All that makes racial shape-shifters a fantastic opportunity for a writer: they've got Huck Finn's independence, an identity in turmoil, a secret that could destroy their world, a refusal to be defined by others and a vantage on race that very few ever get to have.
I can't help but thinking that if the election had turned out differently, we might have heard a chorus of "I told you so's" from a different set of political scientists reminding us of the lessons of 30 or 40 years of academic opinion research on how racial attitudes shape political preferences.
"Similar to how racial segregation shapes perceptions of racial inequality, and occupational sex segregation shapes perceptions of gender inequality, we consider the possibility that residential segregation of the highly educated may facilitate mobilization of a social movement, such as the Tea Party, that opposes redistribution of wealth to society's less prosperous citizens," says the study.
Kennedy is at her best showing how overt and subtle racial politics shaped Sheppard's mission work at every step.
Still, in dutifully reconstructing the era, Professor Purnell recalls "tangible and symbolic" local accomplishments: some apartments and a handful of jobs for black people; improved sanitation in Bedford-Stuyvesant; a focus on how racial discrimination shaped public education.
Racial grammar shapes how people learn to feel differently about race and racism.
After all, many believe we no longer live in a world where overt racism, discrimination or racial terrorism shapes the lives of people of color.
If Kerner and Scarman are anything to go by, the rioters will not be invited to help write the documents that could shape racial discourse for a generation.
As well, it's seemingly an acknowledgment by the filmmakers that racial stereotypes still shape how some people perceive the first couple, and that many divergent stripes of blackness can be collapsed into one idea.
How each party responds both rhetorically and substantively to such activists, who have taken to the streets across the country in protest of police brutality and racial profiling, could shape turnout among black voters in November next year.
She examines how markets and governments shape racial inequality.
