# Who was the last person "outed" for passing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 19, 2011, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466 "2011-11-19T17:26:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/61 "2011-11-21T17:39:06Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Some Italian lastnames are Spanish in origin. Some Spanish lastnames are Italian in origin. Shocking, I know, it’s not like we have any common history or have spent more than 2000 years moving back and forth. And it’s not like the Spanish and Italian languages are related, or anything like that. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/62 "2011-11-21T18:04:23Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > At any rate, he doesn’t appear to have ever claimed that he had more than a small fraction of Indian ancestry. At various times, Churchhill has claimed to be 1/8th Creek, 1/16th Cherokee, and 1/16th Creek and Cherokee. And his university’s Research Misconduct Committee didn’t deem the claim that he used his ancestry to bolster acceptance of his work “unworthy of investigation”, merely that it was outside the scope of the investigation, which was about research misconduct, but does acknowledge that he received his tenure and promotion to full professor “apparently without going through normal review processes”. ---
**Author:** ![Raygun99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/63 "2011-11-21T18:06:48Z")
> [@rogerbox](#): > > The first time I ever saw Mariah Carey I assume she was what I would call “black”, which does not mean I think she is straight out of Africa, just at least partially a decendent of African American slaves. There was a joke on, I think, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, about someone being the person to discover that Mariah Carey was black. At the time, I remember thinking, “wait, there are people who don’t know that?” (White as white can be, here, FTR) ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/64 "2011-11-21T18:11:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I’m not counting someone who learns, accidentally, that they have Black ancestry. I’m only counting someone who knew they did, and purposely tried to hide it. > > As for who would count as being “Black”, I’d say use whatever convention was common in the state or area the person lived. > > I’m obviously thinking of the US here, but similar occurrences in other countries might be interesting. I’d rather avoid the whole issue of Jews in Germany, though, as that could easily be the subject for another thread. There wasn’t any “outing” to speak of, but my first husband’s family always kind of assumed there was some black ancestry in his dad’s side of the family based on some prominent features. When his grandmother died, it came out that she had some black ancestry and hid it. It’s interesting to note the difference in attitude between her generation and my ex’s: for her it was something to be ashamed of and hide, for him it was a case of “Really? Cool.” ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/65 "2011-11-21T18:41:47Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > Again, didn’t try to pass, but the fact that [Wentworth Miller](http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2007/specials/beauties07/beauties/wentworth_miller.jpg) (theeeeee hottest man in the world, right?) is black took me by surprise.. I’m sorry, but how could he possibly be called “black”? ---
**Author:** ![Dunkelheit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dunkelheit/32/248_2.png) [@Dunkelheit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunkelheit)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/66 "2011-11-21T18:46:43Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > I’ve always wondered how Obama gets off passing as the “first African-American President” when his mother Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas and was of English and Irish descent. I think you would be hard-pressed to find any African-Americans these days who don’t have ANY white ancestry at all, at all, especially ones of long-standing American ancestry. There’s been an awful lot of blending from the very beginning. He may be half white, but he is also half black, and since one parent is African and one parent is American, then I don’t see any problem with him calling himself African-American. 😉 Pretty much by definition. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/67 "2011-11-21T18:55:42Z")
> [@Jeneva](#): > > There wasn’t any “outing” to speak of, but my first husband’s family always kind of assumed there was some black ancestry in his dad’s side of the family based on some prominent features. When his grandmother died, it came out that she had some black ancestry and hid it. It’s interesting to note the difference in attitude between her generation and my ex’s: for her it was something to be ashamed of and hide, for him it was a case of “Really? Cool.” Yes. On a smilar note, I remember reading somewhere that it was astonishing how much the US population of Native Americans increased immediately after the release of _Dances with Wolves_. It was suddenly cool for your average American to claim Indian ancestry, whether real or imagined. A generation or so earlier, and few would be flaunting it. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/68 "2011-11-21T18:57:39Z")
> [@Jeneva](#): > > There wasn’t any “outing” to speak of, but my first husband’s family always kind of assumed there was some black ancestry in his dad’s side of the family based on some prominent features. When his grandmother died, it came out that she had some black ancestry and hid it. It’s interesting to note the difference in attitude between her generation and my ex’s: for her it was something to be ashamed of and hide, for him it was a case of “Really? Cool.” My parents didn’t tell me that my dad is 1/16 Cherokee until I was 28 and about to get married. My response was, “Hey, cool!” ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/69 "2011-11-21T18:58:22Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I’m sorry, but how could he possibly be called “black”? How would you call him white? ---
**Author:** ![svd678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@svd678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/svd678)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/70 "2011-11-21T18:58:49Z")
Something like what Robardin was asking, at least about passing in one direction, was the activist in the 60s who chemically darkened his skin so he could move in black circles. He wrote a book for whites telling about the experience. Sorry I can’t think of either name. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/71 "2011-11-21T19:03:15Z")
