I just finished Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He was Black". I had seen the author years ago on Oprah just briefly before tuning into something, but I thought he was just another guy who’d found his “one drop” while doing genealogical research, which just registers a “meh” from me. Turns out it was much more interesting and dramatic than that. The book is a good read. (And he seems like a good guy, too).
Here’s what the guy–Gregory Williams–looks like, by the way.
I’ve always had a thing for “passing” literature, perhaps because my father has always been enigmatic to me. He’s like the father of Gregory Williams, a guy with just enough of a hint of dark Africa to make him look Italian or Spanish, but otherwise white-looking. As a kid, I remember my father blending in very well at the beach amongst white people; he was always just another pale sun-bather amongst all the others and I’d get lost trying to find him. I always understood that both of my parents were black (and proud, dammit!), but occassionally classmates would refer to me as mixed, to my befuddlement, and only later would
I realize they had mistaken the racial background of my father.
My father’s background is also enigmatic. My paternal grandparents were not the darkest berries in the bunch, but neither were they the lightest, though my paternal grandfather was said to look sorta-kinda “Arab” (which back in those days could have meant anything). But my grandfather’s mother was actually quite dark-skinned. What seems to be missing in the family story is the background of my grandfather’s father. I’m not sure my father knows any of this information, but if he does, it’s all been “hush-hush”. Anyway, he’s not the only one in his family who could pass. Pretty much all his siblings are on the “passing spectrum”, depending on the lighting in the room. 
Anyway, he’s a “passable” man, which doesn’t really mean that much today in the world of Mariah Carey and Derek Jeter. But for argument’s sake, let’s say it was 1950, and my father was about to launch off on his own (my father was still a kid in 1950, but let’s pretend anyway). Let’s say he was sick of the poverty he was forced to endure living on the wrong side of the color line and decided that he was going to take advantage of his physical features and live as a white man.
The requirements of this transformation:
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He’d have to move far from his hometown, a small place where everyone knew everyone else. All the blacks would know he was black, and all the whites would know too. And if they didn’t know immediately, eventually they would find out. So he’d have to leave and go far, reducing any chance he’d have of bumping into the “wrong” person.
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He’d have to keep his “black” family a secret if he wanted to reap the benefits of whitetitude. Which would mean, no family photos or visiting relatives. He would have to rewrite his narrative so that he was an orphan or a product of a dysfunctional, estranged family. His white friends would never get to know his “true” background.
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He’d have to lie to his girlfriends and eventually his wife. We’re talking the 1950s and 1960s. Miscegnation was still a non-ironic word back in those days. Even if he told his wife his secret and she was fine with it, they would have to lie to her family and to any future offspring. Which would mean that essentially my father’s family “back home” would never get to know his new family. Once you tell the lie the first time, you’ve got to keep repeating it.
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He’d have to pray on his hands and knees that his children would not turn up with negroid features. If he’s smart, he would pass himself off as a swarthy white, particularly from an ethnic group known for kinky hair. Like Coleman Silk in The Human Stain does. Even still, it would be hard to explain away cocoa skin.
This, I think, is where the ethical dilemma really lies. If you’re a man passing yourself as white and your wife doesn’t know, then any “suspect” children will be an indictment against her integrity, not yours. You can play the innocent victim and cast her out as a harlot, while her protests go unheard. Or else, you reveal the ruse and the marriage disintegrates anyway. It’s a game of Russian Roulette. Yeah, you better pray that the children look white, and that their children look white. “Throw-backs” are not allowed in this cruel game.
But some would say that there is no ethical dilemma at all. You are not obliged to keep in touch with family or acknowledge them, even if they are loving people. Running out on a family you create is one thing, but running away from home doesn’t carry with it the same tragedy. And yes, you’re lying but only to subvert an unfair system, playing the cards you’ve been dealt the best you can. If the system is unjust, then why should you play by its stupid rules? If you look white, then why shouldn’t you be granted the benefits of whitedom? And if people assume you’re white without you even telling them, then really, what harm have you done? Nothing. And if you’re his child and you’re the one kid in the family who is readily identifiable as negro, big whoop. You are not entitled to “whiteness”.
So…what do you think? Do you think if my father had passed as a white guy, he would have been a jerk? Or would he have simply been smart enough to take the path of least resistance? What would you have done?
