This essay examines the symbolic significance of blood in the twentieth century and its role in determining the composition of a national community along racial lines. By drawing parallels between Nazi notions of blood and racial purity and historically contemporaneous U.S. policies regarding blood and blood products, Polsky reveals a disturbing proximity in discourse and policy. While the Nazis attempted to locate Jewish racial essence and inferiority in blood and instituted eugenic measures and laws forbidding racial admixture, similar policies existed (...) in the U.S. based on the so-called one drop rule that systematically discriminated against African Americans. (shrink)