨recognize what's happening to them. And so I don't think that there's aâ¨particular type. I think the people who are aware of the dangers and who backâ¨off when they feel those attractions and see those signals are certainly muchâ¨less likely to get involved this way.â¨â¨GROSS: Americans have a deep belief in romantic love, love conquers all, andâ¨you think of so many movies about how two people fall in love and they'reâ¨separated by war or catastrophe, and they climb mountains and ford rivers toâ¨be united again. So does that romantic belief still apply when the romance isâ¨an extramarital affair? I mean, if you really believe in the magic of loveâ¨and romance and finding your soul mate, if you believe you've found it outsideâ¨of marriage, I mean, should you still kind of, like, pursue it because it'sâ¨the real thing, you've found it at last?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Well, you've really tapped into one of my buttons because I hateâ¨those movies because I think they're so misleading. You know, love that isâ¨going to last over the years is love that we grow into, that we grow to loveâ¨somebody, that falling in love may get us started, it may kick-start aâ¨relationship, but it is so unreliable is a predictor of what's going to happenâ¨to a couple long term. And so that's why so many of these affairs just fizzleâ¨out when people have an opportunity to be outside of that forbidden zone. Andâ¨you mentioned, you know, the barriers and the war and the people that are, youâ¨know, in the way. One of the things that we know about romantic love is thatâ¨romantic love is enhanced greatly by barriers, so that every great opera endsâ¨with them dying. I mean, nobody goes on to just get married and, you know,â¨lead this loving, wonderful life after they've surmounted all these barriersâ¨to get to be together. You know, all these great passions and great storiesâ¨always end as a tragedy.â¨â¨GROSS: So are you saying that you would always advise somebody not to followâ¨that romantic love that they have found in an extramarital relationship?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I would say that they're creating a fantasy that doesn't exist inâ¨the real world, and what often happens is that, in their mind, this personâ¨who's having this affair is trying to decide which relationship they want toâ¨be in. And the affair may, at times, be the one that is calling them, andâ¨yet, when their spouse finds out that they've had an affair and they realizeâ¨that they may lose their marriage, for some people, it's almost as thoughâ¨they've been shocked out of a spell, and they come back to reality, and theyâ¨suddenly begin to see things in this affair partner that they know theyâ¨couldn't live with, that the only reason that they could maintain thatâ¨relationship as an affair is because they had the marriage to supply them withâ¨the, really, sustenance of their life. So it's really like the marriage isâ¨the bread and the butter and the affair is more like the icing and theâ¨champagne. And then they realize they don't want to exist on icing andâ¨champagne.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is psychologist Shirley Glass, author of the new book "Notâ¨`Just Friends.'" We'll talk more about infidelity after a break. This isâ¨FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is psychologist Shirley Glass.â¨She's the author of the new book "Not `Just Friends': Protect Yourâ¨Relationship From Infidelity and Heal the Trauma of Betrayal."â¨â¨You've said that, most of the time, the affair doesn't last; that even if theâ¨person leaves their marriage to be with the affair partner, in the light ofâ¨day, the relationship with the affair partner falls apart. I'm wondering ifâ¨that isn't always the case, though, and if you've seen people who you'veâ¨counseled who left the marriage, went with the affair partner and was able toâ¨create a real long-lasting, good relationship, a better relationship than theâ¨one they had in the marriage.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I've seen a few relationships like that, and I must admit that theâ¨ones I've seen are more in the community of the people that we socialize withâ¨than I've seen in my practice. I think...â¨â¨GROSS: Gee, what does that say, do you think?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I don't know. That those people weren't in therapy.â¨â¨GROSS: Right. That those people maybe really knew so certainly what it wasâ¨they needed to do.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Yeah. But what I do see is that...â¨â¨GROSS: Or maybe they saw a different therapist.