The Architecture of Desire

Explores the reach of the law into our most personal and private romantic lives

The Architecture of Desire examines how the law influences our most personal and private choices—who we desire and choose as intimate partners—and explores the psychological, economic, and social effects of these choices. Romantic preferences, as shaped by law, perpetuate segregation and subordination by limiting, on the basis of race, individuals’ prospects for marriage and marriage-like commitments, as well as economic and social mobility.

The book begins by tracing the legacy of slavery, anti-miscegenation, segregation, and racially discriminatory immigration laws to show how this legal landscape facilitated the residential, economic, and social distance between racial and ethnic groups, which in turn continue to shape romantic preferences today. Solangel Maldonado argues that the law further influences intimate choices by structuring the spaces within which individuals meet and interact via practices such as redlining, gentrification, and zoning.

Maldonado includes studies of online and offline dating preferences to demonstrate that romantic predilections follow a gendered racial hierarchy in which Whites are at the top, African-Americans at the bottom, and—depending on skin tone—Asian-Americans and Latinos in the middle. These preferences may be explicit, implicit, or both, but they are usually the result of stereotypes reflected in social and cultural norms. Furthermore, since marriage confers substantial legal, economic, and social advantages, sexual racism further limits an individual’s opportunity to find a partner and reap these benefits. Finally, the book proposes ways to minimize the law’s influence over who we desire, love, and bring into our families, such as changes to dating platforms as well as to housing, education, and transportation policies.

Solangel Maldonado is the Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. She is the co-editor of Family Law: Cases and Materials and Family Law in the World Community: Cases, Materials, and Problems in Comparative and International Family Law.Solangel Maldonado is the Eleanor Bontecou Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law. She is the co-editor of Family Law: Cases and Materials and Family Law in the World Community: Cases, Materials, and Problems in Comparative and International Family Law.

The Architecture of Desire is an insightful analysis that is very much needed in the midst of our societal colorblind rhetoric that idealizes interracial romance as the solution to racism without considering the systemic barriers to racial equality.

In this important new book, Professor Solangel Maldonado traces the history of sex and marriage across the color line and links the legacy of the past to contemporary patterns of interracial intimacy. While acknowledging the importance of a collective belief in romantic choice, she carefully explores structural barriers, rooted in ongoing segregation and inequality, that can render this choice illusory. Her perceptive analysis of online dating reveals that technology is as likely to perpetuate racialized romantic preferences as to interrupt them.

Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University School of Law:
A probing, insightful analysis of how systematic racism in American culture continues to impact intimate life and family structures.