{"id":16459,"date":"2011-09-23T04:06:51","date_gmt":"2011-09-23T04:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=16459"},"modified":"2011-11-14T01:06:14","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T01:06:14","slug":"race-blood-and-what-the-alligator-knows-a-review-of-what-blood-wont-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=16459","title":{"rendered":"Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of What Blood Won&#8217;t Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lawweb.usc.edu\/why\/students\/orgs\/lawreview\/J.GillmerRaceBloodandWhattheAlligatorKnows.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of What Blood Won&#8217;t Tell<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lawweb.usc.edu\/why\/students\/orgs\/lawreview\/index.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Southern California Law Review<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/lawweb.usc.edu\/why\/students\/orgs\/lawreview\/Volume83Number3.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 83, Number 3<\/a> (March 2010)<br \/>\npages 425-440<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/law.txwes.edu\/Default.aspx?tabid=309\" target=\"_blank\">Jason A. Gillmer<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Law<br \/>\n<em>Texas Wesleyan School of Law<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From the opening pages of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arielagross.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ariela J. Gross\u2019s<\/a> <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=2682\" target=\"_blank\">What Blood Won\u2019t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America<\/a><\/em>, it is clear that the reader is about to embark on something special. The story begins in a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Louisiana\" target=\"_blank\">Louisiana<\/a> courthouse in 1857, with an enslaved woman named Alexina Morrison claiming that she is white. For her contemporaries, the assertion no doubt carried troubling implications. James White, the man who insisted Morrison was black, had papers to prove that he paid good money for her and that she was his property. But her \u201cblue eyes and flaxen hair\u201d told a different story, and her recent appearances at public balls in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jefferson_Parish,_Louisiana\" target=\"_blank\">Jefferson Parish<\/a> had convinced a number of residents that her graceful mannerisms and affectations were those of a white woman rather than slave. The courtroom was soon bombarded with a dizzying array of evidence for such a simple question\u2014was she white or was she black?\u2014with men eventually stripping her to the waist to examine her body for the tiniest signs of her true identity. Three trials later, the community still had not resolved the issue. But more importantly, from Gross\u2018s view, this case provides an unparalleled opportunity to examine the complex and constantly shifting ground of race and its import for this nation\u2018s history&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire essay <a href=\"http:\/\/lawweb.usc.edu\/assets\/docs\/contribute\/83_3GillmerforWebsite.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Race, Blood, and What the Alligator Knows: A Review of What Blood Won&#8217;t Tell Southern California Law Review Volume 83, Number 3 (March 2010) pages 425-440 Jason A. Gillmer, Associate Professor of Law Texas Wesleyan School of Law From the opening pages of Ariela J. Gross\u2019s What Blood Won\u2019t Tell: A History of Race on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,459,1467,8,6940,20],"tags":[880,873,2435,2436,3213],"class_list":["post-16459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-ariela-gross","tag-ariela-j-gross","tag-jason-a-gillmer","tag-jason-gillmer","tag-southern-california-law-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459","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=16459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}