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Right. Right. I do see people coming into therapy whoseâ¨relationship began as an affair, and they have enormous trust issues, and manyâ¨times, they end up cheating on each other. And we...â¨â¨GROSS: Trust issues because, like, well, if you cheated with me, you canâ¨cheat on me, too?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Exactly, exactly, 'cause the relationship began with cheating, andâ¨so there's a lot of insecurity about that. Unless, you know, they both areâ¨operating under the illusion that, you know, I've found my one true love and Iâ¨was with the wrong person, and then you're my soul mate, you know. And so ifâ¨they have that shared illusion, then those would be the couples who wouldâ¨probably, you know, make it work. The divorce rate in first marriages is 50â¨percent. The divorce rate in remarriage, in second marriages is 60 percent,â¨and the divorce rate in marriage to an affair partner is 75 percent.â¨â¨GROSS: Hmm.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Unless--there's an exception to that. An exception is if youâ¨marry an old flame, then those couples have a very high stay together rate,â¨like 78 percent.â¨â¨GROSS: Hmm. Do you believe in monogamy, that it's the...â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Oh...â¨â¨GROSS: ...best way to have a long-term relationship, as opposed to trying toâ¨have a more open marriage and accepting that, from time to time, there will beâ¨infidelities, but you can deal with that?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I believe in monogamy. I have seen people in open marriages whoâ¨were devastated when their partner violated whatever their basic assumptionâ¨was. For example, in many open marriages, the assumption is that it's OK toâ¨have sex with somebody else, but you can't get emotionally involved. And whatâ¨often happens is that one person becomes jealous or one person becomesâ¨emotionally involved. And, you know, the O'Neills, who wrote the originalâ¨book on open marriages, did end up getting divorced. So, you know, I haven'tâ¨over time seen too many people who have been able to handle an open marriageâ¨and keep their marriage intact. I recognize that there are some situationsâ¨where people stay in a marriage for reasons that don't have to do with lovingâ¨their partner. They stay in a marriage because they want to raise theirâ¨children or they stay in a marriage because there are so many financialâ¨rewards from staying in their marriage, and then they get their emotionalâ¨needs or their sexual needs outside the marriage.â¨â¨And by lowering their expectations, then they're able to stabilize theirâ¨marriage, but a stable marriage is not necessarily a happy marriage. One ofâ¨the interesting sidelights is that when women are looking for emotionalâ¨intimacy in their marriages and they say to their husbands, `I don't feelâ¨we're connected enough or, you know, you don't share enough of yourself withâ¨me,' and they're pursuing their husbands to get more emotional closeness,â¨their husbands often regard that as criticism, as being put down, and theâ¨husbands withdraw. And the women keep trying and they keep trying, and theyâ¨get more critical, and they get more intense in their complaining, and itâ¨becomes a vicious cycle. And at some point, they just give up, and they pullâ¨away, and they say, `You know, I've had it. There's just nothing here.' Andâ¨at that point, they may be getting involved with somebody else. Well, theâ¨husband thinks the marriage has improved because the fact that she's notâ¨complaining anymore to him says that things are better.â¨â¨And when couples come in for therapy, it's very interesting because I'll say,â¨`Well, how was your week?' and the husband will say, `Oh, we had a greatâ¨week.' I'll say, `Really? That's wonderful.' And he'll say, `Yeah, noâ¨conflict.' And then the wife will say, `We had a terrible week.' I'll say,â¨`Well, how's that?' She said, `We didn't connect. We didn't talk aboutâ¨things. We didn't stay up late and share our thoughts, and we didn't talkâ¨about what's going on in our lives.' And so a marriage can look better whenâ¨the expectations become lower, but that's only a temporary situation.â¨Eventually, those marriages either crumble or they become aware that there'sâ¨something going on outside, and then they have to do something about it.â¨â¨GROSS: Have you ever worked with a couple and felt, `You know, this marriageâ¨really isn't very good; the person was probably right to have an affair andâ¨they'd probably be better off with that person'?