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).
Aníbal Rosario Lebrón
“It begins with
absence and desire.It begins with blood and fear.
It begins with a discovery of witches.”
Deborah Harkness, A
Discovery of Witches
In Deborah Harkness’ bestselling
series, All Souls Trilogy, her protagonist – historian and reluctant witch – Diana
Bishop, finds herself in an outlawed relationship with a vampire. A species’ covenant
in the Middle Ages prohibited daemons, witches, and vampires from
interbreeding. This covenant brought prejudices, fear, and death; creating a
hierarchy that defined the inequalities in their society.
Diana’s desire for a
vampire pushes her to defy the law and takes her on a journey through time to
find a way to vindicate her relationship. In her travels, just like scientists
recently discovering that some human immunity advantage is due to Neanderthal
and Homo Sapiens interbreeding, Diana
uncovers that powers have been dwindling across all magical communities because
of the interbreeding prohibition and that the key to magic survival was
miscegenation, especially daemon DNA which gave rise to weavers, powerful
witches like herself. Empowered with this knowledge, Diana gains all species’ acquiescence
to rescind the covenant and puts in power the long-marginalized daemons,
eradicating their traditional hierarchies.
Much like Diana, in The Architecture of Desire, Professor Solangel Maldonado takes us on a journey to
understand how the United States legal system – designed to foster and maintain
White supremacy – laid the foundation for a caste system in dating and
marriage. Contrary to Diana’s story, Maldonado’s account does not stop at the
covenant’s dismantling. Instead, she shows us that racial hierarchies are hard
to break down even when the law and society commit to racial equity and that
marriage still plays an important role in safeguarding White supremacy.
First, Maldonado
discusses how, in the United States, even after attempting to dismantle the
covenant with the abolition of anti-miscegenation statutes, the eradication of
legally enforced segregation, the rejection of race-based immigration, and the
enactment of anti-discrimination laws such as the Civil Rights Acts, the dating
and marriage caste system continues today, with most groups preferring a White
person as a romantic partner. After presenting how racial hierarchies have not
been shifted, she proceeds to show us that these racial preferences have real
effects in terms of equity in society as marriage continues to bestow legal
benefits and produce education and economic advantages to a continually shrinking
elite (mostly White) and only to minorities that assimilate by interracial
marriage.
Maldonado’s thesis is
even more striking when we juxtapose her insightful exploration of marriage and
dating in the United States with Harkness’ fictionalized racial utopia. The
abolition of the covenant in Bishop’s story, contrary to the reality that Maldonado
skillfully summarizes in her book, forecasts a new era in which interbreeding
is not frowned upon but encouraged to preserve the health of all magical
creatures. The failure of that utopia in our society perhaps lies in a concept
that Maldonado repeats throughout her book, assimilation.