Items related to One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race
Why has, a nation dedicated to freedom and universal ideals continually produced, through its obsession with race, an unhappily divided people? Scott L. Malcomson's search for an answer took him to communities across the country and deep into our past. From Virginia colonists "going native" onward, Malcomson argues, Americans, in their mania for self-invention, pioneered an idea of race that gave it unprecedented moral and social importance. A parade of idealists, pragmatists, and opportunists -- from Ben Franklin to Tecumseh, Washington Irving to Bobby Seale -- defined, "Indian," "black," and "white" in relation to one another and in service to the aspirations and anxieties of each era. Yet these definitions have never been gladly adopted by the people they were meant to describe. To escape the limits of race, Americans have continually attempted to escape from other races -- by founding, all-black towns, for example -- or to nullify race by confining, eliminating, or absorbing one another. From Puritan enslavement of Indians to the separatism we enact daily in our schools and neighborhoods, Americans, have perpetually engaged with and fled from other Americans along racial lines. By not only recounting, our nation's most distinctive and enduring drama but helping us to own it -- even to embrace it -- this redemptive book offers a way to move forward.
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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 L. Malcomson has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. He is the author of two previous books. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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- PublisherDiane Pub Co
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0756763428
- ISBN 13 9780756763428
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number2
- Number of pages584
- Rating
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