That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans, and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia by Arica L. Coleman (review)

IN A COMPREHENSIVE AND DETAILED HISTORICAL ACCOUNTING of the interactions between peoples in Virginia, Arica Coleman articulates the deep roots and entangled logics of racial purity that began before Thomas Jefferson, through Walter Plecker’s influence on the state’s systems, Loving v. Virginia, and ending with a connection not only to the present but also to an alteration from the tracked historical trend. The distinctions of whites, Native Americans, and African Americans have undergirded American constructions of racial difference based on perceptions of purity and “taint.” Coleman shows how tribal peoples in Virginia were marginalized in the state and eliminated on paper, and how some took up the notions of racial purity and applied them in the late twentieth century in order to gain recognition. Importantly, tribal leaders and members as well as state legislators, policy makers, and enforcers are not the only ones responsible, as academics bear responsibility as well. Inherently Coleman asks, at what cost are these choices made—what is lost and what is gained by playing into a system created to oppress and destroy?

Beginning with Jefferson’s comprehensive response to a survey about the state of Virginia, Coleman turns to how definitions within the state began to blur toward a binary where “mulatto” meant not only an individual who was of mixed white and black ancestry, but also those who were of mixed American Indian ancestry. This term was later used by Walter Plecker in his reign over vital statistics and effort to parse purity in the state, wherein he attempted to invalidate claims to “Indian” identities by arguing that genealogical census records showed that families were “mulatto,” which for him could only mean they were “black.” Coleman deftly shows these errors, including how Plecker was not simply a man separate from but a man of his time whose work was made possible by others, such as “salvage anthropologists.” Coleman explores how anthropologists advocated for the tribes by excising histories of black intermarriage and kinship creation and encouraging those tribes with whom they worked to deny such relations and ancestors as well.

Coleman then turns to the pivotal Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, and complicates the understanding of how this case eliminated antimiscege-nation laws. Whereas many present this case as the marriage between a “black woman” and a “white man,” Coleman demonstrates the roles of self-identity and passing in determining the fates of these individuals and then how their narrative was altered on the national stage. At a time of much attention to this case and how we conceive of limits or expansions of marriage in general, Coleman’s analysis brings new questions to how Virginia’s racial purity ideas have been extended and flattened into a recognizable binary of black/white.

After historicizing these relations, Coleman turns to the contemporary significance of efforts to distinguish (and therefore not allow mixture) between African American, Native American, and white Virginians through the state recognition efforts of the Nottoway Indians. In full awareness of the racial purity ideology that lay under the use of seven criteria for recognition in Virginia, the Nottoway presented their petition while fully embracing the mixed racial ancestry of their community. The resulting fight demonstrated the deep roots of this ideology and the problems of applying historical and ideologically biased criteria to groups that are biological and social, political, and cultural.

Coleman’s first monograph builds on the recent work of scholars such as Christina Snyder, Sharon Holland, and Tiya Miles and the well-known work of Jack Forbes, all of whom examine the interactions (and attempted distinctions) between Native Americans, African Americans, and white populations, with particular attention to the Southeast. Readers across the breadth of Native American studies will appreciate this valuable critical contribution to the field. Her writing deftly interweaves laws and legal cases, media reports, census records, and war...