One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race - Softcover

Malcomson, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0374527946 ISBN 13: 9780374527945

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001

Synopsis

Why has a nation founded upon precepts of freedom and universal humanity continually produced, through its preoccupation with race, a divided and constrained populace? Scott Malcomson's search for an answer took him across the country--to the Cherokee Nation, an all-black town, and a white supremacist enclave in Oklahoma--back though the tangled red-white-and-black history of America from colonial times onward, and to his own childhood in racially fractured Oakland, California. By not only recounting our shared tragicomedy of race but helping us to own it--even to embrace it--this important book offers us a way at last to move beyond it.

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Review

In this exhaustive, introspective study of America's obsession with color, nobody escapes author Scott L. Malcomson's probing. The obvious white supremacists share scrutiny with the Indians, Hispanics, and African Americans who have turned inward in their reaction to racism and called for their own noninclusive territory. The book's imposing size and scope--it roves from early assimilation attempts by Indians to the Harlem Renaissance to white flight through the ages--may put off some who mistake it for a stale textbook. That would be a shame. Malcomson writes with a lyrical, storytelling quality. He mixes solid reporting with his own thoughtful speculation in tracing the histories of Indians, whites, and blacks in this country. Woven through this vivid narrative are the author's conversations with descendants of his own ancestors, who commingled in marriage and love with Cherokees and former slaves. Raised by a seemingly colorblind Baptist preacher father, Malcomson writes of his dismay as a boy as he and his friends began to "think with our skins" and separate by race as they grew older. "These were roles prepared by the American generations that had gone before; the past was forming us, and so we would carry that past into the future. I have never ceased regretting that process, because it diminished each of us." It's clear how Malcomson feels about what he calls America's "tragic drama," but he avoids preaching and gains credibility in doing so. His account is worthy reading for anybody who believes the drama's ending has yet to be written. --Jodi Mailander Farrell

About the Author

Scott Malcomson's previous books are Tuturani: A Political Journey in the Pacific Islands and Borderlands: Nation and Empire. From 1984 to 1996 he worked at The Village Voice in a variety of jobs, including a seven-year stint as senior editor at the VLS.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0374527946
• ISBN 13: 9780374527945
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544