Non-monogamy and the “Black Marriage Problem”

In this discussion post, Justin Clardy (he/they; Santa Clara University) introduces their article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on polyamory and a defense for minimal marriage among the Black population in the USA.

The short synopsis of the article is accompanied by an asynchronous conversation among Anika Simpson (Howard) Faith Charmagne, Luke Brunning (Leeds) and Nannearl Brown (PAGES TRG) where they will engage with the article in terms of its academic and practical implications for the Black population in the US.

Synopsis by Justin Clardy

The Black marriage problem—or the fact that “Black folks just aren’t getting or staying married like they used to”—has been a concern for Black writers. This problem is concerning because just less than 60 years ago, Black marriages rates were thought to be one of the zeniths of the Civil Rights Movement.

In 2022, Ralph Richard Banks appeared in the New York Post doubling down on his 2011 suggestion that in order to solve the Black marriage problem, Black women should consider marrying more white men. What’s striking about Banks’ suggestion is not just that it does not take endogamy as seriously as it should, it also does not take non-monogamy among Black folks as seriously as it should either. What possibilities would expanding legal marriage to include plural marriages offer for the same populations of unmarried Black folks that Black writers believe to be driving the Black marriage crisis? This is one of the questions that I explore in a recent article called “Polyamory in Black.”

Historical records in the U.S. tell stories of non-monogamous relationships dating back to the antebellum period. Some of these relationships were, of course, forged by the pernicious design of the domestic slave trade. Other Black non-monogamous intimate relationships, however, were chosen. In her book, Black Women Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage, Dianne Stewart writes about Dorcas Cooper who was content to remain in a polygamous marriage after arriving on a plantation to find her husband married to a second woman. When Cooper recognized how well her husband’s second wife, Jenny, took care of Cooper’s kids, historical record even shows a deep fondness of Jenny from Cooper as she would not “let anybody say anything against [Jenny].” Historical record also during Reconstruction, shows Freedmen’s Bureau agents disregarding non-monogamous intimacies in the years following the Civil War by breaking up Black non-monogamous families as one agent recounted “Whenever a negro appears before me with 2 or 3 wives…I marry him to the woman who has the greatest number of helpless children who would otherwise become a charge on the bureau.” Importantly, then just as now, marriage was tethered to a bundle of rights and entitlements that had material consequences, such as the denial of Civil War pensions, on Black individuals and families who the institution forbade.

Despite (or, perhaps because of) the presence of Black non-monogamies, both in the antebellum and Reconstruction periods, anti-non-monogamous propaganda routinely portrayed non-monogamists as Black or barbaric in order to convey messages of chaos, foreigners, and despotism. As I show in an article published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, some of these anti-black anti-non-monogamous impressions were published in media outlets following the Reynolds v United States decision handed down by the Supreme Court. Even the Court’s official opinion white engagement with non-monogamy was said to produce a “peculiar race” as the practice was thought natural and common among Asiatic and African peoples but foreign to whites.

Insofar as the Reynolds opinion remains one of the highest opinions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on plural marriage, present day marriage law has disproportionately harmful consequences on the growing population of Black polyamorists in the U.S.—both socially and materially. For example, non-monogamists are more likely than their monogamist counterparts to have their relationship(s) subjected to social scrutiny and are less likely than their monogamous counterparts to have their relationships cohere with zoning laws forbidding the number of “unrelated” people living in the same household. The ongoing ban against plural marriages in the U.S. generate interesting questions about what it might take to end non-monogamous oppression and enact measures to repair the harms done by legal marriage on Black non-monogamists. And, as I argue in “Polyamory in Black” I think that a compelling rationale can be offered for thinking about Black reparations along these lines.

Comment by Luke Brunning

Hello everyone,

I loved reading Justin’s article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, thank you for writing it!

He situates contemporary concerns with the social status of nonmonogamy in their historical context, and makes a strong case for the intersection of racial prejudice and mononormativity.

