Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 14:17 Post subject: Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many...
Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many black Americans
Sunday, October 26, 2003
By Monica L. Haynes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The young unkempt woman still in her pajamas shuffled into her 8 a.m. college psychology class and sat down next to Barbara Douglass.
"I'm sure glad there are no niggers in this class 'cause I can smell them a mile away," the young woman declared.
Because of her fair skin, Barbara Douglass of Wilkinsburg often witnessed -- but never tolerated -- racism directed at other people. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)
"There must be something wrong with your nose," Douglass replied, "because one's sitting right next to you and you can't smell me." Although Barbara Douglass never told anyone she was white, people see her porcelain skin and her silky hair and assume she is.
But Douglass, who lives in Wilkinsburg, is a 53-year-old black woman. She could pass for white but she has never tried, she said.
"Growing up, I knew of people who did, and I was even instructed not to say, at that time, that they were colored. In order to get their jobs, they had to say they were white."
The new film "The Human Stain," based on a novel of the same name by Philip Roth, provides a glimpse into the world of blacks so fair they can live undetected among whites.
Thelma Marshall knows that routine.
During the 1950s and early '60s, she did what her mother before her had done. What her grandmother and aunts had done.
She passed for white.
"One time I told a woman I was black, colored in those days," Marshall recalled. "She said, 'You won't get the job unless you pass for white.' "
So that's what Marshall did.
"I passed for white on lots of jobs," she said. "I had to be white to get the jobs."
It's what many fair-skinned blacks did during those times.
Marshall's remarks are without shame or remorse. She felt she did what she had to do. Still, it is a prickly subject, and the 76-year-old woman does not want to offend so she asked that her real name not be used.
Passing for white offered not only opportunities, but also the opportunities white people received. During slavery, it could mean freedom. There are many documented instances of fair-skinned slaves who posed as white to escape. In modern times, it meant being able to vote in the South. It meant a job in the office rather than a job cleaning the office. It meant schools with the latest equipment and books, instead of dilapidated buildings and out-of-date texts. It often meant better housing. It meant being treated with respect, not disdain.
Barbara Douglass recalls the difference between going out with her white college friends vs. her black college friends.
"We went to a show, about six of us [black students]. The manager came and sat behind us. I asked him 'Why are you sitting behind us?' He said, 'I have to make sure you don't destroy anything.' "
Douglass said she told the manager that he had never sat behind her before.
His response was, "You never came with these people before."
Douglass, who the manager had assumed was white, encouraged her friends to leave the theater rather than be insulted.
The mind-set was "if you're white and you associate with African Americans, you're no good, either," said Douglass, who attended Clarion University during the late '60s and early '70s.
Dr. Edward J. Hale chose to follow the example of his parents, accomplished educators Harriet and William J. Hale. Edward Hale "adored and respected" his father. The proud son says, "He chose to remain black. He got to be a college president." (Bill Wade, Post-Gazette)
Dr. Edward J. Hale chose to follow the example of his parents, accomplished educators Harriet and William J. Hale. Edward Hale "adored and respected" his father. The proud son says, "He chose to remain black. He got to be a college president."
When she was a young child, her parents didn't emphasize racial differences.
"I just figured people came in different shades," she said.
But when the subject came up in her dance class, the 8-year-old Douglass approached her mother, who explained to her about race and racism.
"We are a child of God first. We are human beings first," Douglass remembered her mother saying.
In fifth grade, she learned that the United States is a melting pot, and she declared to her mother that she would be a melting pot.
Her mother decided it was the perfect definition, seeing as how her ancestors were Cherokee, black, Dutch, German and Irish.
Maybe all blacks would have defined themselves that way given the chance. Since black people first came to the New World in 1619, they've mingled and mixed with every race and ethnic group here.
It is not just the fair-skinned blacks who can lay claim to that melting pot definition. Those blacks who have the mark of Africa in their features and skin tone also have multicultural ancestry. They just can't pass.
Most blacks were never afforded the luxury of defining themselves. After the Civil War, Southern whites, not wanting this swirling of races to get out of hand and seeking to keep the white race as pure and powerful as possible, instituted a rule that anyone with "one drop" of black blood was black.
That spurred even more fair-skinned blacks to cross over and escape Jim Crow laws that kept blacks in the shackles of second-class citizenship.
Interestingly, many whites, if they traced their blood line or had their DNA tested, would find they have black ancestors.
In a 1999 piece for Slate, writer Brent Staples cites a 1940s study by Robert Stuckert, a sociologist and anthropologist from Ohio State University.
The study, titled "African Ancestry of the White American Population," indicates that during the 1940s, approximately 15,550 fair-skinned blacks per year crossed the color line. The study estimated that by 1950, about 21 percent or 28 million of the 135 million categorized as white had black ancestry within the past four generations.
Stuckert predicted that the numbers would grow in subsequent decades.
Marshall never thought to pass permanently, although she had family members who did.
Some fair-skinned blacks with "good hair" and keen features did not pass but did "the next best thing" by marrying others with fair skin. This was a way to keep kinky hair out of the family and light complexion in.
"For generations, my mother's side and my father's side married fair so they could get jobs," Marshall said. "My great-grandfather had a barbershop, and he passed for white, and he had only white customers in his shop."
But for many fair-skinned blacks, it was about more than getting jobs. There was a mind-set among some, especially the black middle class, that celebrated and sought to preserve their proximity to whiteness.
