Tag: Daniel Sharfstein

  • The Invisible Line: American families’ journeys from black to white Research news@Vanderbilt Vanderbilt University 2011-02-17 Amy Wolf The idea of someone transitioning from black to white, without science or surgery, seems hard to grasp on the surface. Yet Vanderbilt Law School professor Daniel J. Sharfstein finds that African Americans have continually crossed the color line…

  • The Invisible Line: Three American families and the secret journey from black to white [Live Interview with Daniel J. Sharfstein] Minnesota Public Radio News Midmorning Broadcast: 2011-03-15 15:06Z (10:06 CDT, 11:06 EDT, 08:06 PDT) Kerri Miller, Host Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University For much of American history, racial identity has been defined…

  • Interview with Daniel J. Sharfstein, author of “The Invisible Line” The Christian Science Monitor 2011-02-23 Stacie Williams, Monitor Contributor In “The Invisible Line,” law professor Daniel J. Sharfstein uses the stories of three families to explore the fluid nature of racial identity in America. Race has never been an easy concept in this country; the…

  • The Author Speaks: Interview With Daniel J. Sharfstein AARP Bulletin American Association of Retired Persons 2011-02-17 Julia M. Klein His powerful new book examines how three American families became white Before Daniel J. Sharfstein’s senior year at Harvard, he spent the summer of 1993 in South Africa as a volunteer for a voter education project.…

  • The Invisible Line Between Black and White Smithsonian.com 2011-02-18 T. A. Frail Vanderbilt professor Daniel Sharfstein discusses the history of the imprecise definition of race in America For much of their history, Americans dealt with racial differences by drawing a strict line between white people and black people. But Daniel J. Sharfstein, an associate professor…

  • Shades of White The New York Times 2011-02-25 Raymond Arsenault, Visiting Scholar, Florida State University Study Center in London and John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History, University of South Florida Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp.…

  • Tracing lives of three ‘white’ families and their black forebears The Boston Globe 2011-02-20 Dan Cryer, Globe Correspondent Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781594202827. Randall Lee Gibson, an urbane, Yale-educated Confederate general, mocked black…

  • A conversation with Daniel J. Sharfstein (Author of  The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White) The Penguin Press January 2011 Lauren Hodapp, Senior Publicist The Penguin Press Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey…

  • The Secret History of Race in the United States The Yale Law Journal Volume 112, Issue 6 (March 2003) pages 1473-1509 Daniel J. Sharfstein, Associate Professor of Law Vanderbilt University In the beginning, there was a man named Looney. George Looney’s world was Buchanan County, Virginia, a pocket of Appalachian hills and hollows that juts…

  • Ideologies of racial purity and pollution are as old as America, and so is interracial mixing. Yet the one-drop rule did not, as many have suggested, make all mixed-race people black. From the beginning, African Americans assimilated into white communities across the South. Often, becoming white did not require the deception normally associated with racial…