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Well, I certainly have been with many couples where I thought thatâ¨they had very poor communication or that--you know, I don't understand howâ¨anybody could live with that kind of conflict, but my bias is that ifâ¨somebody's unhappy in their marriage, the way to solve that is not by havingâ¨an affair. The way to solve that is to try to work on it in couples therapyâ¨or to take a marriage education course and to optimize that relationship. Andâ¨then if the relationship isn't what they want it to be, then to get out of itâ¨and then to look for a new relationship, because an affair just is a dirty wayâ¨to leave. It causes tremendous pain. It makes it very difficult for theseâ¨people to raise their children together afterwards because there's so muchâ¨resentment. And so it's certainly not a good solution to a bad marriage.â¨â¨GROSS: When you are working with a patient, are you usually seeing them withâ¨their spouse? If the issue is infidelity, are you usually seeing this personâ¨as part of a couple or seeing them alone?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: More often, I'm seeing them as a couple, but certainly people willâ¨come in to individual therapy because they're having an affair and theirâ¨partner doesn't know about it and they want to make a decision or understand,â¨you know, what's going on. And when somebody comes in, it's very reflectiveâ¨because when somebody comes in individually then they're really working onâ¨themselves. They're not working on the marriage. Whereas when the come inâ¨with their partner, then they're working on the marriage. Usually when peopleâ¨come in with their partner, it's after the affair's been discovered. And soâ¨there's a lot of trauma that they're experiencing and a lot of very intenseâ¨emotions that they're going to need a lot of help with in order to recover andâ¨to regain trust. And if the person who had the affair is ambivalent aboutâ¨which relationship they want to be in, then the beginning of the therapy isâ¨certainly, you know, very agonizing.â¨â¨GROSS: What can you do for a couple like that?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Which couple?â¨â¨GROSS: Well, let's start with the couple where the person is unsure aboutâ¨whether they want to stay in the marriage or be with the person they had theâ¨affair with.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Then we have to decide how open are we going to be about what'sâ¨going on in the affair, and if the involved person is willing to talk aboutâ¨the affair in the couples therapy and not just in individual therapy, thenâ¨that's a much better sign than if they want a wall up around what's going onâ¨in the affair. And one of the questions I'll ask the unfaithful partner is:â¨What are you sharing with your affair partner about the marital therapy?â¨Because if they're running to the affair partner and talking about what'sâ¨going on in the marital therapy and they're not talking to their spouse aboutâ¨what's going on in the affair, then it's very clear where their basic loyaltyâ¨is and who's the insider and who's the outsider. And that's a--you know, whenâ¨I have a couple like that, then I usually think that the prognosis isn't veryâ¨good for them to stay together unless that shifts radically.â¨â¨GROSS: If you find out your spouse has been having an affair, you'd probablyâ¨want to hear all about it and obsessively dwell on the details, and at theâ¨same time, you wouldn't want to hear a word of it. So what advice do youâ¨usually give couples about how much information to share about what actuallyâ¨went on in the affair?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I'm really guided by the betrayed spouse. When somebody finds outâ¨that somebody that they have loved, somebody that they have trusted, somebodyâ¨that they thought was a good person, has lied and deceived them, then theirâ¨reaction is traumatic. And they experience the same post-traumatic reactionsâ¨that people experience when they are violated by someone that they trusted,â¨when a natural disaster happens, when a person who thought that they wereâ¨healthy finds out that they have a serious illness, because they lose theirâ¨sense of innocence and they lose their sense of invulnerability.â¨â¨And one of the things that we do when we're traumatized is we try to makeâ¨sense of it and we try to understand what the story is. And so telling theâ¨story, the affair, is the only way I know that people can get closure and it'sâ¨the only way that I know that people can rebuild trust. In terms of whatâ¨questions need to be answered, usually the betrayed partner has pages andâ¨pages of questions. And then as a therapist, then I have certain questionsâ¨that I want people to think about because I think that they deal more withâ¨meaning of the affair than just the what, where, when and how.