| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.3

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America. Edited by James F. Brooks. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. viii + 396 pp. Illustrations, map, tables, notes, index. $70.00, £54.00, cloth; $29.95, £22.95, paper.)

Given the recent trend by historians to classify race as a social construct, not a product of biology, the significance of "blood" to the construction of racial identity has receded into the background in academic circles. What James F. Brooks's important collection of essays does is recognize that for many people who live their daily lives in the confounded territory between Black and Indian in the United States, the question of "blood" is paramount in how they define themselves and how they are perceived by society. In most cases, tribal citizenship is based upon the criteria of proving direct Native ancestry or possessing a Certified Degree of Indian Blood card. Social construction or not, race for Native Americans and for mixed Black-Indians is quantified, both in contemporary debates and historically. Brooks's book notes that since the first Europeans invaded the Western Hemisphere and introduced the forced migration of Africans to the land as slaves, the lives of Indians and Blacks have been entwined. The scholarship details a relationship forged over four hundred years of coexistence and cross-cultural exchange.

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