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Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. . .One cannot truly understand America without understanding the historical experience of black people in this nation. Simply put, to get to the heart of this country one must examine its racial soul.1
Attorney General Eric Holder, February 2009,
INTRODUCTION
In What Blood Won't Tell, USC law professor Ariela Gross advances an argument paralleling Attorney General Holder's sentiments, revealing race as a topic that remains on the fringes of the national discourse, leaving the body politic ignorant of history and beholden to myths and mis-education. Published in November 2008,2 What Blood Won't Tell is a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of race in American society, integrating research on centuries-old transcripts, court records and newspaper articles about previously untold courtroom tales to shed new light on the role that litigation has played in race-identity and in defining (inadequate) categories of color. In her book, professor Gross attempts to destabilize national (mis)understandings of race as strictly a black-white binary composition by advancing the idea of race as a by-product of three modes of negotiations. Specifically, contemporary conceptions of race originated from negotiations between individuals within any given community; then, between individuals and their particular community; and finally, out of negotiations between communities and the government. Using this lens, Gross traverses the racial spectrum to shed some light on the complex developments that inform race and racial politics in America.
Race matters to millions in North America; as a political identity it remains a prominent feature in the daily lives of many. Opponents of racial considerations in the public sphere often invoke the principle of a colorblind constitution, yet the origins of that principle, uttered by Justice Harlan in dissent to Plessy v. Ferguson,3 still affirmed the propriety of a political system underwritten by white supremacy. A century after Plessy, race permeates civil society, but is little understood yet loyally embraced, often ranking in importance above class and religion. In sum, we may feel its weight, claim its importance, yet as What Blood Won't Tell aptly advances, race is not something we know when...