I. The Problem of Black Marriage

Only a generation ago, almost everyone got married. After all, marriage was the only legitimate--and legal--way to have sex and raise a family. Today, as Banks notes, many Americans have put sex and the baby carriage before marriage. But even as marriage rates have declined in the United States, not all groups have retreated from marriage at the same rate. Even in this modern moment when marriage matters less for everyone, African Americans are the least likely of all demographic groups to get--and stay--married (p. 7). Today, nearly 70 percent of black women and more than 50 percent of black men are unmarried.

Many commentators have noted both the marriage gap between blacks and other demographic groups and the black marriage decline. Some of these commentators have viewed the disparity as a legacy of slavery. More conservative pundits have attributed the trend to governmental welfare programs, which are thought to weaken incentives toward marriage. Others attribute the decline to a more pluralistic family tradition that dates back to Africa--one in which the marital nuclear family is merely one option for organizing kinship structures.

Banks considers, and quickly dismisses, these theories, shifting the discussion from the alleged moral and cultural failings of the black community to numbers and scarcity (p. 12). Focusing on the middle class, Banks reconceptualizes the black romantic landscape in market terms (Chapter Four). Incarceration and uneven educational and employment prospects continually plague black men, stymieing their opportunities for professional and personal success (p. 29). Black women have managed to avoid these obstacles. They complete high school and graduate from college at higher rates than black men, and they are more likely than their male counterparts to belong to the professional class (pp. 38-44).

This results in an uneven marriage market with far more college-educated professional black women than similarly situated black men. Moreover, black men are more likely than black women to date and marry interracially, further reducing the already limited supply of middle-class black men available for marriage (pp. 33-38).

The uneven marriage market creates a power dynamic that severely disadvantages black women. Cognizant of their own scarcity (and the demand for middle-class husbands), black men “dictate the terms of their intimate relationships,” using “their disproportionate [market] power to establish relationships that are intimate but not committed, that entail sex but not marriage, and that offer benefits without responsibilities” (p. 62). Further, black men play the field as long as they can, deferring marriage to sow their wild oats (pp. 57-59). Relatedly, monogamy is elusive and “mansharing” is prevalent among middle-class blacks in dating relationships (pp. 50-54).

Black women have responded to these market dynamics in a number of ways. Some accept these market conditions, choosing to either remain single or date men who they know to be dating multiple women (pp. 59-63). Neither choice, however, furthers their chances for marriage. Others do what Banks terms “marrying down”--partnering with men who are less educated and less economically successful (Chapter Seven).

All of these responses concern Banks. According to him, remaining single deprives black women of the many joys of companionship and family, as well as the economic benefits of pooling two middle-class incomes (pp. 10-11). Submitting to nonexclusive relationships permits some degree of companionship and intimacy--but with costs. As Banks documents, “mansharing” contributes to high rates of sexually transmitted diseases within the African American community (pp. 64-67). And though “marrying down” boosts marriage rates in the short term, these relationships are plagued with the problems caused by the disjunction between the partners' educational levels and economic prospects (pp. 93-102).

Banks's assessment of black marriage market conditions recasts in academic parlance the “man shortage” theory that has been widely discussed in black popular culture. But the book does more than simply render the marriage gap and decline coherent. Banks also reframes the marriage gap and decline in market terms and then proceeds to explain their costs.

Obviously, a principal cost of the uneven marriage market and the marriage decline is that blacks are shut out of marriage's many benefits-- whether salutary or practical. Blacks are less financially stable and secure than other racial and ethnic subgroups--a phenomenon that Banks partly attributes to low marriage rates. Less obviously, the marriage decline exerts pressure on the black family. Black children are far more likely than their white counterparts to be born outside of marriage and raised in a single-parent family. Further, the abortion rate among blacks exceeds that of other racial and ethnic groups--a fact that Banks associates with the stigmatic consequences of nonmarital births (pp. 81-82). Finally, the inability to forge lasting unions deprives African Americans of the personal fulfillment, satisfaction, and support that strong marriages provide. All of these issues, Banks contends, compound the black community's disadvantages.

So how should this imperfect marriage market and its many costs be remedied, thus securing the many benefits of marriage for the black community? Banks's solution is simple but provocative. He encourages middle-class black women to exert their own power by considering the prospect of interracial marriage with similarly situated (nonblack) men (p. 120).

