CONTEMPLATING MULTIRACIALITY

"Mixed Blood" Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South. By Theda Perdue. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2002. xi + 135 pp. Map, photos, notes and index. $24.95.

Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America. Edited by James F. Brooks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. ix + 396 pp. Map, illustrations, tables and notes. $70.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920. By James M. O'Toole. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. xii + 284 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $34.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Paul Spickard
University of California, Santa Barbara

"What is your race?" is a more subtle question than once was widely recognized. We thought we could tell by looking what "race" a person was, and we thought we understood unambiguously what were the consequences of racial differences. However, in recent years many people have become accustomed to the notion that race is not a simple biological fact but a complex social and historical construction, with attendant political and economic implications, motivations, and consequences. For the past decade and a half or so, scholars have been unpacking old historical narratives that assumed clear, timeless, and unquestioned racial categories.1 Even conservative politicians like Newt Gingrich and Ward Connerly have adopted the language of racial constructionism, although their motives seem different than those of scholars. The scholars have sought to explore the ways that racial differences were created in the minds of particular people, at particular times and places, out of particular social materials, and for particular purposes.