All I see when I look at him is imagined nudity and puppy dog eyes. :o
I think if you identify as white, that’s what you are, and black, and so on. And if you identify as both, that too. I mean, it just seems extremely backwards that other people have a say in what you ‘are’ based on what they see. Or think.
Racial identity is pretty complex, so I prefer to leave it up to the person. Also, the term ‘passing’ implies ‘imposter’, eg, you can’t be white if you have a single drop of something else in you because that signifies other-ness.
Bleeeh.
eta: What does ‘mixed’ look like? I always think ‘lighter’ brown.
Interesting you bring him up because he starred in a movie called the Human Stain, where he plays a younger version of the character played by Anthony Hopkins. The basic story is that Hopkins’ character is a college professor who gets busted for having “passed” throughout his life. It flashes back to when he was in college and was dating a white girl and lost her when her parents found out he was black, and how his mom insisted he say he was white so he’d have more opportunities.
It’s a good premise, and the actors are good, but the movie lacks a certain something. That’s probably why no one’s heard of it, lol.
It’s definitely not “passing” since he openly admits it, but Slash of Guns & Roses fame is of mixed race (black mother, white father).
More to the point, though, I think Vin Diesel is another one who still keeps mum about what his ethnic background is because he doesn’t want to be typecast.
Alba may be a Spanish name but it’s uncommon enough that I think most Americans don’t automatically recognize it as Spanish.
The controversy with Alba was not that she ever specifically denied her ancestry. I think it was more that she avoided the subject. She never referred to herself as being Mexican-American or Hispanic or Latina.
What finally pushed the issue were Hispanic critics who called her out for never mentioning her heritage. When asked about this, Alba made a mistake. She responded that she considered herself an American and didn’t particularly regard herself as Hispanic. This got some negative reaction. herehereherehere
Alba has apparently figured that out and has since done some damage control. She now talks about reconnecting with her Hispanic heritage.
It’s not a big deal now, since overtly racist policies have largely been extinguished.
But it is not a personal matter when the deception involves potential danger to others. Someone who does not disclose their black ancestry–especially if it’s recent black ancestry–risks having children who do not appear as white as they do…kids who cannot pass. In a racist society, this can have a detrimental effect on the entire family.
It also involves abandoning family. Passing individuals usually “disappear” because having contact with the folks back home could “out” them.
During times of oppression, a person who passes subverts the system–which I find admirable–but they do so by taking advantage of the system for their own benefit–which is not quite as noble. But I do think there is a difference between sitting in the white waiting room just because you can, and being someone like J. Edgar Hoover, who was a racist’s racist probably because he was all messed-up in the head in regards to his own ancestry.
Many people in this thread are confusing “doesn’t look like the race they are claiming” and “passing”. The former involves lying or lying by omission. None of the people mentioned here–with the exception of maybe Vin Dinsel–have ever equivocated in public about having black ancestry. Like BeaMyra, the moment Mariah Carey came out on the scene, I knew the girl was black (biracial). All the other black people I know–with the exception of my clueless father–knew she was black. White people seemed to be slow on the uptake…but that’s not the same as her “passing”. And just because she didn’t start off with hip hop does not mean she was “racially confused”. She got her start in R&B, singing back-up vocals for folks like Brenda K. Starr of “I Still Believe” fame. Despite both women not looking straight outta Africa, that song does NOT get played on Top 40 radio–but on your local R&B stations.
Why have the Italians in Trenton adopted Spanish given names and surnames? The Italian forms would be “Giulio” and “Santi”, respectively, though I don’t think “Santi” is a particularly common Italian last name. (It would at any rate be more common than the foreign-sounding “Santos”.)
My father’s family did. It was the family secret that they had native american blood. Not to be spoken of and apparently with good cause given…
My father is only 1/8th, but about 10-12 years ago, my mother made an angry statement* about how she would have NEVER married him if she had known he was (racial slur I cannot recall).
