Education and Opportunity for Students after SFFA: 39th Nathanson Memorial Lecture with Ralph Richard Banks

A distinguished Stanford law professor examines the steep decline in marriage rates among the African American middle class, and offers a paradoxical-nearly incendiary-solution. Black women are three times as likely as white women to never marry. That sobering statistic reflects a broader reality: African Americans are the most unmarried people in our nation, and contrary to public perception the racial gap in marriage is not confined to women or the poor. Black men, particularly the most successful and affluent, are less likely to marry than their white counterparts. College educated black women are twice as likely as their white peers never to marry. Is Marriage for White People? is the first book to illuminate the many facets of the African American marriage decline and its implications for American society. The book explains the social and economic forces that have undermined marriage for African Americans and that shape everyone's lives. It distills the best available research to trace the black marriage decline's far reaching consequences, including the disproportionate likelihood of abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, single parenthood, same sex relationships, polygamous relationships, and celibacy among black women. This book centers on the experiences not of men or of the poor but of those black women who have surged ahead, even as black men have fallen behind. Theirs is a story that has not been told. Empirical evidence documents its social significance, but its meaning emerges through stories drawn from the lives of women across the nation. Is Marriage for White People? frames the stark predicament that millions of black women now face: marry down or marry out. At the core of the inquiry is a paradox substantiated by evidence and experience alike: If more black women married white men, then more black men and women would marry each other. This book not only sits at the intersection of two large and well- established markets-race and marriage-it responds to yearnings that are widespread and deep in American society. The African American marriage decline is a secret in plain view about which people want to know more, intertwining as it does two of the most vexing issues in contemporary society. The fact that the most prominent family in our nation is now an African American couple only intensifies the interest, and the market. A book that entertains as it informs, Is Marriage for White People? will be the definitive guide to one of the most monumental social developments of the past half century.

Family Law in a Changing America highlights law and family patterns as they are now, not as they were decades ago. By focusing on key changes in family life, the casebook attends to rising equality and inequality within and among families. The law, formally at least, accords more equality and autonomy than ever before; yet, as our society has grown more economically unequal, so too have family patterns diverged, with marriage and marital child-rearing becoming a mark of privilege. A number of developments--mass incarceration, the privatization of care, and reproductive technologies--have also contributed to disparities based on race, class, and gender. The casebook reflects the law's continuing emphasis on marriage, but also treats nonmarital families as central. Rather than privilege the marital heterosexual family, the casebook organizes the presentation of the law around (1) adult relationships and (2) parent-child relationships. New to the Second Edition: Updated coverage on reproductive justice and abortion access Expanded and updated and coverage of the Indian Child Welfare Act Updated coverage on the child welfare system and a focus on debates over abolition Professors and students will benefit from: Text that includes dramatic changes in family patterns, including declining marriage rates, with differential rates based on race and class; increasing rates of nonmarital cohabitation and nonmarital parenting; tensions between women's increasing education and employment and the perseverance of the gendered division of labor in families An approach that decenters the marital heterosexual family and instead is structured around the general topics of adult relationships and parent-child relationships Focus on the scope of family law, including extensive coverage of crucial sites of family regulation that are traditionally given short shrift Emphasis on multiple modes of legal interpretation (common law, constitutional, statutory) and multiple actors in the legal system (judges, legislators, lawyers, experts, social workers) Practical problems and exercises that illuminate the gaps, tensions, and implications of existing doctrine; some of the problems include postscripts explaining how the issue was resolved by a court or legislature An approach that draws on more recent cases and cutting-edge issues and that includes extensive coverage of the rights of unmarried partners, reproductive justice, assisted reproduction; parentage (including intentional parenthood, functional parenthood, and multi-parent arrangements), adoption (including open adoption, transracial adoption, and the Indian Child Welfare Act), the child welfare system, and family support

White Supremacy pervades American history. Moreover, notwithstanding landmark civil rights gains and egalitarian aspirations, America remains segregated and unequal. This book examines the role of law in reinforcing and ameliorating racial injustice. Although surveying key historical precedents, its primary focus is the present. The book examines contemporary controversies across a variety of settings, animated by three fundamental questions: What is the current racial order? To what extent is it unjust? How can law and legal actors advance a more racially just order? The book uses cases, statutes and other sources of law, supplemented by problems and exercises, to equip students to both critique and construct pragmatic solutions to race-related controversies.