As I understand the argument, Justin does not embrace the strong claim that marriage is incompatible with liberal neutrality, but argues marriage law needs to change to include plural-intimacies, and may have to do so to redress the distinct injustices faced by Black people in the USA, since their exclusion from plural marriage is inseparable from their racial oppression. He concludes with tentative support for something like Elizabeth Brake’s ‘minimal marriage’ proposal.

I want to check that I have understood the general strategy of argument. As I read it Justin thinks the absence of a plural-marriage option is bad for everyone, since it unreasonably prevents some people from accessing intimate goods on their terms. But there is another sense in which this is bad for US Black people, and that is because of the racialised way the ban on plural-marriage was enacted, upheld, and culturally supported at the time of Reynolds vs. United States. I take it the idea here is that this gives the state extra reason to alter the ways marriage is recognised.

I had four thoughts here:

First, Justin is right that Reyonlds and other cultural forms of opposition to plural marriage at the time were articulated in racial terms. But I am wondering about cultural contexts where the situation is more ambivalent, where there might be some social support, some opposition, and differences in how that opposition is framed (with some being racialised, and some not). Put bluntly, when is a relationship style sufficiently ‘racialized, stigmatized, and subjugated’ at a point in time to justify social change later on.

Second, the argument seems to make two claims, whose relationship I want to better understand. On the one hand, opposition to nonmonogamy was historically expressed in a racialised way, but on the other hand, Black people are not featured prominently in the contemporary social imagination when it comes to nonmonogamy. The claim of present people for state adjustment to marriage, therefore, stems less from racialised opposition to their nonmonogamy today (even if there is more general opposition to it) and more from this opposition in a prior century. I suppose a critic might argue that many laws are framed in ways that we would no longer accept, but that they can remain fit for purpose over time for other reasons, or that we should be more concerned with how oppression operates right now.

Third, I wonder whether a similar argument holds for other social groups whose access to marriage has been similarly subject to restriction or shaped by social prejudice. Might women, or queer people, for instance, be able to reach for a similar claim? Do people who were excluded from marriage *of any kind*, on the grounds of prejudice, have a stronger claim to reparative provisions when it comes to plural marriages (e.g. lesbian polyamorists)? Or should we resist thinking in terms of stronger claim at all here? Does any of this matter?

Fourth, I am curious about the practical implications of Justin’s argument. Weakly we might think he has identified an additional reason for the state to hurry up and change how it regulates marriage. But more strongly, we might think these reasons support prioritising Black people in the USA when it comes to accessing plural marriage once plural marriage becomes possible in some form. I would be interested to know whether that latter claim is something he and others are sympathetic to, i.e. whether the allusion to reparations has practical consequences e.g. perhaps through the provision of subsidies or tax breaks to Black polyamorists to form minimal marriages, but not to other groups. A critic might be concerned that such measures would likely embolden prejudice against the very groups it is intended to benefit, or would have a negative impact on attempts to change how marriage is viewed as a form of social status.

I’d love to hear what you all think. One thing I didn’t mention was the idea of ‘minimal marriage’ in general, which I know is often criticised as unworkable – are other people more sympathetic to the idea?

Response by Justin Clardy

Thanks for reading the article Luke and for these questions. I’ve tried to speak carefully and directly to the questions you’ve brought up–all of which have been super generative for me, so thank you.

I am wondering what you might think about what I have to say:

First, I want to say that yes, you’ve understood the general strategy of the argument. However, I want to revisit the phrasing “the absence of a plural-marriage option is bad for everyone.” I’m not sure that this broad claim fits within the scope of the argument I’ve laid out. Admittedly, the argument is more narrowly focused, primarily concerned with African Americans—or more broadly, “those marked Black”—in the U.S. context, as I tried to mention in footnote 4.

I emphasize this point for a couple of reasons. Earlier versions of this article were presented in different venues, and I often encountered pressure to consider the impact on groups outside of the Black community. While I understand the desire to address justice on a broader scale, I’ve been reflecting on the significance of limiting the argument to those marked Black. In some cases, questions like this seem to suggest that focusing specifically on Black subjects is somehow insufficient or less valuable in itself.