Some social organizations, fraternities and sororities admitted only fair-skinned blacks or those who could pass the "paper bag test," meaning they could be no darker than a brown paper bag.
To this day, Marshall, indoctrinated into such thinking as a child, would have preferred that her children marry white or at least very light-skinned people.
"All my children married black, much to my regret," she said. "I would have preferred they married white. ... It's still an advantage to be white."
State decides for you
Sometimes blacks used their fair complexion not for personal gain but to circumvent discriminatory practices. For example, in the 1940s, blacks who looked white helped integrate Lewis Place, a neighborhood in St. Louis, Mo.
Like many cities during this time, Lewis Place had covenants that prevented blacks from buying homes in certain neighborhoods.
But in the '40s, fair-skinned blacks would purchase homes on Lewis Street and then transfer deeds to darker-skinned black people who had actually bought them.
Famed NAACP chief executive Walter White's light skin allowed him to investigate lynchings and race riots in the 1920s. White, who was raised in Atlanta, under Jim Crow, remained an NAACP officer until he died in 1955.
For nearly a century, just who was white or black depended upon what state that person was in. Between the 1890s and 1950s, the peak period for blacks passing as white, every state had its own racial designation, said Wendy Ann Gaudin, a history instructor at Xavier University in Louisiana.
Gaudin has interviewed mixed-race people in Louisiana who passed for white as part of study she conducted on that subject.
A person could be born white in one state and be designated black in another depending upon the racial laws in that state, said Gaudin, who also is a Ph.D. candidate at New York University.
During the antebellum period, enslaved black people were referred to as negroes. Then there were free people of color, who generally had mixed racial heritage and were born free to free parents. Free people of color could be brown with European features, light with African features and everything in between.
"They were not looked upon as so-called negroes and of course they weren't equated with white, either," Gaudin explained. "Society had a place for them."
They were generally in the building trade. The women were mostly domestics. Some were slave owners, others staunch abolitionists.
Louisiana's Creoles were known as free people of color, or Les Gens de Couleur Libres. Defined by their European, Native American and African ancestry, they enjoyed a preferred status no matter what their complexion.
"Creole is not a race. It is a blended ethnicity and a blended culture," Gaudin explained.
"They were accustomed to freedom as their condition, not to slavery," said Gaudin, who is a Creole. "In many cases they did not relate to African-Americans who were slaves."
However, after the "one drop" rule was instituted and Jim Crow became the law of the land in the South, things changed. Often, they would move and cut ties with family members, especially the ones who could not pass.
The law aimed at these "white Negroes," as they were sometimes called, actually forced more of the very racial mingling it sought to counter.
"Once these laws were [enacted], passing made more sense, and it became more necessary," Gaudin said.
Some who passed
In her 2002 memoir, "Just Lucky, I Guess," Broadway legend Carol Channing revealed that her father, George Channing, was a light-skinned black man who passed.
Wendell Freeland, a Squirrel Hill lawyer and civil rights activist, never considered passing as white, although he witnessed others passing to get into barred theaters or stores. "That was just casual passing," Freeland says. "I knew people who crossed over." (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)
Channing said she grew up singing gospel songs with him and did not know this was anything out of the ordinary for white people.
When she was 16 and about to go off to college, her mother told her about her father.
"My mother announced to me I was part Negro," Channing writes. "I'm only telling you this because the Darwinian law shows that you could easily have a black baby."
A noted case of passing in recent history is that of Anatole Broyard, longtime literary critic for The New York Times.
Born black and raised in black neighborhoods in New Orleans and Brooklyn, he passed for white for decades because he did not want to be labeled as a Negro writer, he had said, but simply a writer. Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Afro-American history department at Harvard, chronicled Broyard's brilliant career and secret in a New Yorker essay that was included in his 1997 book, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man."
For years, Broyard sidestepped rumors of his ancestry and would credit his skin tone to a very distant relative who may have been black. Even in the waning days of his life, his body withered by cancer, he denied his wife's request to tell his children of their true heritage. They met Broyard's darker-skinned sister, Shirley, for the first time at his memorial service in 1990.
No identity crisis
Unlike Broyard, Shadyside's Dr. Edward J. Hale never sought the advantages of whiteness his complexion could have provided him.
He's a retired staff member of Western Pennsylvania Hospital, served as chief of medical services and acting director of professional services at
the Veterans Affairs Department Medical Center on Highland Drive, and he has taught at the University of Illinois, Howard University, the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Hale, 80, said he followed the example of his father, William J. Hale, founding president of Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College, now known as Tennessee State University.
Hale had come from a family that had accomplished much by living as black people.
His goal was to do the same.
"I've always been fond of my dad, loved and adored and respected my father," Hale said. "He chose to remain black. He got to be a college president."
His mother, a graduate of Fisk University, headed up the business department at Tennessee State. She, too, was fair enough to pass, as were Hale's siblings.
His sister, who earned a master's in French from Columbia University, married a man who could not pass, Hale said.
"But they had a very positive marriage as black, and they lived happily," he added.
His brother "used to float back and forth between being white and being black," he said. "He did that for work."
Why didn't Hale?
"I chose black because I have a black identity. I grew up in an era where we pushed Negro as being capitalized," he said. "We had a heritage, and it was something important."
His parents emphasized being proud of who he was, excelling at something, making a contribution to society.
After getting his bachelor's degree at Tennessee State, he entered Meharry Medical College in Nashville, graduating third in his class in 1945. Two years later, he earned a master's in physiology from the University of Illinois.
