Centering Families of Color

Centers families of color in family law, revealing their pivotal role in shaping justice, equality, and social change and how their perspectives reframe the scope of family law

Centering Families of Color argues for the reframing of how we define “family law.” Centering the voices and perspectives of families of color, it expands and contextualizes how the law functions in relation to families. It exposes the impact of structural inequalities as they differentially and hierarchically impact families. This groundbreaking volume thus reorients how we think of family law, offering the experiences of families of color as critical to both the diagnoses and solutions for structural inequality.

While conventional treatment of families of color marginalizes their role socially and politically as add-ons, this volume centers them as essential. Leading scholars across disciplinary groups unearth and expose the hidden norms of family law, identify the critical history of how the law impacts families of color, and detail their dynamic contributions to social transformation. Families of color offer affirmative, resilient strategies for social justice and reform.

At a time of diversity among families and dramatic changes in the pattern of life, this volume provides a critical examination of the legal structures that impact families from the much-needed perspective of families of color. Centering Families of Color showcases how families of color are central to understanding what family is and how families interact with the law.

R. A. Lenhardt is Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Race, Law, and Justice and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Georgetown Law. She is the co-editor of Critical Race Judgments: Rewritten U.S. Court Opinions on Race and the Law.

Nancy E. Dowd is Emeritus Professor, University of Florida Levin College of Law, where she was a University Professor and Director of the Center on Children and Families. She is the author of multiple books, most recently, with Margaret Beale Spencer, Radical Brown: Keeping the Promise to America’s Children.