One Drop - Many Views

The New York Times LENS blog today (12/16/2013) features photographs and from the forthcoming book (1)NE DROP: Shifting the Lens on Race, which explores "the extent to which historical definitions of race continue to shape contemporary racial identities and lived experiences of racial difference, particularly among those for whom the legacy of the one-drop rule perceptibly lingers."

Maurice Berger writes, "The portraits in (1)ne Drop attest to the many faces, colors and stories of blackness: from Zun Lee, a photographer and physician of Korean and African-American descent, who identifies as 'black' (Slide 6), the community most accepting of him and in which he has always felt most comfortable, to Angelina Griggs, a pale-skinned centenarian (Slide 11), who refers to herself as “colored” and recounts the prejudice she experienced growing up in the Jim Crow South, both from whites and blacks. It also includes the 'black/Latina' television journalist Soledad O’Brien (Slide 8) and Liliane Braga, a writer and educator of black, white and indigenous heritage from São Paulo. The books subject’s recount how their efforts to define themselves clashed with society’s imperative to assign neat racial categories in order to 'make something that is fluid and uncertain more certain,' as a contributor, Deborah Thomas, noted. Some described the bewilderment and prying questions of acquaintances, co-workers and strangers attempting to discern their race. Others pointed to the social stigma of having complexions that are frustratingly — or insultingly — viewed as too dark or too light."

View the full slideshow and article here.

Pre-Order (1)NE DROP: Shifting the Lens on Race here.