"As a fair-skinned black, I could pass for white, but you couldn't get to be outstanding as a white because if you got to be too outstanding, people would look into your background," Hale said.
When he came to Pittsburgh in 1955 to serve as chief of medicine for the VA Hospital, he knew people would assume he was white.
They soon learned differently through his stand on issues and his friendships with other blacks.
Hale and several other black doctors formed the Gateway Medical Group, now called Gateway Medical Society. He was active in the National Medical Association and helped bring their convention to Pittsburgh.
"I had to make an identity for myself, to let people know who I was," Hale said.
Gaudin said it was easy for well-educated light-skinned people to take what is considered the high road by maintaining their black identity. Poor, uneducated folks with the same complexion faced a different reality.
"These were people who used their physical appearances because, in many cases, that's all they had," Gaudin said. "They weren't wealthy. In many cases, they felt this was their greatest, most valuable resource."
Unbreakable family ties
Attorney Wendell Freeland remembers a decade or so ago when he and his wife were reading in the newspaper about the fast rise of a young man who was white.
In the ensuing conversation, Freeland's wife noted that her husband was smarter and much more on the ball than the young man and should have reached the same career peak.
Freeland recalls his daughter saying to him, "You've got nothing to complain about; you could have [lived as] white."
Theoretically, yes. Freeland says he can fool even those black people who swear they can detect another black, no matter how fair.
Consciously, Freeland said he could no more pass than his brown-skinned brethren.
"I never thought about it," said the 78-year-old attorney. "My family ties were so great."
Freeland, who came to Pittsburgh in 1950, grew up in a segregated community in Baltimore.
"I learned by the time I went to Howard [University] that I looked different [from most black people]. I was not different."
As a college student, he encountered blacks from the British West Indies and other places who passed to go to the movies or to shop in places where blacks were not welcome.
"That was just casual passing," Freeland said. "I knew people who crossed over."
He remembers years ago that a high school friend was visiting Pittsburgh and looked him up. Freeland invited the friend to visit him at his office, which at that time was Jones, Smith and Freeland. But the friend did not want to come by until late evening.
"I was a Negro, and he was a Negro, and he was passing for white, and he didn't want to be seen with me," Freeland said. "That probably happens to many Negroes who pass, and I don't know how they can stand it."
Freeland, who lives in Squirrel Hill, has spent a lifetime utilizing his considerable talents for numerous social and civil rights causes.
He served as senior vice president of the National Urban League and was a member of the search committee that selected Vernon Jordan to lead that organization in the 1970s. He's been on any number of boards, including those of Westminster College, University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and he had been chairman of the board of governors for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.
As obvious as the European portion of his ancestry is, Freeland said it was never a source of great pride or interest to him.
"I'm more proud of my great-great-grandmother's manumission [emancipation] papers than any drop of white blood," he said.
"I have to tell you my complexion has certain advantages. I learn a lot about white people by being the only Negro in my group," Freeland said, "though I make it a general rule in certain places to announce that I'm black today because I don't want to hear any off-color stories.
"It doesn't bother me if somebody passed and had a life that was more successful and happy. I'm successful and happy, too."
Books about passing
1. "Passing" by Nella Larsen (F)
2. "Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson (F)
3. "The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White" by Henry Wiencek (NF)
4. "The House Behind the Cedars" by Charles Waddell Chesnutt (F)
5. "Slaves in the Family" by Edward Ball (NF)
6. "Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family, 1820-1920" by James M. O'Toole (NF)
7. "Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class" by Lawrence Otis Graham. (NF)
8. "The Sweeter the Juice" by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip (NF)
9. "Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black" by Gregory Howard Williams (NF)
10. "Caucasia" by Danzy Senna (F)
F = Fiction; NF = Nonfiction -- Compiled by Monica Haynes
Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 14:35 Post subject: Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many...
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My mother announced to me I was part Negro," Channing writes. "I'm only telling you this because the Darwinian law shows that you could easily have a black baby."
Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 14:51 Post subject: Re: Passing: How posing as white became a choice for many...
G-Man wrote:
Where do people come up with this [Black baby myth] foolishness?
You know, that is a very interesting question. This myth appears in times and places lacking an ODR (the antebellum deep south, for instance). And you even see it in places lacking an endogamous color line (like Latin America). It may spring from the observation that in most populations (those somewhere between Nordic-pink and Bantu-brown) about one child in four is darker than both parents, and one in four is lighter. But the idea that two clearly European-looking parents might have a definitely African-looking child is sheer fantasy.
It does make you wonder. When and where did this notion first arise? Why is the mirror-image myth unknown? (That two clearly African-looking parents might have a definitely European-looking child.) Is the assymetry due to European colonization and exploitation? Did ancient Greeks think that Greek parents (of distant barbarian ancestry) might have a barbarian child? The question is worth investigating.
Last edited by fwsweet on Wed 19 Oct 2005 20:22; edited 1 time in total
When I see and hear of people such as these tell about their pride in Blackness, I take it much more serious (and truthful) than someone that looks like Michael Clark Duncan. Of course, the latter is proud to be Black if he has no other choice, but when you have a choice (literally) and choose to remain "African-American" I respect that more.....
The same Michael Clark Duncan that was in The Green Mile?
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Of course, the latter is proud to be Black if he has no other choice.
Girlfromthenc,
If you could, please elaborate further on this comment. I'm not at all familiar with this actor (haven't read about him or seen him interviewed) and am curious as to why you used him as an example.
