About the Author

F. James Davis is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Illinois State University and the author of Society and the Law (1962), Social Problems (1970), and Minority-Dominant Relations (1978).

Reviews

"This is a very well written book that communicates complex ideas with clarity and interest. It is rare, in my experience, for an academic book written by a social scientist to be as interesting and exciting as a piece of fiction. This book is hard to put down because Davis's story of how the United States as a nation came to define who is black reads like a mystery novel in which every historical event provides one more clue to the final murder of a people." - Aida Hurtado, In American Journal of Sociology "Davis has given us a brilliant and informative history of the fateful policy commonly called the rule of hypodescent (the 'one-drop' rule) and the impact it has had psychologically, socially, economically, and politically on African-American history. Davis's book is the most recent in the series of works written on this topic, but is by far the most thorough and insightful." - G. Reginald Daniel, in Contemporary Sociology "This is an eye-opening appraisal of an issue often taken for granted in America." - Publishers Weekly