â¨â¨GROSS: Shirley Glass is the author of the book "Not `Just Friends.'" She'llâ¨be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESHâ¨AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨(Announcements)â¨â¨GROSS: Coming up, more with psychologist Shirley Glass on trying to patch upâ¨a marriage after an affair. Interracial marriage used to be illegal in 42â¨states. We'll talk with Harvard law Professor Randall Kennedy about his newâ¨book, "Interracial Intimacies."â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with psychologist Shirleyâ¨Glass. She's a family and marriage therapist who has studied infidelity sinceâ¨1975. Her new book is about what she describes as the `new infidelity,'â¨relationships between people who form a deep connection at work and findâ¨themselves crossing the line from a platonic to a romantic relationship.â¨â¨When we left off, we were talking about the advice she gives married couplesâ¨on how to talk about the affair after it has ended. Glass says the questionsâ¨she thinks most need to be addressed have to do with the meaning of theâ¨affair, not just the when, where and how.â¨â¨What kinds of questions would you ask that deal with the meaning of theâ¨affair?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I would ask `How did you give yourself permission as you crossedâ¨these various thresholds?' I'm looking for `What are the vulnerabilities?â¨Was it curiosity? Was it flattery?'--as you pointed out before--`Was it thatâ¨you felt your emotional needs weren't being met in the marriage? Is itâ¨because everybody that you work with is engaged in these kinds of relationshipâ¨and it looks like it's an acceptable thing to do?' So we want to know, whatâ¨are the different vulnerabilities set the stage for an affair?â¨â¨I want to know `What role did you play in that affair, with that other person?â¨What did you like about yourself in that other relationship? And what wouldâ¨you like to bring back into your marriage? What did you give in that otherâ¨relationship that perhaps you aren't giving in your marriage? And if you wereâ¨giving more in your marriage, maybe you'd be more invested, and maybe thisâ¨marriage would seem more appealing to you,' because the more we invest in aâ¨relationship, the more we feel. And so sometimes the affair looks betterâ¨because the person's making time for it, they get together, they look in eachâ¨other's eyes, they plan when they're going to be together, they share theirâ¨most recent triumphs and their disappointments. And if we did that in ourâ¨marriages, the marriages would feel a lot better.â¨â¨So I'm trying to get at `What's the meaning of the affair? What was theâ¨attraction of the affair? And what does it say about the marriage?' so thatâ¨we can use that information to build the marriage back.â¨â¨GROSS: Let's take a hypothetical couple; one of the spouses had an affairâ¨with somebody at work. What's your relationship to that person at work whoâ¨had the affair with the married person? I mean, do you want to hear theirâ¨side of the story? Do you want to bring them in for counseling with theâ¨married couple? Do you think that the person who had the affair with theâ¨person at work should keep the job and still be around this person?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: The only time that I have wanted to bring in the affair partnerâ¨was when somebody was ambivalent and kept going back and forth between the twoâ¨relationships. And it seemed like if we got all three people together, maybeâ¨we could do something to break up that stable triangle, because the worstâ¨resolution is to have one of these ongoing triangles that goes on for yearsâ¨and, you know, with all the tensions and the promises and the broken promisesâ¨and the lying to this one and then the lying to that one, so that...â¨â¨GROSS: Boy, how did that work out?â¨â¨(Soundbite of laughter)â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Usually, if it was a man who was, you know, involved with twoâ¨women, the two women would be willing to do that, but the man wasn't, becauseâ¨the way that you'd carry on a double life is to keep those parts of your lifeâ¨separate, to keep them, you know, split. And that would be their worstâ¨nightmare, would be to have these two women get together. And I did know aâ¨woman who was in that situation with her husband and she insisted that theyâ¨have a meeting with the affair partner, and when they did, that really createdâ¨the crisis that ended his relationship with the other woman, that the otherâ¨woman could see that he really was devoted to the wife and, of course, she hadâ¨refused to believe that and believe that he was only in the marriage for theâ¨sake of the family.