In this work, the author, a social historian traces the lives of six African Americans from the colonial era to the late 20th century, using their stories to illustrate the complex ways in which racial ideologies in this country have changed since the first Africans arrived on the nation's shores hundreds of years ago. The very idea of "blackness, " she shows, has changed fundamentally over this period. She also shows that race does not exist, and the very factor we think of as determining it, a person's heritage or skin color, are mere pretexts for the brutlaization of powerless people by the powerful. This book explodes the fiction of "race" that has shaped four centuries of American history. -- From book jacket.