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58 Emory L.J. 7 (2008-2009)

handle is hein.journals/emlj58 and id is 17 raw text is: TOWARD A RENAISSANCE FOR THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN FAMILY: CONFRONTING THE LIE OF BLACK INFERIORITY Enola G. Aird* I. THE HARDEST QUESTION How do we extinguish-once and for all-the lie of black inferiority that continues to undermine the ability of black people to love themselves and to love each other? That, in my view, is the hardest question regarding law, religion, and the African-American family that will have to be faced over the next twenty-five years. Like all families in the United States today, black families are facing profound challenges. Marriage rates are low. Divorce rates and the rates of births to unmarried women are high. These and other disturbing trends are especially pronounced in the black community.' African-American families, in addition, carry the weight of unique challenges that are grounded in the past, but still reverberate today. The black family has been under siege for centuries. Black people in the United States endured more than two hundred years of family-crushing enslavement and another hundred years of humiliation under Jim Crow. Even with the dramatic changes brought about by the movement for civil rights, continuing racial and economic discrimination (and, until recently, family- dividing welfare policies) have put black and white families on vastly unequal footings. In spite of these difficulties, an amazing number of black people have managed to succeed. But the constant assaults have worn many families down. * Co-Founder and Coordinator, The Community Healing Network, New Haven, Connecticut. I am grateful to my husband, Stephen L. Carter, for his helpful comments on earlier drafts of this Essay. 1 See, e.g., Megan M. Sweeney & Julie A. Phillips, Understanding Racial Differences in Marital Disruption: Recent Trends and Explanations, J. MARRIAGE & FAm. 639, 643 fig. 1 (2004) (documenting that the divorce rate among white women was 29% lower than that of black women in 1993); Joy Jones, Marriage Is for White People, WASH. POST, Mar. 26, 2006, at B I (stating that the marriage rate for blacks fell by 34% between 1970 and 2001).

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