"The Getting of a Lawful Race"

If ever a topic needed to be waylaid, queried, and "debrided" of acquired meanings before discussion of its origins might fairly begin, surely it is the discourse of race. ¹ For while the twentieth century has generally presumed that skin color is its determining factor, what actually complicates any analysis of racial discourse is, to begin with, the pervasive ambiguity — in the late sixteenth or late twentieth century — surrounding the use of the term "race" itself. As Frank Reeves puts it:

I may recognize others' discourse to be about race, when it employs a category which I am able to identify as having a referent corresponding to that designated by my own understanding of the term "race." It is not to be recognized solely by the occurrence of one particular linguistic symbol. ²