I have great respect for the people interviewed as well... They are successful, happy and at peace. My only issue with the article, is the very racist assumption that whiteness means "pure" and that blacks as a "race" naturally "come in many colors". When you talk about "light-skinned blacks", and those who can "pass as white, you're talking about a group of people of mixed origin. But, for some sick reason it's a Cardinal sin to mention it. The people interviewed in this article are clearly predominantly European in ancestry on a DNA level, BUT proudly black/African-American when it comes to their self-indentification based on their upbringing, the racist history of this country, their personal experiences with "race", etc... And this of course is their right. It's their choice and they're happy with it.
Predominantly white bi/multiracial individuals who choose to self-identify as white or bi/multiracial instead of black/African-American however, desearve the same respect and don't desearve to have their personal choice maligned, ridiculed, or called a lie.
And that's just what's done when you talk about "passing" as...
Joined: 15 Oct 2005 {Posts: 76 } Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 22:19 Post subject:
Quote:
It does make you wonder. When and where did this notion first arise? Why is the mirror-image myth unknown? (That two clearly African-looking parents might have a definitely European-looking child.)
I remember my high school sophomore year world history teacher remarking on the stupidity of the ODR. She, a German-Austrian American, asked why isn't the opposite true, why doesn't one drop of white blood make one white. Sparked a very interesting debate within my very multicultural class. That was one of many events that year that led me to now identify as 'mixed' or 'multiracial'.
As far as why the mirror-image myth is unknown, here's my guess. I think it is unknown or seen as unlikely because African blood as the stigma of being tainted, not European blood. So that myth (of a possible black child from two white or mixed white parents) seems to serve as yet another intimidation tactic and more fearmongering to keep people 'in line'. Don't want to have a throwback child? Don't mate with an African-American! When and where it was created? Who knows as is the case with other urban legends it's not like it's documented. But I would guess that such a notion began to rise once laws were created that codified the one-drop rule and people really had to begin to chose which side they were going to be on.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 22:28 Post subject: Only in the U.S.A.
Hi,
What an weird world is the U.S.A. I believe there have not been a more crazy society since the Bizantine Empire.
White people claim they are not what they look like. Above all, it seems whiteness is a very important club that deserve people try to "pass" into it.
That idea is really ridiculous. Imagine that the important club were the one of the "small people". Tall people would be excluded. Now imagine tall people trying to passing like small people.
Or thin individuals trying to passing as fat people.
Yes. The one drop rule seems to be very much like the "blue-blood" idea in Europe. Something that nobody sees but that you can catch at the first sight when is there.
And these are the developed countries that are supposed to be the leaders of the world. What a shame
I preffer the "third world" fashion that considers people just people, and the color of skin only as a factor between many that define the aspect of the individuals. Race is natural used to sing a song. In Spanish of course.
The same Michael Clark Duncan that was in The Green
Girlfromthenc,
If you could, please elaborate further on this comment. I'm not at all familiar with this actor (haven't read about him or seen him interviewed) and am curious as to why you used him as an example.
Yes, the same Michael Clark Duncan that was in the Green Mile. Honestly I don't know how to explain what I meant any clearer. What I mean is that many times people take pride in something if they have no choice in the matter. Then there are people who are flat out proud of their "hertiage" anyway, even when they don't have to be!
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I have great respect for the people interviewed as well... They are successful, happy and at peace. My only issue with the article, is the very racist assumption that whiteness means "pure" and that blacks as a "race" naturally "come in many colors". When you talk about "light-skinned blacks", and those who can "pass as white, you're talking about a group of people of mixed origin. But, for some sick reason it's a Cardinal sin to mention it. The people interviewed in this article are clearly predominantly European in ancestry on a DNA level, BUT proudly black/African-American when it comes to their self-indentification based on their upbringing, the racist history of this country, their personal experiences with "race", etc... And this of course is their right. It's their choice and they're happy with it.
Predominantly white bi/multiracial individuals who choose to self-identify as white or bi/multiracial instead of black/African-American however, desearve the same respect and don't desearve to have their personal choice maligned, ridiculed, or called a lie.
And that's just what's done when you talk about "passing" as...
Felicia
I know! We go over this "I have the right to identify as White' all the time in this group. Basically its done daily! Yet at the same time "we" try to argure that logically there is no such thing as a "light skin Black" and that people who don't look completely West African are SUPPOSE to identify as Mixed race! If they don't "they hate Whites" or "are ashamed of their White blood" or "One Droppers" themselves.
We also advoid any information that we simply DON'T WANT TO HEAR. Like the fact that the average White Americans is only .7% Black in hertiage. Not even a full 1%. It seems that since historically Octaroons, Quadroons and every other Negroid mix in America has not been valued nor considered "equal" to that of the White/Caucasian that we must now attempt to make White Americans as a whole this "impure" people.
Zsane, I get completely what you're trying to say. I've given this idea of the Mixed White quite a lot of thought. The idea/goal is to prove to Whites and racists that I'm just as White as you (and hopefully this will lead to the spiral down belief that they have no right to mistreat Americans of African descent). The exact same thing is done throught Latin America (this isn't new).
I personally won't feel any better by forcing myself to believe that people .7% Black have "Mixed impurities". This is like claiming someone as your 23th cousin! This is so far out there that it can't even be taken as a joke![/b]
Posted: Wed 19 Oct 2005 22:57 Post subject: Re: Only in the U.S.A.
oevega wrote:
Hi,
What an weird world is the U.S.A. I believe there have not been a more crazy society since the Bizantine Empire.