â¨â¨GROSS: What about the issue of going back to work if your spouse has had anâ¨affair with somebody at work?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: It is so awful to know that your partner had an affair withâ¨somebody at work, it's supposed to be over, and now every day they go to workâ¨and they see this person. And so one of the things we talk about is that theyâ¨share what goes on when they see this other person and that they stop all theâ¨contact and, you know, when you say `stop all contact,' people misinterpretâ¨that. What they say is, `Well, I'm not having sex anymore,' but they mayâ¨still have coffee together or they may still e-mail that person or they mayâ¨still call the person on the cell phone to see how they're doing becauseâ¨they're worried about them since they broke up with them. And stopping theâ¨contact means stopping all kinds of personal exchanges. So if the affairâ¨partner at work says, `Well, you know, how's the marriage therapy going?' or,â¨you know, `How are you doing?' or, `How's your wife handling this?' then theâ¨person really needs to say, `I'm sorry, I'm not going to discuss anythingâ¨personal with you.'â¨â¨And at the beginning, people do a very poor job of that because they feelâ¨responsible for having hurt this person who cared about them. But as theyâ¨begin to put up thicker walls, then they can move back a few steps. It'sâ¨certainly better if they don't have to work together. In the olden days when,â¨you know, it was the powerful man and the secretary, then the secretary wasâ¨fired. In today's world, even in that situation, a secretary can't be firedâ¨because she'll end up suing for sexual harassment. If she can be transferredâ¨to another department, that's a good idea.â¨â¨What sometimes happens is if the unfaithful partner really puts up a wall,â¨then the affair partner will on their own move out of that situation, becauseâ¨it's too painful to be in this formal arrangement with somebody that you hadâ¨this very intimate relationship with; it hurts too much. And so they'll lookâ¨for another job on their own. But if they don't or they can't, then the rulesâ¨have to be very carefully understood. Just as when somebody has an Internetâ¨affair, the rules about how we're going to use a computer have to be veryâ¨carefully understood.â¨â¨GROSS: Have you seen a lot of marriages survive affairs?â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: I've seen many marriages not only survive affairs, but I've seenâ¨marriages really stronger and exceptionally intimate. Because if we can talkâ¨about this very painful thing in a way where we show compassion for eachâ¨other--and the compassion isn't just for the person who's been betrayed;â¨compassion is also for the person who went down that slippery slope perhapsâ¨without realizing it, who had unmet needs from their childhood that were beingâ¨acted out--and so if we are willing to open up all of those doors and look atâ¨those issues and be understanding of each other and work through the painâ¨together, then we have a very strong relationship.â¨â¨I mentioned before, Terry, that people suffer these traumatic reactions afterâ¨they find out about an affair, and so somebody may have flashbacks for monthsâ¨or even years. And if their partner is supportive and comforting during thoseâ¨flashbacks, then again you have a couple who are building something veryâ¨strong and very special in a situation that is certainly very difficult.â¨â¨GROSS: Shirley Glass, thank you so much for talking with us.â¨â¨Dr. GLASS: Oh, thank you so much, Terry.â¨â¨GROSS: Shirley Glass is the author of the book "Not `Just Friends.'"â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: Coming up, Randall Kennedy on interracial love and marriage. This isâ¨FRESH AIR.â¨â¨* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *â¨â¨Interview: Professor Randall Kennedy discusses fears and controversiesâ¨surrounding interracial relationships in the USâ¨TERRY GROSS, host:â¨â¨Interracial marriage was illegal at one time or another in most Americanâ¨states. It wasn't until 1967 that the Supreme Court overturned the remainingâ¨anti-miscegenation laws. But there are many whites and African-Americans whoâ¨are still uncomfortable with or even opposed to interracial romance.