> [@svd678](#): > > Something like what Robardin was asking, at least about passing in one direction, was the activist in the 60s who chemically darkened his skin so he could move in black circles. He wrote a book for whites telling about the experience. Sorry I can’t think of either name. _Black like Me_ was the book. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/72 "2011-11-21T21:38:10Z")
It’s funny. I grew up in northern New Jersey, primarily during the sixties and early seventies. In those days in my small town, having Native American ancestry was a real attention grabber in a very positive way - it was exotic (it didn’t hurt that the family of kids best known for this were exceptionally attractive kids). I was very surprised when, at some point in my adult years, I realized that in some parts of the country this was considered a negative. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/73 "2011-11-21T22:08:47Z")
> [@Jeneva](#): > > There wasn’t any “outing” to speak of, but my first husband’s family always kind of assumed there was some black ancestry in his dad’s side of the family based on some prominent features. When his grandmother died, it came out that she had some black ancestry and hid it. It’s interesting to note the difference in attitude between her generation and my ex’s: for her it was something to be ashamed of and hide, for him it was a case of “Really? Cool.” Similar event in my own family, that I’ve posted here before: while researching one branch of the family tree, I found an 1816 marriage certificate listing one of my great x many grandmothers as “mulatto.” My grandmother was appalled: turns out that she really didn’t want to know quite that much about her father’s side of the family! It was especially funny to me and my brother, because Grandmother had spent our entire lifetimes sniffing at (denigrating?) our obvious black ancestry, which must have come from our father’s side of the family! (And it did, by way of a Seminole grandmother.) The rest of the family is just intrigued by the how and why of a second-generation German-American marrying a half black woman in south Georgia back then. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/74 "2011-11-21T22:17:43Z")
> [@Lacunae\_Matata](#): > > Similar event in my own family, that I’ve posted here before: while researching one branch of the family tree, I found an 1816 marriage certificate listing one of my great x many grandmothers as “mulatto.” My grandmother was appalled: turns out that she really didn’t want to know quite that much about her father’s side of the family! It was especially funny to me and my brother, because Grandmother had spent our entire lifetimes sniffing at (denigrating?) our obvious black ancestry, which must have come from our father’s side of the family! (And it did, by way of a Seminole grandmother.) The rest of the family is just intrigued by the how and why of a second-generation German-American marrying a half black woman in south Georgia back then. What sort of “obvious black ancestry” did you see? It would be strange for someone who had only one African ancestor 200 years ago (that’s almost 10 generations) to show any “obvious” evidence of that ancestry. As noted in another thread, it’s quite possible that you would not have inherited a single gene from an ancestor that far back in time. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/75 "2011-11-21T22:19:00Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Unless, of course, **Annie** was just making a joke and we’ve both been whooshed to death. I believe she was making the highly asinine argument that it’s wrong to consider Obama African-American/Black considering his mother is the whitest white who ever whited. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/76 "2011-11-21T22:26:42Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > I believe she was making the highly asinine argument that it’s wrong to consider Obama African-American/Black considering his mother is the whitest white who ever whited. Moderator Note **MeanOldLady** , if you want to take **Annie** to task for the statement do it in another thread, either in GD or the Pit. Let’s not sidetrack this thread. Colibri General Questions Moderator ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/77 "2011-11-21T22:35:18Z")
My bad. So anyway, the Estevez/Sheen family hid their Hispanicness for a while, in case anyone’s been living under a rock and didn’t know that. I’m pretty sure they’re completely white though, but the name Estevez made people nervous. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/78 "2011-11-21T22:37:54Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > My bad. > > So anyway, the Estevez/Sheen family hid their Hispanicness for a while, in case anyone’s been living under a rock and didn’t know that. I’m pretty sure they’re completely white though, but the name Estevez made people nervous. Martin’s parents were a Spanish father, Irish mother, both first generation Americans. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/79 "2011-11-21T22:42:58Z")
My Dad has passed for white his entire life, as did his mother. It was only a couple of years ago when his sister looked up their ancestry that it turned out that not only was his mother half-African (I mean black African-African, too) and half-Indian (or possibly Bangladeshi, due to boundary changes - her father was a ‘Lascar’) but he’d always known that. His mother somehow passed as white despite not being white at all; being born in the last decade of the nineteenth century in London, where there’s always been some mixing but not as much then as now, perhaps people just didn’t know what to look for. I only saw her when I was very young and she was extremely old, fat and ill, and the only race I saw in her was Walrus. Since the Aunt’s revelation it’s amused me that under the one-drop rule in some regions of the US I would have counted as black. (I think my Dad’s own ‘passing’ counts for the OP. Not that he was the last, but, y’know, interesting related family anecdote). ---
**Author:** ![gatorslap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gatorslap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gatorslap)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2011, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466/80 "2011-11-21T23:01:46Z")
> [@Jeneva](#): > > I think you would be hard-pressed to find any African-Americans these days who don’t have ANY white ancestry at all, at all, especially ones of long-standing American ancestry. There’s been an awful lot of blending from the very beginning. He may be half white, but he is also half black, and since one parent is African and one parent is American, then I don’t see any problem with him calling himself African-American. 😉 Pretty much by definition. That’s hardly an American thing. It’s equally true of black Africans in Africa – it’s not like there’s a river Styx separating North Africa from the rest of the continent. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-the-last-person-outed-for-passing/603466.md?page=5)