Daily Log

Friday, October 8

We continnued to discuss questions raised by Jefferson's Blood, starting from the questions which students submitted Thursday.  The most consistent focus was on the perplexities of racial categorization in our society, exemplified by such phenomena as the white-appearing black descendants of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.  Mr. Potratz contributed historical information about the principal of hypodescent in U.S. racial definitions and about anti-miscegenation laws in the twentieth century.