More simply put, if my argument doesn’t claim that the absence of plural marriage is bad for everyone, is that a flaw? I don’t think so. This isn’t to say the absence of plural marriage wouldn’t be bad for others—it’s simply beyond the scope of this particular argument. There’s value in centering those marked Black as the primary focus, and the importance of arguments that do so, in my view shouldn’t be diminished—not to say that I take you to be intending to do so.

Next, I want to speak to the question about “when is a relationship style sufficiently ‘racialized, stigmatized, and subjugated’ at a point in time to justify social change later on.” I think this is a really important question. In one sense, I would argue that a relationship style is sufficiently racialized when a society’s political institutions actively contribute to that racialization, as in the case of Reynolds.
To answer more directly, I’d suggest that a relationship style is sufficiently racialized, stigmatized, and subjugated when these dynamics lead to social or political disadvantages relative to the dominant power structures within a given socio-political context.

I also think here of Robin Zheng’s work on imagination in oppressive contexts for racialized people. For Zheng, imagination—and what is possible to imagine—is constrained by socio-historical contexts. She points out that even when we aren’t aware of certain tropes being racialized, our imaginations may still rely on them, and historical narratives often reinforce this. I mention this to complicate the notion of ambivalence, both on an individual level and within a society like the U.S., with its specific socio-cultural history.

So, when asking, “When is a relationship style sufficiently racialized, stigmatized, and subjugated to justify social change?” I am of the mind that we need to understand both what it means to have power or freedom in a given cultural context, and how that power or freedom has been historically accrued or concentrated. The point at which we can clearly identify social or political disadvantage is likely where the justification for change emerges (in societies committed to equality).

You also raise that “The claim of present people for state adjustment to marriage, therefore, stems less from racialised opposition to their nonmonogamy today (even if there is more general opposition to it) and more from this opposition in a prior century. I suppose a critic might argue that many laws are framed in ways that we would no longer accept, but that they can remain fit for purpose over time for other reasons, or that we should be more concerned with how oppression operates right now.”

I appreciate this question as well. As I understand it, you’re asking: How is anti-Black oppression of the past connected to the experiences of Black people today? Haven’t we made progress?

I think it’s important to clarify that this article stems from a larger book project I’m working on, where I draw on Afropessimist thought. In particular, I’m influenced by Frank Wilderson III, who views slavery not as a historical event but as a dynamic that persists into the 21st century. This aligns with Saidiya Hartman’s observation of Emancipation as a “non-event,” meaning it didn’t radically alter the status of Black people in the way we might assume. In this sense, I’m also building on thinkers like Anika Simpson and Paul Taylor, who trace how the institution of marriage has evolved to manage Black intimate relationships while ensuring continued subjugation. The value of these projects is that they help explain the idea that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

In this context, I would challenge the notion of “Black progress” as long as Black people—including Black polyamorists—are still subjected to social and political disadvantages based on their racialization (i.e., being marked as Black) and their participation in practices that have historically been racialized as Black.

This connects directly to my argument for reparations. It’s not as if, upon Emancipation, all Black relationships were fully recognized under the law. As I argue in the paper, certain non-monogamous relationships never received legal recognition. Given that marriage plays a critical role in distributing rights and privileges, we might suspect that the disadvantages imposed on Black non-monogamous relationships have been accumulating since that time and remain unresolved.

When asked how oppression functions today for the group I’m focused on, my response is that it’s the same—and in some ways, worsening. I would love to hear others’ thoughts on this line of thinking.

You also ask, “I wonder whether a similar argument holds for other social groups whose access to marriage has been similarly subject to restriction or shaped by social prejudice. Might women, or queer people, for instance, be able to reach for a similar claim?” I think the answer for me here is, perhaps. I realize that might not be the most satisfying response, but this topic falls somewhat outside the scope of this particular paper. However, I believe it is definitely worth exploring, as it matters significantly.

Finally, to the point about the practical implications–In relation to the scope of this paper, I am sympathetic to the latter claim, and not just in the context of Black individuals. For instance, Kim TallBear discusses how intimate Indigenous relationships have been—and continue to be—assaulted by colonialism, particularly in North American contexts. On this basis, I could be convinced that there might also be reasons to prioritize Indigenous access to plural marriage.

