Reviewing, (For the Balkinization Symposium on) Solangel Maldonado, The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality (New York University Press, 2024).

When I teach Loving v. Virginia in family law, I remind students that, in 1967, Virginia was not alone in banning interracial marriage. And I point out  that many of their parents were alive during this era.

This semester, I will follow up to ask if racial preferences continue to shape my students’ dating and relationship choices. I suspect that they will indignantly declare that such intimate discrimination is a relic of the past.

After reading Solangel Maldonado’s compelling book, The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality, I will be fully prepared to respond by pointing out the history of laws that have prohibited relationships as well as the numerous other laws that have affected our seemingly most intimate choices as to partners – and their ongoing effects. As Professor Maldonado points out, anti-miscegenation laws were, at one point or another between 1661 and 1967, in effect in 41 states. Under a 1661 Maryland law, for example, not only would “a free White woman who married an enslaved Black man [ ] be enslaved by her husband’s enslaver,” their children would also be born into slavery (p. 39). 

Citation
Naomi R. Cahn, Deconstructing Desire, Balkinization (2024).