1) What are the similarities and differences in systems of social classification in Israel and Louisiana? For Domínguez, what does this indicate about the "naturalness" of identities?

2) What is the Susie Phipps case about? Why is it interesting and important?

3) What are some of the competing ways that people have tried to define "race" in the Phipps case and in other instances?

4) What is the role of individual choice in determining social identities like "race"? What sort of limits are placed on individual choice?

5) Why are legal systems so concerned with delineating racial and other social identities?

6) What are the different bases for defining "Creole" in Louisiana?

1) What were the three categories in the tripartite system of social classification that characterized colonial southern Louisiana? Why did this tripartite system come into place and why was it so important?

2) How and why did the definition of "people of color" change over the course of time?

3) What are some examples of hypodescent (cf. Fish in C&C) in this part of White by Definition?

4) How and why did laws about marriage and concubinage change over time?

5) Who was Naomi Drake and what was her role in the history of social and racial identities in southern Louisiana?

6) What is the relationship between "nature" and legal systems?

7) What is the connection between laws about incestuous marriages and laws about interracial marriages? What are the implications of this legal system for issues of inheritance?

8) Which aspect of Domínguez's history of the law in Chapter 3 do you find most surprising and/or interesting?

9) What does the historical evidence in Chapter 3 suggest about the relationship between racial identities and socioeconomic class?

10) What were the underlying issues involved in the majority of the inheritance cases that Domínguez describes?

1) How and why did the meaning of "creole" change over time? To what did it refer during French and Spanish colonial periods? What about after the Louisiana Purchase? After the Civil War?

2) How did Spanish colonial policies foster the growth of an aristocracy?

3) Why was race irrelevant in determining creole identity in the antebellum period?

4) Why was the Creole/American dichotomy so important after the Louisiana Purchase? How did the growth of this dichotomy affect definitions of creole and creole identity?

5) What does Domínguez have to say about the origins of Mardi Gras in New Orleans and its relationship to Creole and American identities?

6) What factors led to the decline of the power and prestige of the Creoles in the middle of the nineteenth century?

1) What changed after the Civil War that made the Creole/American dichotomy less important and racial identities more important?

2) Why was there a shift from a ternary to a binary system of racial classification during this time period? What had to happen to allow for this shift?

3) How did creole identity begin to change or break down in the second half of the nineteenth century? How did white Creoles respond to these changes?

4) What factors suggest that Creole identity is not simply determined by ancestry?

1) Besides ancestry, what five criteria ("indexical markers") play a key role in determining a person's identity as Creole?

2) How do Creoles claim and maintain elite status within society? How does a person's occupation/labor help to reinforce or create social boundaries?

3) How do Mardi Gras krewes help to create or reflect social hierarchies and a principle of exclusivity?

4) Domínguez suggests that "it is a classic case of pragmatics in the long run determining semantics" (260). What does she mean by this? What are the chief pragmatic concerns that have helped to shape Creole identity?

5) Why does Domínguez claim that "Status, then, is frequently more of a determining factor in group membership than genealogical ancestry" (263)?

6) Thinking back to the ten characteristics of culture, can we say that Creole identity and racial identities in Louisiana are examples of cultural symbols? Why or why not?