Identities rooted in the reality or the fantasy of shared ancestry remain central in our politics, both within and between nations. In this new century, as in the last, the color line and its cousins are still going strong. Race, you might say, has become a palimpsest, a parchment written upon by successive generations where nothing is ever entirely erased. Often with the most benevolent of intentions, and sometimes with the least, we keep tracing the same contours with different pens.