I understand the concern that “such measures would likely embolden prejudice against the very groups it is intended to benefit.” Historically, we have seen this occur with affirmative action and the attitudes surrounding it. This phenomenon may be an inevitability in societies that are poorly attuned to how certain groups can be rendered vulnerable due to their social or political positioning. We observe similar dynamics with vulnerable populations, such as seniors and women. This worry about emboldened prejudice and the need for appropriate attitudes of care and concern for the socially and politically vulnerable has been addressed by political theorists who explore political emotions. While this is a significant concern for me, it is also a broader project that requires more dedicated attention.

The point regarding social status is valid and one I think about quite a bit. While it may be true that preserving the institution of marriage could negatively impact efforts to reshape how marriage is viewed as a form of social status, I wonder if the potential for a positive impact is being weighed equally in this discussion. As Faith noted in her comment, if the state were to reshape the kinds of benefits it currently offers married couples (and the ways that it offers said benefits), we might witness a positive shift in how individuals approach their intimate relationships. If not, I believe this would stem from default societal attitudes toward non-monogamy. And also as Faith suggests, the article encourages those opposed to plural marriage to critically examine the origins and validity of their beliefs.

That said, I focused much of my attention on marriage law in this article and would love to further explore the challenge of changing social attitudes to foster a more caring approach in how a state or society can protect its most vulnerable citizens. If anyone has thoughts here, I would love to hear them.

I look forward to see what folks are thinking!

Comments by Faith Charmagne

I thoroughly enjoyed this article as I believe that it really takes black marriage and makes the reader look at it in a way that I haven’t come across before. As Justin states in this piece not only does making marriage only available to two people violates equal treatment, but when it comes to black people that practice consensual non-monogamy it is fundamentally racist. That is an argument that calls for those who are opposed to plural marriage to really question where some of those thoughts really stem from and how valid they actually are.

One of the main points made during this article that really stuck with me was the idea that marriage as it stands now is incompatible with liberal principles. By denying those who would want to engage in plural marriage it is essentially telling them who they can and can not be with in a society where marriage tends to be considered the epitome of relationship success. That alone strikes me as wrong. It also makes me think of how the state picks and chooses what they have a right to enforce onto people. If the state isn’t allowed to tell people who they can worship why should they be given the right to tell people who or how many people they can marry? especially if marriage as it is mostly talked about now in the United States is supposedly about love.

The way marriage has shaped and affected the way the population, especially black people, makes me really think about how if the state didn’t place marriage on this pedestal, by giving married couples the abundance of benefits it offers, how different some would go about choosing their romantic endeavors. What if marriage had a counterpart that was equally praised and offered the same amount of perks that marriage currently offers? How many would rethink their views on relationships, not just romantic, as a whole? And how would those new views effect how Black people that practice polyamory are treated?

Using minimal marriage as a way to not only give reparations but to also satisfy the need for equal treatment is an interesting concept. It made me think of how exactly that would look in the sense of how would Black non-monogamist specifically benefit from this in relation to their white counter parts that would also be participating in the practice. I am curious as to how that would actually look or would the existence of minimal marriage be enough to satisfy the need.

These are just some of the thoughts and questions I’ve had while enjoying this piece. I would love to hear yours.

Reply by Clardy

Hey Faith! Thanks for reading the article and for raising these important questions. When you ask, “What if marriage had a counterpart that was equally praised and offered the same amount of perks that marriage currently offers?” it highlights a significant issue connected to the questions Luke raises about social status.

For instance, prior to the landmark 2015 case of Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S., the state had established domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. While these partnerships had their own political drawbacks, socially, many people remained reluctant to regard them as equal to marriage. This suggests that even if there were a counterpart for non-monogamous relationships that offered similar perks, we might still face a similar phenomenon—namely, that these relationships wouldn’t be afforded the same social status as marriages. Political recognition might improve, but social acceptance could lag behind.

