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65 Vand. L. Rev. En Banc 1 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/valewenb65 and id is 1 raw text is: BOOK REVIEW Go White, Young Man Alfred L. Brophy* DANIEL J. SHARFSTEIN, THE INVISIBLE LINE: THREE AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE SECRET JOURNEY FROM BLACK TO WHITE (Penguin Press, 2011). Our nation's struggle with race is now about one-third of a millennium long. So there is a lot for Daniel Sharfstein's epic work of American history, The Invisible Line, to engage as it sweeps across centuries-from Virginia in the 1600s to Washington, DC, in the 1950s-and as it details generations of lives, from humble farmers in Appalachia to heirs of Gilded Age merchants. Where most other people who have looked at such issues focus on the chasm between white and black, Sharfstein looks at people on the line separating black and white. He is able in this way to get at key-and often overlooked-issues, such as how people have crossed the color line in America and what efforts to cross and police it tell us about our national struggle with race and with equality. To detail the sine curve of attitudes towards race, Sharfstein offers three case studies of how racial categorization has functioned and how it kept (or attempted to keep) African-Americans in their place. The book follows three families whose members at some point crossed the line separating black from white-or tried and failed to. Sharfstein's elegant prose illuminates how the color line functioned for people on both sides of it. For those who could do so, there were great incentives to claim to be white rather than black. In one era, race could define who might be a slave; in later eras, it was central to who could live in desirable locations, who could go to the most desirable schools, who could have access to the best government jobs. From Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. Thanks to John Charles Williams for a perceptive critique of this essay. 1

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