One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race

by Scott L. Malcomson

Why has a nation dedicated to freedom and universal ideals continually produced, through its preoccupation 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--the redemptive book offers a way to move forward.

"Scott Malcomson rescues us from silence. With this meticulous history, he has written a fabulous romance. He reminds us that American history is more than a tale of conflict and separation; we are united as a nation by an eroticism outlasting our denials and fear."
-- Richard Rodriguez

"Malcomson has written an impressive, complex, disturbing, and provocative book about the tangle of race, particularly as Americans have experienced it."
-- Larry McMurtry

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Sociology, Race, African American

584 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long, dense book but packed with history and well worth reading. I especially liked:

(1) The history of the Cherokees in Georgia before the Trail of Tears. Some of the men were college-educated and lived like white men and married white wives. Yet they were still driven out. They couldn't win, no matter what they did and how much they assimilated.

(2) The author's story of growing up in mixed-race Oakland, California, how the whites, blacks, and Asians were friends in elementary school but, by high school, had all withdrawn into their racial groups. He tried to fight the trend by joining the Asian group.

Recommended to anyone willing to read a long, dense tome with lots of gems.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was amazed at how much I didn't know about race relations in America. For example: segregation may have lasted longest in the south but the concept of contamination by contact the laws that embodied it were first promulgated in the northern and western states after the Civil War. This was an important book for me. I was also amazed, to learn that virtually every non-rebel state passed laws after the civil war banning colored people. They were not enforced but the fact of their promulgation alone is shocking.
This book delineates many levels, forms and times of racial prejudice in America, which makes it the best resource I've come across. This is not to gainsay the many fine slave histories and other explications of more particular aspects of racism in America but this book was important to my knowledge and understanding.

[Narr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Red, White, and Black should be our national colors according to Malcomson.

[LaShara Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best book ever! almost. everyone should read this. everyone

[Mercer Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who cares or is interested in race relations in the history of the US must read this book.

[Sarah]

i haven't "been reading" this for months, but i read 3/4 of it. it's amazing.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Any serious student of history and race relations must read this book.

[Michael Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really powerful book in parts, oddly weak in others, I thought his personal life story section was very mixed. The ending was particularly unsatisfying.