Explores the reach of the law into our most personal and private romantic livesThe Architecture of Desire examines how the law influences our most personal and private choiceswho we desire and choose as intimate partnersand explores the psychological economic and social effects of these choices. Romantic preferences as shaped by law perpetuate segregation and subordination by limiting on the basis of race individuals prospects for marriage and marriagelike commitments as well as economic and social mobility.The book begins by tracing the legacy of slavery antimiscegenation segregation and racially discriminatory immigration laws to show how this legal landscape facilitated the residential economic and social distance between racial and ethnic groups which in turn continue to shape romantic preferences today. Solangel Maldonado argues that the law further influences intimate choices by structuring the spaces within which individuals meet and interact via practices such as redlining gentrification and zoning.Maldonado includes studies of online and offline dating preferences to demonstrate that romantic predilections follow a gendered racial hierarchy in which Whites are at the top AfricanAmericans at the bottom anddepending on skin toneAsianAmericans and Latinos in the middle.