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What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America | 
 enlarge | Author: Ariela J. Gross
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 63875
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 067403130X
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.800973
EAN: 9780674031302
ASIN: 067403130X
Publication Date: October 31, 2008
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Product Description
Is race something we know when we see it? In 1857, Alexina Morrison, a slave in Louisiana, ran away from her master and surrendered herself to the parish jail for protection. Blue-eyed and blond, Morrison successfully convinced white society that she was one of them. When she sued for her freedom, witnesses assured the jury that she was white, and that they would have known if she had a drop of African blood. Morrison’s court trial?and many others over the last 150 years?involved high stakes: freedom, property, and civil rights. And they all turned on the question of racial identity. Over the past two centuries, individuals and groups (among them Mexican Americans, Indians, Asian immigrants, and Melungeons) have fought to establish their whiteness in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms, administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Like Morrison’s case, these trials have often turned less on legal definitions of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way people presented themselves to society and demonstrated their moral and civic character. Unearthing the legal history of racial identity, Ariela Gross’s book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society. This book reminds us that the imaginary connection between racial identity and fitness for citizenship remains potent today and continues to impede racial justice and equality. (20081110)
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A book on "race" every American should read! January 5, 2009
A.D. Powell (United States)
Ariela Gross has performed a great service by writing a book that can be used a reference for anyone (teachers, journalists, etc.) who THINKS they know about racial classification in the U.S. Gross does not do everything well. Frank W. Sweet has written a more comprehensive account of U.S. racial classification trials: Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise And Triumph of the One-drop Rule; Lawrence R. Tenzer has written a better book on the political importance of antebellum white slaves: The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue and Virginia Dominguez has written a comprehensive account of racial classification among Louisiana Creoles (a group that Gross neglects)White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. What Gross has done is combine accounts of racial classification trials involving Latinos (especially Mexicans), Indians, Asians, native Hawaiians, Armenians, Arabs, as well as the usual Anglo part-black mixed-race people. Gross even includes the Melungeons, Lumbees and others formerly called "tri-racial isolates" (See Walking Toward The Sunset: The Melungeons Of Appalachia (Melungeons: History, Culture, Ethnicity, & Literature) and The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People : An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America). This really impressed me, because most American historians on "race" are totally ignorant of those groups, don't understand their importance, and rarely mention them.
If you read this book, you will overcome any "Imitation of Life" image of what it means to have your "whiteness" challenged. The so-called "one drop" myth is mainly a 20th century invention; "whiteness" has always been an evolving and contradictory concept. "Black blood" was not only legally allowed in the "white race," but the "performance" of whiteness (exercising the rights of whites and socializing with whites)was usually more important in a racial classification trial than degrees of "black blood."
Because immigration was legally restricted to "whites," (assumed to be European), immigrants who did not come from Europe (Arabs, Armenians, Asians, part-Asians, etc.) had to "prove" in court that they were "white." This subject has been covered in detail by Ian Haney Lopez: White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (Critical America Series).
Mexicans were made citizens by treaty (regardless of race) when the U.S. took Mexican territories after the Mexican-American War. This was a major contradiction because few Mexicans are really "white" compared to European-Americans (They are a mixture of Indian, Spanish and African). Their legal whiteness was usually combined with a de facto "racial" segregation from "other" whites. Neil Foley has written extensively on this subject: The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture (American Crossroads, 2). Gross should be praised for including the Mexican-American effort to be labeled "white" in the same book with part-black Anglos and other groups. Most historians try to act like these groups have nothing in common.
The major flaw in the book is the Conclusion, in which Gross indulges in a fashionable and politically correct rant against those who believe that racial classifications should not be asked for or legally enforced (affirmative action, the census, etc.). Her Conclusion contradicts the evidence of her own research. Skip the Conclusion and enjoy the rest of the book.
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