White people claim they are not what they look like. Above all, it seems whiteness is a very important club that deserve people try to "pass" into it.
That idea is really ridiculous. Imagine that the important club were the one of the "small people". Tall people would be excluded. Now imagine tall people trying to passing like small people.Omar Vega
The human desire to be "White" in general is something I couldn't even began to describe! All I know is that when someone passes up this golden oppurtunity its newsworthy, its a spectacular, and its unheard of!
I've always found it ironic how Europeans have traveled the world and conquered and performed so many atrocities on sooooooooooo many people and in turn those same people's only desire is to become White themselves! In their way of thinking, becoming Whites too will finally signal the end of discrimination and persecution (by Whites).....
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 00:21 Post subject: Re: Only in the U.S.A.
oevega wrote:
Hi,
What an weird world is the U.S.A. I believe there have not been a more crazy society since the Bizantine Empire.
Black people that can pass for white (meaning people with african-american families), are very rare, and the average american would be just as shocked and confused as you to meet such a person. So our society and definition of "blackness" is not that "crazy", and the vast majority of black people are genuinely "black"- consistent with how they would be considered in Latin America and abroad.
In my life time I have known or met less than 50 such persons, and they are generally afluent. A few notable current examples I can think of are Congressman G. K Butterfield, distinguised lawyer and former president of Lincoln Center Gordon Davis, Detroit City Council woman Sharon Mcphail.....and some more that I cant recall.
Butterfield...whos is also a member of the CBC
McPhail...... (although at times she doesnt look white)
Davis....hes Alison Davis's Son
Last edited by Phil345 on Thu 20 Oct 2005 00:58; edited 1 time in total
My only issue with the article, is the very racist assumption that whiteness means "pure" and that blacks as a "race" naturally "come in many colors".
"Black" people do come in different colors; its not a racist assumption at all. I dont understand the desire to limit the "black race" to just dark people. And I'm not talking about people that look European (like the examples in the article), or persons significantly of mixed heritage who looked obviously mixed; i mean the average lighter skinned black person.
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Predominantly white bi/multiracial individuals who choose to self-identify as white or bi/multiracial instead of black/African-American however, desearve the same respect and don't desearve to have their personal choice maligned, ridiculed, or called a lie.
Felicia
They get the same respect. Nowadays the only people like that who are regarded as "black" are because they identify as such. I cant think of any context where a mixed race person that looks white would be pressured to call themself "black". Thats just doesnt happen.
Its more likely that a person like that would be told that they're not. For example Nicole Richie staunchly identifies as "black", and nobody takes her seriously. I remember in an interview with Norm McDonald he kept telling her that shes not black, and she got offended; black people usually react the same way to Nicole.
"Black" people do come in different colors; its not a racist assumption at all. I dont understand the desire to limit the "black race" to just dark people. And I'm not talking about people that look European (like the examples in the article), or persons significantly of mixed heritage who looked obviously mixed; i mean the average lighter skinned black person.
If you're talking about black/African-American self-identified people(but genetically bi/multiracial whether acknowledged or not) who are light-skinned and/or straighter haired because of their distant (and sometimes recent) non black ancestors you are correct. These people DO come in different colors.
The term light-skinned black "makes sense" and is logical to an American mind IMO because of the ODR that has been so entranced historically in this country. This mindset is so deeply set into peoples minds.
Many of us here at this group (at least the American members) have been raised to view ourselves - depending on our age - as Negro/Colored/black/African-American/Light-skinned black. Some of us still do, others don't.
Outside of America, in Europe, Latin-America and ESPECIALLY in Africa, bi/multiracial people are considered just what they are. People of mixed heritage.
Everyone knows that the enslaved African ancestors of today's Americans of black and biracial decent, Brazillans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, etc... were not "light-skinned". They were from West Africa and were uniformly dark, with afro-textured hair, and negroid features. They weren't from Somalia, Ethiopia, or Eritrea and therefore did not have the caucasian features, curly hair, and tanned skin that is sometimes observable in these East African populations.
There is photographic documentation of what the slaves looked like and there was no "variety" colorwise.
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They get the same respect. Nowadays the only people like that who are regarded as "black" are because they identify as such. I cant think of any context where a mixed race person that looks white would be pressured to call themself "black". Thats just doesnt happen.
I wish this were the case... It HAS lessend, I'll give you that. BUT it most certainly does still happen to some people. When it comes to some historical figures, it's done posthumously.
Last edited by zsana on Thu 20 Oct 2005 14:13; edited 10 times in total
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 13:05 Post subject: "Posing" as "white or "black"
Actually, the people in the article (created to accompany Brooke Kroeger's book on "passing) ARE "white." They are "passing" as lighter versions of "black." This usually happens because they have been told, from childhood, that terrible things will happen to them if they dare assume a "superior" (implied) "white" identity. They are exposed to folklore, gossip, literature, media, etc. condemning the "passer" as something worse than a serial murder or child molester.
Joined: 15 Oct 2005 {Posts: 76 } Location: Chicago, IL
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 16:44 Post subject:
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Outside of America, in Europe, Latin-America and ESPECIALLY in Africa, bi/multiracial people are considered just what they are. People of mixed heritage.
This reminded me of an experience I had in Australia eleven years ago. My elementary school dance troupe traveled to Sydney for an international dance conference and three of the teachers there were black South Africans. We got to talk to them at length and they asked us why Americans who are clearly biracial or multiracial people say they're African when they (in the eyes of these black South Africans) didn't have any close ancestors from Africa and weren't even born in Africa themselves. The teachers weren't trying to be offensive but they were genuinely confused about this.
