{"id":12443,"date":"2011-03-03T22:26:21","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T22:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=12443"},"modified":"2013-08-16T02:07:13","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T02:07:13","slug":"tracing-lives-of-three-%e2%80%98white%e2%80%99-families-and-their-black-forebears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=12443","title":{"rendered":"Tracing lives of three \u2018white\u2019 families and their black forebears"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tracing lives of three \u2018white\u2019 families and their black forebears<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Boston Globe
\n<\/a>2011-02-20<\/p>\n

Dan Cryer<\/strong>, Globe Correspondent<\/p>\n

Daniel J. Sharfstein. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White<\/a><\/em>. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 415 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 9781594202827.<\/p>\n

Randall Lee Gibson<\/a>, an urbane, Yale-educated Confederate general, mocked black people as \u201cthe most degraded of all races of men.\u2019\u2019 Later, as a US senator from Louisiana<\/a>, he helped broker the end of Reconstruction<\/a>, freeing the South to harass and lynch blacks virtually at will.<\/p>\n

In the 20th century, his orphaned son, Preston, was raised by an aunt and her husband, who had been a justice on the US Supreme Court that legitimated racial segregation in the infamous case of Plessy v. Ferguson<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the 21st century, a rent-a-car employee and genealogy buff dubbed himself Sir Thomas Murphy after tracing his mother\u2019s lineage to English aristocracy. His father\u2019s line remained a mystery.<\/p>\n

None of these white people knew that they had African-American ancestors who had \u201cpassed for white.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Race has always been an inherently unstable construct of nature, culture, and law. Should one be considered black if one grandparent or great-grandparent was black? Or does the \u201cone-drop\u2019\u2019 rule<\/a> hold, that a single black forebear makes one black? Does \u201crace\u2019\u2019 exist in the eye of the beholder, or solely in the mind of the beheld. In today\u2019s age of mixed-race chic\u2014in which Mariah Carey<\/a> and Derek Jeter<\/a> are hailed as beautiful royalty\u2014such questions may seem quaint. But throughout American history, the consequences have been deadly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Invisible Line,\u2019\u2019 Daniel J. Sharfstein\u2019s<\/a> spellbinding chronicle of racial passing<\/a> in America, reminds us that the phenomenon has existed since our Colonial beginnings\u2014as escape from oppression, enhancement in status, and path to economic opportunity. However well defined in law, the racial line has always remained porous, breachable under the right conditions…<\/p>\n

Read the entire review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tracing lives of three \u2018white\u2019 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,1467,8,6462,20],"tags":[5578,2766,2767,5579],"class_list":["post-12443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-dan-cryer","tag-daniel-j-sharfstein","tag-daniel-sharfstein","tag-the-boston-globe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}