â¨â¨My guest, Randall Kennedy, is the author of the new book "Interracialâ¨Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption." His previous book wasâ¨about the changing meaning of a word that is a terrible epithet, but hasâ¨become almost a term of endearment in part of hip-hop culture. That book,â¨titled "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word," has just come outâ¨in paperback. Randall Kennedy is a professor at Harvard Law School, andâ¨served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.â¨â¨You're a law professor so, obviously, you researched a lot of the legalâ¨aspects of interracial relationships. Now at one time there were 42 statesâ¨that banned intermarriage. What was the legal case for the state intercedingâ¨and making intermarriage illegal?â¨â¨Professor RANDALL KENNEDY (Harvard Law School; Author): Interracial marriageâ¨was viewed for a long time as a real menace. There were some people whoâ¨thought that it was against the teachings of the Bible. So, frankly, even inâ¨the 1960s there were judges who said, you know, marriage across the race lineâ¨is against the teachings of the Bible. If God had wanted--clearly God did notâ¨want people of different races to intermarry. That's why, you know, differentâ¨races were put on different continents, and it's only because of man'sâ¨intervention that people have been able to--different races have been able toâ¨get together anyway.â¨â¨The main thing going on, of course, was white supremacist, white separatistâ¨notions, the idea that America should be a white man's country. And one wayâ¨of keeping it a white man's country would be to police the race line.â¨â¨GROSS: How carefully were the laws enforced?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: It's difficult to tell, frankly, the degree of energy that wasâ¨put into the enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws. But one thing I did findâ¨is that the private enforcement mechanisms were sometimes more in evidenceâ¨than the resort to criminal law. So, for instance, imagine the followingâ¨episode: a white man who has an estate, a wealthy white man, dies. He leavesâ¨his estate to his wife. Well, let's imagine that the white man's brothers andâ¨sisters get angry because, after all, the white man has died, he has this bigâ¨estate, they don't have any of it. They hire a private investigator, theâ¨private investigator finds out that the wife's grandmother or maybe evenâ¨great-grandmother was colored. The brothers and sisters of the dead man thenâ¨go and challenge the putative widow's right to the estate. If she isâ¨determined to be colored under state law, that means that she was neverâ¨legally married to the man; that means that she should not get his estate;â¨that means that the children that she has had with this man are now deemed toâ¨be illegitimate.â¨â¨But I found hundreds of cases of private enforcement. Often these cases wouldâ¨be brought by resentful, angry relatives.â¨â¨GROSS: Although there are no longer any anti-miscegenation laws on the books,â¨there are still certain prohibitions against adopting children of anotherâ¨race. What are some of those prohibitions?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Well, until recently there were states that had laws on theâ¨books that required strong racial matching policies. For instance, inâ¨California, until relatively recently, social welfare officials were directedâ¨to search for adoptive homes of the same race as a child who was eligible forâ¨adoption. Now those laws have been essentially superceded by a federal lawâ¨that was--two federal laws, actually--a federal law that was passed in 1994â¨and then a federal law that was passed in 1996--which prohibits race matchingâ¨by any entity that is taking money from the federal government.â¨â¨But on the ground, race matching still exists. Throughout many areas of theâ¨United States, probably most areas of the United States, there is still a veryâ¨strong inclination to try to place children of a given race with adults of theâ¨same race for purposes of adoption.â¨â¨GROSS: And...â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: As you know, I'm quite critical of race matching for a varietyâ¨of reasons.â¨â¨GROSS: What are your reasons?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Yeah. Well, there are a couple. First, race matching has hadâ¨the consequence of condemning children to institutionalized care for longâ¨periods of time, or for foster care where they're bumped around from oneâ¨insecure, you know, household to another. It seems clear to me that theâ¨children need security in their lives, they need continuity in their lives,â¨they need someone who is going to view that child as, you know, their child,â¨and someone who's going to be willing to be a permanent parent 24 hours a day,â¨seven days a week.