Professor Banks’ exploration of plummeting marriage rates among African Americans, particularly black women, is learned and unflinching, careful but provocative. He unabashedly explores the touchiest issues pertinent to African American romantic intimacies, including among many blacks a lingering preference for Caucasian features – “good hair” and light skin. Banks’ conclusion that black women ought to cross the race line more often for marriage partners, and that doing so will be helpful to the black community as a whole, is sure to provoke a fierce and hopefully productive debate.

—Randall L. Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of  Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption (Pantheon Books 2003)