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).
Tanya Katerí Hernández
Solangel
Maldonado’s The Architecture of Desire: How the Law Shapes Interracial
Intimacy and Perpetuates Inequality, offers an empirically rich intervention
into the presumption that one’s choice of intimate partner is solely the
product of individual preference. By methodically assessing all the laws that
have shaped how our “choices and preferences” are formed, Maldonado
demonstrates that our racially restrictive ideas of who makes a desirable
partner are not simply a matter of individual choice. The value of Maldonado’s
exhaustive assessment of the role of law in influencing intimate partner
choice, is that it dispels the notion that our racially segregated societies
are natural.
Peeling back the veil to show the legal machinery that structured and continues to influence intimate partner choice, will hopefully disrupt the societal complacency of accepting racial segregation as a natural consequence of benign personal choice. By doing so, the book is key in the social justice effort to address the great extent to which segregation facilitates racial hierarchy and denial of opportunity even in the present-day absence of Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation. As a result, the book makes a valuable contribution not only to the U.S. conversation about racism, but also to the transnational consideration of race and racism. This is because the puzzlement over how racism can exist in the contemporary absence of Jim Crow segregation, is a global phenomenon that needs insightful analyses like that of Maldonado.
There is
one complication that is beyond the scope of The Architecture of Desire’s,
already significant contributions, but is worth noting for how this additional
layer also further normalizes racial hierarchy as being beyond the reach of
legal intervention. This relates to the way in which the global misperception
of endogamous intimacy patterns as a matter of mere personal preference, is
often coupled with the notion that any cross-racial intimacy is a direct
indicator that race relations have improved.
For instance,
the mainstream press has universally celebrated the growth of interracial
intimacy and the creation of a multiracial-identified population therefrom as a
new phenomenon that portends “the end of
race as we know it.” Ethnic studies scholar Caroline
Streeter notes that the ubiquity of media images featuring mixed-race
people as visions of racial harmony is a device that “emphasizes the
pleasurable aspects of ethnic diversity without engaging the challenge of
cultural differences and the existence of racial hierarchies and racial
inequality. Multicultural images that use multiracial people envision a future
free of such power struggles.” Indeed, advertisers have seized upon the
interest in what sociologist Kimberly
McClain DaCosta describes as “racially ambiguous” and presumably mixed-race-appearing
persons for marketing numerous products.
The public
fascination with interracial intimacy has promoted the belief that racial
mixture will, in and of itself, destroy racism. For instance, leaders of the
lobby for the recognition of a “multiracial” census category frequently posit
that multiracials are a “unifying
force,” on the theory that multiracial
individuals “as a group may be the embodiment of America’s
best chance to clean up race relations.” Indeed, the equating of interracial
racial mixture with racial harmony is often quite explicit. Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson
agrees: “If your object is the eventual integration of the races, a mixed-race
or middle group is something you’d want to see developing. . . .
The middle group grows larger and larger, and the races eventually blend.” Similarly,
demographer William
Frey, the author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are
Remaking America,” asserts that multiracial identity will blur racial divisions
and soothe cultural tensions. The multiracial discourse narrative thus posits
that “mixing
away” racism will absolve the nation from having to address entrenched
racial disparities in socioeconomic opportunity.
However, one
only need look to jurisdictions with much longer standing mythologies regarding
the presumed power of interracial intimacy and racial mixture; to better
appreciate the hindrance it poses to the pursuit of racial equality. Latin
America in particular provides an illuminating comparative example. Persons of
African
descent are approximately 1/3 of the region but make up more than 40
percent of the poor and have been consistently marginalized and denigrated
as undesirable elements of the society since the abolition of slavery across the Americas. Yet, the
view that “racism does not exist” is pervasive in
Thus the
denial of racism is rooted in what many scholars have critiqued
as the “myth of racial democracy” – the notion that the racial
mixture (mestizaje/mestiçagem)
in a population is emblematic of racial harmony and insulated from racial
discord and inequality. Academic scholarship has in the last thirty years
critiqued Latin American “mestizaje” theories of racial mixture as emblematic of racial
harmony. Yet, Latin Americans still very much adhere to
the notion that racial mixture and the absence of Jim Crow racial segregation are such a marked contrast to
the United States racial history that the region views itself as what I term “racially
innocent.” Indeed, extensive survey data demonstrates
that biased Latin American racial ideologies have not completely evolved
despite the existing scholarly critiques of mestizaje
as a trope of racial innocence.
As a
result, in Latin America today the Afro-descendant
racial justice movement struggle against racism is in large measure
centered on questioning “the myth of racial democracy” and countering the
opposition to race-specific equality policies that are based upon the presumed
distinctiveness of the Latin American racial democracy mestizaje ethos. In short, the celebration
of interracial intimacy racial mixture as the cure for racism has done
little to eradicate racism, and has instead obstructed the ability to address
it.
This is
why The Architecture of Desire, is such a significant contribution. The
book begins the arduous process of
deconstructing U.S. mythologies
about the presumed civil rights consequences of interracial intimacy. This is a
much-needed intervention during a time in which so much backlash against racial
equity efforts exist. With the insights provided by The Architecture of
Desire, the pursuit of substantive racial justice will not be equated with ineffectual
celebrations of interracial intimacy. The Architecture of Desire, shows
us that there is a better path forward.
Tanya Katerí Hernández is Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. You can reach her by e-mail at THernandez@law.fordham.edu.