My host family, Irish-English Australians, didn't understand why my blond-haired, green-eyed, European featured classmate Susan, more than any of the rest of us, identified as black when she was as white as them. I'm darker than Susan and yet they didn't understand why I also then identified as black African-American.
This reminded me of an experience I had in Australia eleven years ago. My elementary school dance troupe traveled to Sydney for an international dance conference and three of the teachers there were black South Africans. We got to talk to them at length and they asked us why Americans who are clearly biracial or multiracial people say they're African when they (in the eyes of these black South Africans) didn't have any close ancestors from Africa and weren't even born in Africa themselves. The teachers weren't trying to be offensive but they were genuinely confused about this.
James Baldwin in his book 'Nobody Knows My name also writes about this. He knew a gentleman in France who as American and a so-called "light-skinned black' and the Frenchmen were constantlty asking him why on earth he would call himself black. They were just confused about it. It didn't make sense to them.
I don't think it makes sense to many people outside of the U.S.
I don't think it makes sense to many people outside of the U.S.
I suspect that the source of the confusion is that for U.S. biracial individuals, their endogamous group membership is, in practical reality, as voluntary as ethnicity or religion. But most Americans persist in describing such choice in biological terms. As someone in this forum recently suggested, a medium-brown person who calls himself "Hispanic" has merely chosen an "ethnicity," but if the same person calls himself "Black," then he is somehow, mystically, of a biologically different "race," thus confering greater legitimacy to the self-applied label. Although even foreign children can see that this makes no sense, Americans take it very seriously indeed, and demand that everyone else follow suit.
For example, if the same individual in France claimed to be a Zoroastrian or a Ba'hai, it would not confuse anyone because all agree that religious choice is not biological. Similarly, the person could claim to be a socialist or monarchist without raising doubts. The problem is the weird U.S. insistence that everyone agree and accept that "racial" choice is not really choice at all, but biologically determined in some mysterious and intangible way.
The only similar confusion that I have seen overseas has been when an Englishman insists that you can always tell an Irish Catholic from an Irish Protestant on the basis of their distinct "racial" features.
Last edited by fwsweet on Fri 21 Oct 2005 01:25; edited 1 time in total
The problem is the weird U.S. insistence that everyone agree and accept that "racial" choice is not really choice at all, but biologically determined in some mysterious and intangible way.
You hit the nail on the head. Aren't Americans something like 4% of the earths population? YET, most think they're "experts" and speak universally
when it comes to this racial business. Many, speaking in absolutes as if personal choice never enters the equation when it comes to the racial self-identification of mixed heritage people. Some even trying to export and apply racist American concepts like the ODR to other people in different countries against their will. It's sheer arrogance...
I am in NO way accusing anyone here at this group of doing this, BUT it is done. Often, by the intelligentsia/cultural elite and supposedly educated scholars.
Posted: Thu 20 Oct 2005 22:55 Post subject: Choices and No Choices
Frank said:
Quote:
I suspect that the source of the confusion is that for U.S. biracial individuals, their endogamous group membership is, in practical reality, as voluntary as ethnicity or religion.
I disagree. When you read the biographical statements made by mixed-race people who have "chosen" to be "black," they nearly always state:
1) They had no choice but to be "black" because of how they look (Halle Berry's excuse),
2) Partial black ancestry or the "one drop" rule (Gregory Howard Williams)
3)Because they were reared to believe that "passing" was a terrible thing and they were to uplift the "black race" (Adrian Piper, Judy Scales Trent).
On being biracial:
It's not a choice you make. For me to sit here and say, 'I feel white,' somebody would try and commit me somewhere. When people see me, nobody ever thinks I'm white. No person in my whole life has ever thought that I was white. As I've gotten older people have thought I was Mexican or Chicano or Italian even. But never white, and not connected to anything... Kids are cruel. When I was little some kids left Oreo cookies in our mailbox. A couple of times kids would call me zebra, but that's kids trying to understand how my mom could be white. They're spewing out the views of their parents; they often don't even know what they're saying.
Scales Trent, like most mixed whites and other nonblacks who believe they have to be "black," polices herself and tells whites to observe the ODR even when they don't want to:
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" I remember one time in particular, after the cab I was in crashed into the car in front, then backed into the one behind. A policeman stopped to help. As he was taking down my name and address, I noticed that he had checked the 'white' box. 'Officer,' I said politely, 'you made an error on your form. I am not white. I am black.’ He gave me a long, bored look, decided not to discuss it, and said, 'Sure, lady. If you say so.' If I say so? If I say so! As if it were my idea! I was enraged at his assumption that all of this—the categories, the racial purity laws, the lives that are stomped, mangled, ruined because of those categories and those lawsüwas based on my say-so. If I said so, we would do away with all of itüthe sickness and fear, the need to classify as a way to control, the need to make some appear smaller so that others can appear larger. 'If I say so' indeed."
Quote:
From the issue dated January 27, 1995
Chronicle of Higher Education
At the Racial Dividing Line
In a series of new books, academics question America's concepts of race
By Robin Wilson
Greg Williams was riding a Greyhound bus headed for Muncie, Ind., when his life changed forever. The 10-year-old boy had grown up in Virginia, attending whites-only schools and swimming in whites-only pools. But on that bus ride in 1954, with his father and his brother, Greg learned the truth.