â¨â¨A second reason is that I don't think that the state should in any way suggestâ¨that the monoracial family is any way superior to the multiracial family. Andâ¨I think that that's an inescapable inference that is drawn when state policy,â¨you know, tries to create monoracial families, viewing them as more naturalâ¨than multiracial families.â¨â¨Now as for the question of identification, you know, inculcating a correctâ¨sense of racial identity, first of all, the whole question of what is aâ¨correct sense of racial identity is itself very controversial. There areâ¨probably all sorts of, you know, notions of racial identity. We have aâ¨pluralistic nation, pluralistic country. We should applaud pluralism. And inâ¨this context pluralism, it seems to me, means being willing to facilitate andâ¨tolerate and encourage all sorts of family formations--multiracial and, youâ¨know, any other sort of family formation that makes sense.â¨â¨GROSS: Now I'm sure a lot of your readers wonder, `Well, is Randall Kennedyâ¨married to a white woman? And is that why he wrote this book?' And...â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Yeah, a lot of people, I'm sure, will want to know that. I'mâ¨married to a black woman, very happily married to a wonderful black woman, soâ¨that's fine. I'm not making any claim that interracial relationships areâ¨necessarily better than, you know, relationships between people of the sameâ¨race. All I'm saying is that people ought not feel embarrassed, ought notâ¨feel bad, ought not feel ashamed if their affections carry them--you know, ifâ¨their affections cross the race line.â¨â¨GROSS: My guest is Randall Kennedy. His new book is called "Interracialâ¨Intimacies." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.â¨â¨(Soundbite of music)â¨â¨GROSS: Randall Kennedy is my guest. He's the author of the new bookâ¨"Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption." His previousâ¨book was "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word," and it's allâ¨about the history of that word and the controversy over its uses.â¨â¨Randall Kennedy, among the things that happened after your book was publishedâ¨was that there was an episode of "Boston Public," the Fox TV series set in anâ¨integrated high school--an episode in that series about the use of that wordâ¨in class, and I think, you know, the students had to read an excerpt of yourâ¨book in that class as part of their assignment. So I'm wondering if you sawâ¨the episode, and what you thought of the episode, and how they handled theâ¨controversy over the word.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: I did see the episode. I thought it was an excellentâ¨episode--very complex. I thought that it allowed people with different pointsâ¨of view to articulate those points of view with reason and with power, andâ¨that's one of the things that made it a very compelling instance ofâ¨television.â¨â¨GROSS: Among the issues in that episode was, you know, does a white teacherâ¨have the right to teach a class about that word; can white students use thatâ¨word since the black students are using it all the time in the context ofâ¨talking to each other and in quoting rap lyrics. And so, you know, everyâ¨point of view was represented within the episode.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Right. And it was a very realistic rendering of controversiesâ¨that are ongoing all across the United States. And one reason why I know thatâ¨to be the case is that in the aftermath of the airing of that episode I gotâ¨hundreds of letters from across the country--from teachers andâ¨students--telling me about, you know, controversies at their schools. I got aâ¨lot of papers where teachers have actually asked students to write about thatâ¨particular episode or write about my book or write about articles in theâ¨newspaper that talked about my book. That episode also helped garner my bookâ¨an audience that, frankly, I had not considered. I now hear from high-schoolâ¨students a lot. You know, they write me, they send me their papers, they sendâ¨me questions all the time, because they were introduced to my book throughâ¨that episode on "Boston Public."â¨â¨GROSS: So did they call you and say, you know, `We're using your book in oneâ¨of the episodes for this series; just wanted you to know'?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Well, it was a little bit more involved than that. Theâ¨producer called and said that they were thinking about doing an episodeâ¨involving a controversy regarding the N-word. They heard about my book. Theyâ¨said, `We'd like to read your book.' So I sent the book to them. Then aâ¨couple of weeks later they sent me a draft of the script and asked for myâ¨reactions to it. I sent back a little memo giving, you know, my reactions.