Advising black women to exit the black marriage market is not something that Banks takes lightly. He candidly documents the many reasons why black women have resisted racial heterogamy, particularly with white men (pp. 121-69). Chief among them is the legacy of slavery and the (often) coercive sexual relationships that arose between white men and enslaved women, as well as a strong desire to support black men and the beleaguered black family. But Banks also notes the degree to which fear animates black women's resistance to outmarriage (Chapter Ten). There is the fear that they will not be accepted by white in-laws (pp. 144-47); fear that their own families will not accept a white son-in-law (pp. 147-51); fear that white partners will not understand their experiences as black women or worse, that they will be fetishized as an “exotic adventure” (pp. 151-59); and fear that their biracial children will be insufficiently tethered to the black community (pp. 159-66).

Though Banks concedes that these fears are “not irrational” (p. 166), he believes that they nonetheless “embody the echo of the past” (p. 169)--a past that is giving way to a more progressive future. Citing statistics demonstrating greater acceptance of interracial couplings, Banks concludes that black women should not be bound by their fears of interracial marriage (pp. 166-68). As in any relationship, there will be challenges, but these challenges are not insurmountable, and they may pale in comparison to the challenges facing intraracial couples who, although united by a shared racial background, lack a set of shared values (p. 103).

Banks's proposal is not simply about being more open and receptive to interracial dating and marriage--of seizing love wherever one might find it. His prescription is aimed at salvaging black marriage for the black community. Recall the discussion of the black marriage market in which black men, due to demand and scarcity, wield greater relationship power than black women. In the face of these market pressures, black women have “redouble[d] their commitment to black men” and the black family (p. 180).“But [that] strategy hasn't worked so well” (p. 180).“To the extent that the problems of the black family stem from the numbers imbalance,” the commitment to black men and racial homogamy furthers that imbalance, and in so doing, “actually undermine[s] the black family that [black] women hope to salvage” (pp. 180-81).

Therein lies the paradox. If their goal is to bolster the beleaguered black community and salvage the black family, instead of doubling down on the black marriage market, black women should be walking away from it. Critically, this does not mean foregoing marriage altogether. Instead, Banks asks middle-class black women to “open[] themselves to interracial marriage” (p. 181). Doing so, Banks argues, permits black women to remedy the uneven market conditions that offer them too few options and black men too many. And though it requires them to subordinate their desire for intraracial marriages, it allows them a better chance to form the lasting partnerships they crave. Finally, Banks's interracial-marriage prescription addresses black women's concern for the black family and black community, laying the foundation for successful black marriages in the future. By exiting the black romantic market--and entering new romantic markets--black women will disrupt the extant market conditions that offer black men too many choices. No longer privy to an endless array of desirable prospects, black men will be forced to change their behavior in order to remain competitive. Banks speculates that “[i] f more black women married nonblack men, more black men and women might marry each other” (p. 181). In this way, “interracial marriage doesn't abandon the race, it serves the race” (p. 181).

Banks's interest in the African-American marriage decline contributes to an extant conversation about marriage in contemporary society. In recent years, mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (“LGBT”) rights groups have focused on securing marriage equality as a critical component of their effort to expand legal protections for LGBT persons. Though Banks does not weigh in on the question of same-sex marriage, he too is interested in expanding marriage's constituency by increasing marriage rates among African Americans (pp. 180-81). In this way, Banks broadens the conversation to consider access to marriage for other marginalized groups.

Written in a conversational tone with an eye toward engaging lay audiences, Is Marriage for White People? differs from Banks's academic writing. Nevertheless, it too showcases many of his scholarly talents. For example, the interview testimonials that pepper the book reveal Banks to be a skilled interviewer, capable of eliciting deeply personal responses from his subjects. Indeed, the book is most satisfying when it uses these interviews to craft a searing (and at times unsettling) portrait of the intimate lives of African Americans. The book unabashedly focuses on lives, not law, which is to say that it is primarily interested in setting forth a cluster of issues that impact the way in which African Americans construct and experience their intimate lives. But importantly, the book is not a static and descriptive endeavor. Banks intends to spark discussion and conversation about the black marriage decline. And he succeeds.

Still, one wonders whether the discussion that Banks launches is sufficiently far-reaching. Banks sets forth the parameters of the debate, focusing on explaining and remedying the black marriage gap and decline. But is this focus unduly narrow? Is interracial marriage the magic bullet solution for the black middle class? Is marriage a panacea for all that ails the black community (and America more generally)? Are declining marriage rates the problem, or merely symptomatic of something larger? Is this cluster of issues--marriage markets, marriage rates, and interracial marriage--a red herring distracting us from more challenging and pressing issues? In the subsequent Parts, I take up these questions.