Sarah Lewis’s latest book, The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America, is a masterpiece of historical detective work, uncovering one of the most damaging lies in American history. In the 19th century, images of Caucasian people captivated the American public but also showed that the place from which we derive “Caucasian” for whiteness was not white at all. Cultural and political figures ranging from P. T. Barnum to Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois to Woodrow Wilson recognized these fictions and more, exploiting, unmasking, critiquing, or burying them. Speaking with historian, author, and artist Nell Irvin Painter, Sarah Lewis shows how visual tactics have long secured our distorted regime of racial hierarchy—and offers a way toward dismantling it.

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