Race Changes: Shifting Identities in World History

Race Changes is a book about people whose seemingly permanent racial or ethnic identities in fact change over the course of their lifetimes. Sometimes it is just a matter of changing racial rules from one place or era to another. Sometimes people make a racial choice. Sometimes an outside agency—a government, a social institution, adoptive parents— enforces a change in one’s identity. Race Changes is written for both a scholarly and a popular audience. It explains in what circumstances such changes tend to take place and explores what is the work that racial change is doing.