One Drop of Blood

Why has a nation dedicated to freedom & 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 & 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 & social importance. A parade of idealists, pragmatists, & opportunists--from Ben Franklin to Tecumseh, Washington Irving to Bobby Seale--defined "Indian," "black," & "white" in relation to one another & in service to the aspirations & 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 dramas of separatism we enact daily in our schools & neighborhoods, Americans have perpetually engaged with & fled from other Americans along racial lines. By not only recounting our shared tragicomedy but helping us to own it--even to embrace it--this redemptive book offers a way to move forward.Malcomson, Scott L. is the author of 'One Drop of Blood' with ISBN 9780374240790 and ISBN 0374240795.