Lawyering in Black and White: A Book Review of According to Our Hearts, Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family

• Author: Tamara F. Lawson
• Position: Professor of Law
• Pages: 1773-1788

1773

Lawyering in Black and White: A Book

Review of According to Our Hearts,

Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of

the Multiracial Family

Tamara F. Lawson

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1773

II. RHINELANDER V. RHINELANDER—A LESSON IN TRIAL

ADVOCACY ................................................................................... 1776

A. THE LAWYER’S ROLE ............................................................. 1776

B. THE JURY’S CONSCIENCE—IN BLACK AND WHITE ................... 1780

III. DO LAWS REALLY MATTER? THE LOVING MARRIAGE SURVIVED

WHILE THE RHINELANDER MARRIAGE FAILED ............................ 1782

IV. UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: RACE, CULTURE, AND THEIR UNIQUE

COMBINATIONS ........................................................................... 1784

V. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 1788

I. INTRODUCTION

According to Our Hearts1 is an impressive work that advocates for a robust

protection of the American family. Thus, in many ways, at its core, the book

is very traditional and classic.2 What makes it groundbreaking and innovative,

however, is Professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s ability to integrate the

understanding of intimate family relationships seamlessly with issues of race

 Professor of Law, St. Thomas University School of Law; LL.M., Georgetown University

Law Center, 2003; J.D., University of San Francisco School of Law, 1995; B.A., Claremont

McKenna College, 1992. Special thanks to Professors Gary Kravitz, Wendy Greene, and Marc-

Tizoc Gonzalez for their helpful feedback on my drafts, as well as to my research assistants,

Kathryn E. Lecusay and Gamila Elmaadawy, for their assistance on this project.

1. See generally ANGELA ONWUACHI-WILLIG, ACCORDING TO OUR HEARTS: RHINELANDER V.

RHINELANDER AND THE LAW OF THE MULTIRACIAL FAMILY (2013).

2. See Jennifer Chacón, Opening Our Hearts: A Response to Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s According

to Our Hearts, 16 J. GENDER RACE & JUST. 725, 735–36 (2013).

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and the performance of race. The narration of the historic racial fraud

annulment case, Rhinelander v. Rhinelander,3 coupled with the personal

interviews with present-day multiracial families, offers the reader a fresh

perspective on interraciality and opens one to the prospect that modern law

should naturally include “the law of the multiracial family.”

According to Our Hearts has been praised for its effective presentation, its

innovations in thinking about racial-, familial-, and collective-identity injuries

that stem from the intersectionality of race and family,4 plus its ambition in

addressing gaps in antidiscrimination law.5 In my opi nion, however , the book

has not been sufficiently recognized for its contribution to trial advocacy,

especially trial advocacy in racialized litigation. In the book, Professor

Onwuachi-Willig employs the narrative style of legal storytelling that the

pioneers of critical race theory have utilized. However, I think she uses this

style, in a rather original way, to tell the lawyer’s story of how to manage—or

mismanage—a racialized trial. The book includes a behind-the-screens and

detailed retelling of the Rhinelander trial, which at first I thought was largely a

tragic love story, and secondarily a tale about gender and race norms in the

1920s. But soon I realized that the book’s narrative is really about lawyering—

critical race lawyering6—“lawyering in black and white.”

The book explores not only notions of romantic love and family, but it

also seriously confronts the complex and systemic legal problem of racial

discrimination. Acknowledging the influences of both law and society on

issues of race in America, Professor Onwuachi-Willig offers the reader a

critical lens with which to think seriously about interraciality, as well as the

racial identity of a family.7 Prior to According to Our Hearts, the discussion of

racial identity, largely, was recognized as an individual concept. The book

broadens the dialogue and encourages an understanding of interraciality that

can be applied to a collective identity—a familial identity. Professor

Onwuachi-Willig further teaches the reader that because racial identity can

be a collective one, cognizable legal harms can flow to individuals based on

membership in the family. Consistent with the book’s expanded definitional

framework of interraciality, it follows that statutes proscribing racial

discrimination may, too, warrant a correspondingly more expansive scope in

order to adequately protect the American family. Professor Onwuachi-Willig

3. Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, 219 N.Y.S. 548 (App. Div. 1927) (per curiam).

4. Chacón, supra note 2, at 738–39.

5. D. Wendy Greene, All in the Family: Interracial Intimacy, Racial Fictions, and the Law, 4

CALIF. L. REV. CIRCUIT 179, 185–86 (2013).

6. Scholars have acknowledged the importance of including critical race perspectives in

lawyering all cases. See Symposium, Critical Race Lawyering, 73 FORDHAM L. REV. 2027 (2005).

7. ONWUACHI-WILLIG, supra note 1, at 233 (“So far in this book, I have utilized the lives of

Alice and Leonard Rhinelander as a window into understanding how law and society have

functioned together to frame the normative ideal of family as monoracial (and heterosexual),

both historically and presently.”).