For years, his father had been "passing" as white. But in Muncie, he and all of his relatives were considered black.
"Life is going to be different from now on," Greg remembers his light-skinned father telling him and his brother that day. The boys' mother had left them, and they were headed to Indiana with their father to start over. "In Virginia you were white boys," said his father. "In Indiana you're going to be colored."
Gregory H. Williams is now 51 years old and dean of the Ohio State University College of Law. His book about his life as a boy caught between two worlds has just been published. Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black (Dutton) tells how people treated a black boy with white skin and straight hair.
Mr. Williams's father was born to a black woman. She became pregnant in a relationship with a white man for whom she worked as a maid.
During his teen-age years in Muncie's housing projects, black boys who didn't know of Greg Williams's heritage taunted him with cries of "white motha------." And white strangers shot him looks of shock and anger when they saw him dating black girls.
"The story is more than Greg Williams," the law dean said in an interview. "I was trying to write a story of a boy who was trying to cope with a world in which everyone wanted to make life as hard as possible because he did not fit in a category."
Across the country at the State University of New York at Buffalo, another law professor has just completed a book about not fitting in. Her story is not as dramatic as Mr. Williams's. Judy Scales-Trent grew up in a middle-class family with a strong black history. But her great-grandfather was white and she has very light skin. Her book, Notes of a White Black Woman (Penn State Press), describes her bitterness at life on the racial dividing line. The book will be published in March, and she will be traveling that month to promote it.
"I wrote to make sense of my life," she says in the book's introduction. Her experience brings the meaning of race into question, she says. "Because I am a black American who is often mistaken for white, my very existence demonstrates that there is slippage between the seemingly discrete categories 'black' and 'white.'"
In an interview, Ms. Scales-Trent said American society believes that maintaining black and white as distinct racial groups serves a purpose. "I think race is created in this country to separate black and white," she says. "I think of them as terms of war."
Both Mr. Williams and Ms. Scales-Trent are considered black when their universities take account of the race of their employees. But they are also part of a growing number of mixed-race people who are waging a war of their own against America's concept of race. Many people of mixed racial background are writing about their lives.
Both Ms. Scales-Trent and Mr. Williams say that despite their mixed backgrounds, America did not allow them to claim both white and black heritage. They were defined as black.
In the United States, anyone who has any black ancestors is considered black, according to F. James Davis, who recently retired from teaching sociology at Illinois State University. Mr. Davis's 1991 book, Who is Black? One Nation's Definition (Penn State Press), says America defines people with black ancestors as black, even if they also have white ancestors.
Ms. Scales-Trent's book begins with entries from a diary she started in the late 1970's when she was in her 30's. She describes how white people who did not realize she is black used racial slurs in front of her. She tells of the guilt she has felt at not looking black enough. She wonders: Has she avoided discrimination -- been able to rent an apartment and catch a cab -- because she looks white?
Ms. Scales-Trent worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington for 11 years before becoming a professor at Buffalo. She has endured racism as a black professor, she says, just as other blacks have.
In the book, she recalls when one of her white male colleagues at Buffalo was denied tenure. He came to her office to give advice, telling her that publishing was important. But then he concluded, "'You don't need to worry because you're black. You will get tenure anyhow.'"
Like other black professors, Ms. Scales-Trent says, she has wondered whether he was right and whether she would ever know for sure.
"My struggle is probably similar to that of other black professors," she writes. "But that is an important point. For it is important to know that white black Americans are still black, and that once white Americans understand that you are black, they construct your racial identity the way they always do -- by treating you badly."
For his part, Mr. Williams watched the reconstruction of his racial identity happen almost overnight. It showed him that race was as much about economics and privilege as about color.
One day he was white, living in a comfortable home in a whites-only neighborhood of Virginia. But after James A. Williams's once-profitable tavern near a military base went out of business at the end of the Korean War, he felt forced to move with his sons to Indiana to find work. There, Greg Williams became black. His father could find only low-paying jobs -- partly because he drank and partly because of his color -- and the family lived in the toolshed his Grandma Sallie called home.
In a chapter of his book called "Learning How to Be Niggers," Mr. Williams writes about his early years in Muncie. He barely got enough to eat each day and bought his clothes at rummage sales.
Mr. Williams's woes were compounded by his father's heavy drinking. James Williams often disappeared for days or months. Finally, Greg Williams and his brother, Mike, moved in with a black woman in the neighborhood who agreed to raise them.
Mr. Williams's father was an alcoholic, but he was also intelligent and charming. He encouraged Greg to pursue his dream of becoming a lawyer. Mr. Williams earned high grades in school. But his brother Mike wasn't as studious. He eventually fell in with gamblers and hustlers, and then lost his sight in a shooting incident.
Mr. Williams believes his brother suffered because their mother abandoned them. While the family was still in Virginia, she fled with her two youngest children. The boys didn't hear from her for 10 years.
Life became easier for Mr. Williams when he enrolled as a freshman at Ball State University. His teachers did not discriminate against him because of his financial situation or his background. "I was able to run into a lot of teachers who were interested in my intellectual ability rather than immobilized by my heritage," he says.
Mr. Williams's book ends with his years at Ball State, but his achievements didn't stop there. He went on to earn a law degree and a Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University.
Mr. Williams has spent his career in academe, first at George Washington, then at the University of Iowa, and now at Ohio State.
