Progress in Human Geography 29, 6 (2005) pp. 700–717 © 2005 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0309132505pp578oa She’s only a friend, a friend who happens to be a cream-colored blonde of 5’10”with long legs and eyes of the richest brown. People notice when she enters a room, particularly when it’s with me. Old school hip-hop comes through the speakers as she and I take a seat at the bar, but I get the strangest feeling when we raise our first nips. It’s as if all eyes in this mostly white crowd have turned in our direction. . . . I, the black man, their lesser equal, have no right to even breathe near what is theirs. Because I’m one of the only dark faces there, they cannot see my intelligence, nor my sarcasm, nor the fact that she and I are dear friends. If it were up to them, I would be punished by whatever means available. Maybe I’m just having a bad night. Maybe I’ve been mistaken for someone else, some old rival that’s just popped up, sitting next to the woman of their dreams. But most likely nothing’s wrong with the picture on my screen. Most likely I’m a black man still behind enemy lines, a caramel scapegoat trapped in a nation that still can’t confront its deepest sins. (Kenji Jasper, Decemeber 2004 commentary on National Public Radio) Places of possibility: where mixed-race partners meet Serin Houston, 1 * Richard Wright, 2 Mark Ellis, 3 Steven Holloway 4 and Margaret Hudson 4 1 Department of Geography, Box 353550, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA 2 Department of Geography, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755-3571, USA 3 Department of Geography and Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, Box 353550, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA 4 Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-1502, USA Abstract: Although mixed-race partnering in the United States is on the rise, scholars have paid scant attention to where people of ‘differently racialized parentage’ (Ifekwunigwe, 2001: 46) actually meet. In an effort to help fill this gap, this paper (1) offers an overview of current scholarship on places of encounter and (2) aims to provide a blueprint for future research that will explicitly interrogate where mixed-race partners meet. We organize our survey around four contexts – residential neighborhoods, workplaces, educational settings, and cyberspace – to point out productive avenues for further inquiry. In contrast to much of the literature cited in this essay and in an effort to emphasize the intersections of race and space, we advocate for new scholarship that addresses the times and places where routine, prosaic, interactions between adults can erode long-standing stereotypes and lead to meaningful relationships. In studying everyday social and spatial processes, we highlight the potential insights gained from detailing the ‘micro-geographies of habitual practice’ (Nash, 2000: 656). Key words: context, everyday, mixed-race meeting, racial mixing. *Author for correspondence (e-mail: serindh@u.washington.edu)