IN FALL 1991, I LED AN AMERICAN STUDIES COURSE ENTITLED "RACIALISM and Inter-racialism in American Culture and Thought." My goal was to attack current popular beliefs that in American society race is an unchanging biological and historical reality, which determines unyielding social divisions and animosities. I challenged the idea that in the United States diverse humans could be assigned to exclusive categories; instead, various peoples' ostensible racial blood lines and their cultural creations had become mixed on the North American continent. It rapidly became apparent, however, that students did not need inspiration about how to connect with peoples different from themselves. They wanted an examination of the dominant racial concept in American culture: