Conclusion

Is Marriage for White People? aims to remedy the African American marriage gap and decline. However, in the end, it underwrites society's persistent preoccupation with marriage. Critically, this preoccupation with marriage is also a red herring, diverting attention from the other issues at hand. By focusing on marriage, we maintain the fiction that the marital family is the “natural” structure for intimate life, and the “natural” means by which we ensure economic stability and provision. Moreover, the emphasis on marriage perpetuates the view that broad social problems can be remedied by focusing solely on changing individual behavior--that appeals to individual will and personal responsibility alone will suffice. And as long as we focus on this red herring, we need not engage in the hard work of identifying thoughtful public policy interventions to address the wide-ranging social issues that the marriage decline implicates.

Of course, Banks is not solely responsible for tackling these thorny problems. Banks has asked this question--“Is marriage for white people?”--because we, as a society, have signaled that marriage is important. But its importance is not merely affective and relational. Marriage is an integral part of our social welfare system, and accordingly, we insist that it should be for everyone. But this intuition, and all that undergirds it, is too limited. Banks has launched an important discussion about the future of marriage for African Americans, but it is not the only discussion we should be having. It is worthwhile to think about why marriage is so elusive for so many African Americans. But it would also be worthwhile to think about building a society where the absence of marriage did not matter so much--for black people and everyone else.

Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.