â¨Then they sent another draft, and the second time around they said, `Listen.â¨We'd like to use your book as a prop in the show. We'd like to use your nameâ¨in the show. And, you know, is that OK?' And I said, `Sure, it's OK.' Andâ¨they went ahead and did the show, and I saw it and I really liked it. Andâ¨it's--like I said, it's certainly been helpful in spreading the word about myâ¨book.â¨â¨GROSS: And have you been saying `the N-word' or using the full word when youâ¨talk about it?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Oh, I use the word `nigger.' I mean, you know--there is aâ¨place for euphemism. I don't get mad when people, you know, use `the N-word.'â¨But, you know, the name of my book is "Nigger: The Strange Career of aâ¨Troublesome Word." And depending on the context, I use `N-word.'â¨â¨I mean, it was funny. I was on a radio show where the host of the show said,â¨`Listen. The station had a strong policy, no exceptions. Nigger could not beâ¨pronounced on the show.' I went on the show. We spoke for one hour. It wasâ¨radio program. Never once was the word `nigger' used, although I did spell itâ¨out for purposes of identifying my book. And we had a wonderful, wonderfulâ¨discussion.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, how'd you feel about that? Because obviously the purpose ofâ¨that policy is to protect you and other African-Americans from being offendedâ¨and from being intentionally or inadvertently insulted. But here you areâ¨trying to kind of start an intellectual conversation...â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Right.â¨â¨GROSS: ...about the use of the word, the origins of the word, the linguisticsâ¨of--you know, all this stuff, and you're not allowed to use it.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Well, I argued. I said--on the show I said, `I think theâ¨station's policy is not a good policy.' For one thing, when you make a wordâ¨or a symbol tabooed expression, you give it a certain allure, and I don'tâ¨think that this word should be given that sort of power. And so I'm againstâ¨the sort of policies that would--the policy of this particular radio program.â¨But I mention it because it was interesting to discuss my book on a programâ¨where the title of my book could not be mentioned.â¨â¨GROSS: Right. Part of your book was devoted to the word's use in pop cultureâ¨and rap music, movies, comedy routines. I'm wondering if you're finding anyâ¨more or less citings of the word since the publication of your book.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Well, the book, you know, caused quite a stir, and there wereâ¨a lot of articles generated by the book itself. I think some people haveâ¨become considerably more self-conscious in the aftermath of my book. And, ofâ¨course, controversies continue. Recently in St. Louis a schoolteacher wasâ¨publicly reprimanded because she gave out to her class a chapter of my book.â¨It was almost, frankly, a parody of some of the things that I talk about andâ¨discuss in the book. But that happens, and I'm sure it will continue toâ¨happen.â¨â¨GROSS: Was the teacher white or black?â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: I do not know. I get the sense that she was white, but Iâ¨don't know that for sure.â¨â¨GROSS: 'Cause I'm thinking maybe that if she was white the reason why she wasâ¨reprimanded might have been, in part, because some people think it'sâ¨presumptuous and inappropriate for a white teacher to pretend to have anyâ¨authority on this subject...â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Yeah.â¨â¨GROSS: ...which is part of what the "Boston Public" episode was about.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: That's right. And some people do have that point of view, andâ¨it's a point of view that should be opposed. This is a teacher teaching in aâ¨public school. The authority that she has should be an authority that comesâ¨not from her skin color, but from what she knows, the energy she brings to theâ¨job, her effectiveness in trying to educate the upcoming generation ofâ¨Americans. That's where her authority should lie, not in what she happens toâ¨be.â¨â¨GROSS: Well, Randall Kennedy, good to talk with you again. Thank you veryâ¨much.â¨â¨Prof. KENNEDY: Thank you so much for having me on your show.â¨â¨GROSS: Randall Kennedy's new book is called "Interracial Intimacies." Hisâ¨book "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word" has just come out inâ¨paperback.â¨â¨(Credits)â¨â¨GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.