In this paper, we explore the way that interracial relationships between blacks and whites come to be represented as problematic for mainstream audiences. By looking specifically at the film Monster's Ball (2001), we examine how race is used to identify and characterize our culture's standard protagonist, the white male, and at how white male sexuality is constructed through the black female. Particularly striking in this film is how the social and institutional structures that create and reiterate problems of race are used to characterize the movie's central protagonists, yet then evaded and submerged in the discourse of romance.