In each job, says Mr. Williams, he has made a commitment to helping minority students. He is particularly proud of his record at Iowa, where he was in charge of recruiting minority professors and students to the law school.
During his 16 years at Iowa, the number of minority students in the law school's entering class increased by about 25 per cent.
None of the minority students was resentful because he didn't look black, he says. "Most of the black students I dealt with took great pride because of the position I was in," he says.
Mr. Williams married his white high-school sweetheart, and they live in a predominantly white suburb that Mr. Williams says they chose because it is convenient to the law school. The dean has not been able to spend much time at the school lately, however. He has been talking to Tom Brokaw for a segment about his book on NBC's Dateline and is scheduled to start a 10-city book tour next month. He says he knew for a long time that he would write a book.
"I am grateful to have been able to view the world from a place few men or women have stood," he writes at the book's end. "I realize now that I am bound to live out my life in the middle of our society and hope that I can be a bridge between the races, shouldering the heavy burden that almost destroyed my youth."
The most famous and highly respected member of the faculty observed me for awhile from a distance and then came forward. Without introduction or preamble he said to me with a triumphant smirk, "Miss Piper, you're about as black as I am."
Cultural and Ethnic Differences from Blacks
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My family was one of the very last middle-class, light-skinned black families left in our Harlem neighborhood after most had fled to the suburbs; visibly black working-class kids my age yanked my braids and called me "Paleface." Many of them thought I was white, and treated me accordingly.
These exchanges are extremely alienating and demoralizing, and make me feel humiliated to have presumed a sense of connectedness between us. They also give me insight into the way whites feel when they are made the circumstantial target of blacks' justified and deep-seated anger. Because the anger is justified, one instinctively feels guilty. But because the target is circumstantial and sometimes arbitrary, one's sense of fairness is violated. One feels both unjustly accused or harassed, and also remorseful and ashamed at having been the sort of person who could have provoked the accusation.
My maternal cousin, who resembles Michelle Pfeiffer, went through adolescence in the late 1960s and had a terrible time. She tried perming her hair into an Afro; it didn't prevent attacks and ridicule from her black peers for not being "black enough." She adopted a black working-class dialect that made her almost unintelligible to her very proper, very middle-class parents, and counted among her friends young people who criticized high scholastic achievers for "acting white."
Most blacks don't accept the ODR; the Middle Class blacks and Mulatto Elites promote it. Most Blacks are not "Mixed" in that they don't see a range of racial types within the family as normal or "black":
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In my experience, these rejections almost always occur with blacks of working-class background who do not have extended personal experience with the very wide range of variation in skin color, hair texture and facial features that in fact has always existed among African-Americans, particularly in the middle class.
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So Suffering Test exchanges almost never occur with middle-class blacks, who are more likely to protest, on the contrary, that "we always knew you were black!" – as though there were some mysterious and inchoate essence of blackness that only other blacks have the antennae to detect.
Piper confirms that she is forced to be "black" or believes that she is.
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My eminent professor was one of only two whites I have ever met who questioned my designated racial identity to my face. The other was a white woman junior professor, relatively new to the department, who, when I went on the job market at the end of graduate school, summoned me to her office and grilled me as to why I identified myself as black and exactly what fraction of African ancestry I had. The implicit accusation behind both my professors' remarks was, of course, that I had fraudulently posed as black in order to take advantage of the department's commitment to affirmative action. It's an
extraordinary idea, when you think about it; as though someone would willingly shoulder the stigma of being black in a racist society for the sake of a little extra professional consideration that guarantees nothing but suspicions of foul play and accusations of cheating.
Sense of shame against "passing" created by family and internalized
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Although both of my parents had watched many of their relatives disappear permanently into the white community, passing for white was unthinkable within the branches of my father's and mother's families to which I belonged. That would have been a really, authentically shameful thing to do.
Piper: raised to believe that a decent white would not want to be family to a "Negro"
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I was very moved, and also astounded that a white person would voluntarily acknowledge blood relation to a black. She was so free and unconflicted about this. I just couldn't fathom it.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 22 Oct 2005 13:39 Post subject: Re: Only in the U.S.A.
Phil345 wrote:
....
Black people that can pass for white (meaning people with african-american families), are very rare, and the average american would be just as shocked and confused as you to meet such a person. So our society and definition of "blackness" is not that "crazy", and the vast majority of black people are genuinely "black"- consistent with how they would be considered in Latin America and abroad.
In my life time I have known or met less than 50 such persons, and they are generally afluent. A few notable current examples I can think of are Congressman G. K Butterfield, distinguised lawyer and former president of Lincoln Center Gordon Davis, Detroit City Council woman Sharon Mcphail.....and some more that I cant recall.
Butterfield...whos is also a member of the CBC
McPhail...... (although at times she doesnt look white)
Davis....hes Alison Davis's Son
Hi,
These people in the pictures may have non-white ancestors. But they are white. A white person is the one that fit some phenotypical arbitrary criteria. A white person is the one that most people would say he is one.
The funny thing is that most white people, light blond included, have lots of ancestors that are not white.
If you even see a white Latino, blond blue eyed, you should be almost certain he had non-white ancestors. The same happens in Finland and Norway anyways were many people have oriental ancestry.
A white person is a person that look like a stereotype; nothing else. genetics has anything to do with it.
I have seen whites from India wearing turbants. I have seens white from Arabia wearing tunics, there are native americans from the Amazon and Polinesians that look white. I am also convinced certain Japanese look more white that we usually accept.
White is only a label for certain apparience, nothing else.
'
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