Moreover, when considering those marked as Black, it seems likely that attitudes toward Black non-monogamists wouldn’t change independently of broader shifts in attitudes toward Black people as a whole. In other words, even if an institution recognized a wider variety of Black intimate relationships and family formations, American society might still retain its anti-Black sentiments. Thus, while marital recognition is essential, it is only one aspect of a larger project of Black recognition that would require ongoing effort.

I hope that this clarifies at least what I am thinking regarding your questions. Let me know what you think!

Comment by Anika Simpson

Thank you for this article, Justin! It so very heartening to have a Black philosopher addressing erotic love relationships in a serious and sustained manner. I am so pleased to read work that pushes us to think beyond the normative convention of monogamy within Black communities. This is most exciting!

I am looking forward greatly to remaining in conversation with you because, while our steadfast commitment to championing diverse forms of Black erotic love are the same, our approaches to doing so are radically divergent. You address the purported “Black marriage problem” by arguing for marriage reform, specifically advocating for state recognition of polyamorous relationships. In my forthcoming book, “Single Black Mother: Queer Reflections on Marriage and Racial Justice,” I note that many people view unmarried Black mothers as a problem but I reject that claim and offer that marriage itself is the problem. In my view, there is neither a “Black marriage problem,” nor a “single Black mother problem,” rather we have a sexual citizenship problem. Put differently, no amount of reform to liberal democratic institutions will address the deep-seated ills that reinforce anti-Black racism in the United States. I make the case for abolition democracy as an alternative to the pervasive, and in my view, misguided notion that perpetual reform will lead us to Black liberation.

Before diving into the weeds of your compelling argument, I am curious to know why you turn to both liberal democracy and marriage reform as mechanisms to support the flourishing of Black non-monogamous relationships. We are Black philosophers. We dream and conjure and engage in world-making in our own way. Surely we can soar beyond the limiting, or I would say suffocating, confines of US sexual citizenship and fashion liberatory theories that capture the beauty of Black erotic love in all its manifestations. No?

Reply by Clardy

Hey Anika!

Thanks for giving the article a read and for tapping in to the discussion here. Im super happy to have yo has a part of this dialogue. Here are some of my thoughts :

I appreciate your framing of the issue as a sexual citizenship problem. I’m also looking forward to seeing how you develop that concept in Single Black Mother.

I share your skepticism about whether reforms to liberal democratic institutions can ever truly address the deep-seated ills that reinforce anti-Black racism in the U.S. This skepticism is part of what has drawn me toward Afropessimist thinking as I continue to work through the socio-ontological positioning of Blackness and Black suffering. In fact, my current book project delves into these very questions. However, in this particular article, my aim was to engage with non-ideal political theory—an attempt to envision a world still burdened by Black suffering, but perhaps one marginally better than our present reality. To put it plainly, I don’t see the reforms I propose in this paper as necessarily worsening the situation for Black people, even if they might fall short of radical transformation.

That said, I want to touch more on the idea of positionality—something I think is crucial to this conversation. As Black philosophers of love, we navigate a field where work on non-monogamy and polyamory is still relatively sparse, especially when it comes to articulating the specific experiences of Black non-monogamists. This is critical because the full picture of Black non-monogamous suffering, if it indeed contributes to a fuller understanding of Black suffering in general, has yet to be fully painted. In this article, my primary goal was to begin sketching that picture—illuminating the kinds of suffering Black non-monogamists face. I think this part of the work, particularly in the earlier sections, is perhaps even more significant than the proposed reforms. While my suggestions for reform may ultimately prove insufficient, I believe the groundwork of identifying and articulating these experiences is important as we move forward in this dialogue.

Reply by Simpson

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I remain indebted to your philosophical work on Black non-monogamy. There is scant treatment of Black love and sexuality within the Africana philosophical canon that addresses heteronormative, monogamous relationships. Sustained engagement with Black non-monogamy is virtually nonexistent. Your work fills a vital gap within the discipline (I am counting on it to help inform my next book project!).

I also want to thank you for bringing Reynolds v United States (1879) to my attention. The connection that you draw between the state’s antipathy towards plural marriage and its sustained commitments to anti-Blackness is an important one. To my Black abolitionist mind, your conclusion is yet another indictment of the inherent failures of the US marital regime to support the flourishing of Black people. I look forward to continued conversation about reform vs. abolition. More importantly, however, I am delighted to have the opportunity to engage your substantive work on Black non-monogamy itself.

