Jungle Fever Research Paper

“It’s not a question of responsibility, it’s just a fundamental disrespect. A disrespect of women.”1 So says one of Drew Purify’s friends as they discuss interracial relationships between black men and white women. The movie Jungle Fever tells the story of Drew’s husband, Flipper, who has an affair with a white woman. When Drew and her friends find out, they are outraged - with Drew feeling doubly betrayed, as her husband not only cheated on her, he cheated on her with a white woman. The women express the sentiment that they, as black women, just aren’t good enough for the black men, that black men are betraying them and turning to white women instead.2 These assertions are representative of the beliefs many black American women have expressed about interracial relationships in the past 50 years.3 The reasoning that formed these beliefs is very complex and stems from both logistical realities and ingrained cultural values and reactions to racism. This paper seeks to examine both the logistical and cultural histories of these beliefs and their influence on the black woman’s strong aversion …show more content…
Whites created the borders, and their motivations for patrolling them are usually rooted in perpetuating white power. In contrast, blacks patrol borders as part of a “struggle for liberation”, a way of differentiating themselves and coming together.9 As Danzy Sezna says in her short essay, The Mulatto Millenium, “You told us all along we had to call ourselves black because of this so-called one drop. Now that we don’t have to anymore, we choose to. Because black is beautiful.”10 When Erica Childs interviewed black college women about their beliefs on interracial relationships, she found that they were unwilling to date whites because they were raised to be proud of their heritage as black women and whites “just don’t understand” what it is like to be