Marriage as Black Citizenship?

The narrative of black marriage as citizenship enhancing has been pervasive in American history. As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Moynihan Report and prepare to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Thirteenth Amendment, this Article argues that this narrative is one that we should resist. The complete story of marriage is one that involves racial subordination and caste. Even as the Supreme Court stands to extend marriage rights to LGBT couples, the Article maintains that we should embrace nonmarriage as a legitimate frame for black loving relationships—gay or straight. Nonmarriage might do just as much, if not more, to advance black civil rights. Part I explores marriage’s role in racial subordination by looking at the experiences of African Americans, as well as Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Asian Americans. Drawing on institutional structure analyses, it then considers how legal marriage has “married” Blacks to second-class citizenship. Part II explores the current place of marriage in African America. It argues that, while the regulation of black loving relationships today differs dramatically from what we saw in earlier times, family law often has a punitive effect on such American families. Part III contemplates the benefits of adopting a focus on nonmarriage. It contends that meeting black families where they are holds the most potential for progress in addressing the structural barriers to success faced by those families. The Article ends with a “call to action” for legal scholars and others concerned about black families and citizenship. It maps a broad agenda for exploring in earnest the potential that supporting and valuing the existing networks, arrangements, and norms regarding gender and caretaking in African America has for promoting black citizenship and equality in the twenty-first century

Parenting While Black

Changes in law and policy—not to mention developments such as the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating effects on families—raise important questions about how to define parental rights and how to best support parents and children during these challenging times. The Symposium also presented important questions about issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class in our modern context. Even more salient in this space are issues of race. Here, as in other contexts, Black families, like my grandmother’s and so many others, are the “canaries in the mine.” Their experiences provide us with important insight into the signs of danger facing Black and Brown families. To that extent, the concerns of families, like my grandmother’s, should be at the center of our discussion around families and the challenges they face in this moment. This Essay intervenes in the conversation hosted by the Fordham Law Review by focusing on issues of race, which, as I have indicated elsewhere, remain underexplored in family law scholarship.1 More specifically, it endeavors to give greater context to the term “parenting while Black,” which I utilized in the narrative that launched this iniquity. In the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in 2020,2 people of all walks of life are all too familiar with the phrase “driving, or even walking, while Black.”3 These phrases reference the scores of Black and Brown people killed or badly injured at the hands of white law enforcement officers, often when the need for such action was plainly unwarranted.4 In deploying the term “parenting while Black,” I mean to invoke not only the criminal justice context, but also all the systems that inform the functioning and well-being of families of color. Enumerating such systems provides us with a deeper appreciation of the obstacles that parents of color must navigate in trying to provide for their children

Flexibility within the middle ears of vertebrates

Introduction and aims: Tympanic middle ears have evolved multiple times independently among vertebrates, and share common features. We review flexibility within tympanic middle ears and consider its physiological and clinical implications. Comparative anatomy: The chain of conducting elements is flexible: even the ‘single ossicle’ ears of most non-mammalian tetrapods are functionally ‘double ossicle’ ears due to mobile articulations between the stapes and extrastapes; there may also be bending within individual elements. Simple models: Simple models suggest that flexibility will generally reduce the transmission of sound energy through the middle ear, although in certain theoretical situations flexibility within or between conducting elements might improve transmission. The most obvious role of middle-ear flexibility is to protect the inner ear from high-amplitude displacements. Clinical implications: Inter-ossicular joint dysfunction is associated with a number of pathologies in humans. We examine attempts to improve prosthesis design by incorporating flexible components

Probing Nuclear forces beyond the drip-line using the mirror nuclei 16^{16}N and 16^{16}F

Radioactive beams of $^{14}$O and $^{15}$O were used to populate the resonant states 1/2$^+$, 5/2$^+$ and $0^-,1^-,2^-$ in the unbound $^{15}$F and $^{16}$F nuclei respectively by means of proton elastic scattering reactions in inverse kinematics. Based on their large proton spectroscopic factor values, the resonant states in $^{16}$F can be viewed as a core of $^{14}$O plus a proton in the 2s$_{1/2}$ or 1d$_{5/2}$ shell and a neutron in 1p$_{1/2}$. Experimental energies were used to derive the strength of the 2s$_{1/2}$-1p$_{1/2}$ and 1d$_{5/2}$-1p$_{1/2}$ proton-neutron interactions. It is found that the former changes by 40% compared with the mirror nucleus $^{16}$N, and the second by 10%. This apparent symmetry breaking of the nuclear force between mirror nuclei finds explanation in the role of the large coupling to the continuum for the states built on an $\ell=0$ proton configuration.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication as a regular article in Physical Review