Comment by Nannearl Brown

Hey all!

Justin – it’s exciting to see this article come to fruition after having had the opportunity to see some of your talks on this topic as your ideas were in their earlier stages. I remember the historical aspect of the treatment of those marked Black standing out as intriguing to me during those earlier moments and that continues to be true today. It seems very easy to be hyper focused on the current state of things and the picture that you’ve been able to paint via the Reynolds case and the U.S. government’s role in creating, ignoring and collapsing non-monogamous relationships among slaves and the formerly enslaved makes what I believe to be a strong argument against taking the present at face-value.

In response to your comment, “when asked how oppression functions today for the group I’m focused on, my response is that it’s the same—and in some ways, worsening” – I think I’d agree. After George Floyd’s murder in 2020, it was clear that many people who had previously been oblivious to or denied the presence of present-day anti-Black racism had come to a reckoning of sorts (at least superficially, through the public lens). Though this is a slightly different context than Black non-monogamies, it still involves someone from the oppressed group in question (i.e., someone marked Black) and is what I think to be a poignant example of what I get from your comment. I see one of the main perpetuators of the denial of anti-Black racism in America to be a belief that significant progress has been made, in terms of sociopolitical race relations, and this often times adds to the invisibilization of harms and of those who attempt to shed light on them – the harms of “yesterday” (e.g., the antebellum period and periods that followed) and their impact on today. That rendering invisible of the harms that persist is where I believe the “in some ways, worsening” part of what you said comes into play in my mind. This leads me to another thought I’m having around the social and the political and how much attempting to “play” within the bounds of the political can actually do in reality for non-monogamists marked Black presently. I’m wondering if there’s an example that we can draw on that successfully portrays a change in social attitude toward the vulnerable, particularly of Black folks. You mentioned Hartman’s “observation of Emancipation as a ‘non-event,’” and that brings me to wonder whether a reformation of marriage as you describe would not also land us in a place of yet another reformation being a “non-event” …which I think has me sharing Anika’s sentiment and question of why reform instead of abolition. Based on your response on reform vs abolition though, it seems like we find ourselves in a challenging space of what may actually be possible to do versus what might actually constitute more of a resolution (which is less likely to be as possible?). This may be going further outside to scope of this paper but I’d love to hear any other thoughts on this.

Reply by Brunning

Dear Justin,

Thank you for clarifying the argument, I do not mean to suggest that a narrower focus is problematic, I was just more curious about the layering of wrongs here, i.e. someone might think the reason things are so bad for people marked as Black, re. plural marriage, is that their lack of access to such an institution is *over-determined* in a way that might not be the case for other social groups and that recognising this helps us understand why things are so bad for that social group.

I think what I had in mind in my second thought was not that progress has been made (I am not so sure it has, or has enough) but rather how we are to think about cases of what we might call discontinuous oppression, where the *mode* of oppression shifts. As a historical narrative, one way to read your paper is that (1) overt attention to and social hostility about plural marriage on racialised grounds has been replaced with (2) the social silencing of the nonmonogamous practice of people marked as Black. I suppose my thought was methodological: why ground an appeal for contemporary social change, in (1) rather than in (2)? Is your idea that, actually, (1) and (2) are versions of the same dynamic?

Your book project sounds great and I’ll be excited to read it when it comes out! I have really enjoyed this discussion so thank you Justin, Faith, Anika, and Nannearl!

I also share the worry voiced by Anika and Nanneral about reform as a non-event. One way to voice the concern is to ask whether minimal marriage, in a way, is more ‘ideal’ than straight marriage abolition would be? On something like Clare Chambers’ view of abolition, there is a lot of room for individual symbolic expression in ‘marriages’, and there is a kind of equality in the state saying ‘this is none of our business’, but I wonder if an ambitious minimal-marriage proposal would actually be more complex and controversial in practice in its attempt to retain the thrust of marriage while shearing off the problematic features it has as a status?