At Thanksgiving dinner. To her kids. In front of my sister’s friend from Nigeria. :eek:
And no, she wasn’t drunk. She was just MEAN and STUPID.
These days in Trenton, he’s almost certainly Hispanic. Very heavy Latino population these days, especially in South Trenton. The Italians have mostly moved to the burbs.
Aside from all the off-topic bickering in this thread about what it means to be of a certain race, I find it interesting that there is so little evidence of people passing. There must have been tens of thousands of people trying to “pass” in the late 19th and early 20th century, but it doesn’t seem to be very easy to find info about particular people doing so. Seems like there should be any number of “scandals” as people were outed.
Or maybe my google-fu is not up to snuff on the subject. I was surprised at the paucity of information on wikipedia concerning this subject.
Has there ever been a known case of “white” people passing as someone black passing as someone white, like in Langston Hughes’ short story Who’s Passing For Who?. A story that illustrates exactly how complicated things get when questions of racial identity and privilege get tangled with folks who are in between…
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 this might be due to two things. If you’re able to pass, it’s not all that difficult to do so if you just move away from your hometown and keep a low profile. Someone who keeps a low profile is not going to attract much attention and therefore unlikely to be outed by anyone with an axe to grind. And if they are outed, it’s not like their crime will be printed up in the papers. They’ll just be gossiped about, shunned, or kicked out of clubs.
I’d imagine that the only time a true “scandal” would occur is if someone in the public eye was outed, but someone determined to pass would never place themselves in the public eye in the first place. Someone like Lena Horne could have never passed as white because everybody and their mama in her hometown would have known her roots.
The other reason is that I don’t think “passers” were as common as we would think they are. Not just because of racial (and family) loyalities that kept light-skinned blacks from defecting, but also because of the burden of having to live a lie. The psychic strain that comes from pretending to be white and enjoying the privileges that come with that should not be underestimated.
That said, one of these days it’ll come out that Bob Barr is a black man.
This isn’t quite an example of a white man passing for black:
Johnny Otis is solely of Greek ancestry. He’s never lied to anyone about his ancestry, but he’s spent his entire career in the music business working with African-Americans and his entire adult private life with African-Americans. Nearly everybody who’s met him assumes that he’s a light-skinned African-American.
Obama’s appearance would clearly classify him, in most other people’s eyes, as African-American, or at least of clearly mixed ancestry. Thus, his experience of America would be one in which he was treated by most others as African-American and not white.
*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. *
I don’t know if it was uncommon or common. But I can speculate that most people light enough to pass did so not on a permanent basis, but only when situations merited it. Walter White, for instance, had literally a drop of black “blood” while being one of the biggest fighters for civil rights back in his day. But during the Atlanta race riots, he used his whiteness to escape the violence. When investigating lynching activities, he used his whiteness to get the inside scoop straight from the devil’s mouth–literally acting as an “undercover brother”.
I was having a conversation with my office secretary about this topic–every black person seems to have a tale of someone “passing” in their family. She said a great aunt of hers passed on “accident”. She was hired by a dry cleaners and was eventually put up in the front to work the register. Everyone at the place loved her, so she didn’t think to question it. One day her brother–who had darker skin–came by looking for her when she wasn’t there, and let the staff know to mention that he had come by. Thus “outting” her to her co-workers. It was a shock to everyone, but the woman was not fired. She was just moved to the back again.
I imagine this kind of stuff happened all the time. It has happened to my father numerous times. How do you document such incidents? Unless it’s a famous person, it’s not like it’s going to be in the paper.
I forgot to add: I also imagine that even people of stature who were “outed” would not make the news. Their careers would just silently crumble around them, with no one but the “knowers” none the wiser. Why? Because even back in the day, racists cared about how they looked. First off, no one likes to look like a fool. A secret negro in your midst is an embarrassment, especially if you’re on the record saying he is a helluva guy. Secondly, no one wants the world to see how irrational their hatred is. If you’re going to love someone one day and then hate them the next just because you find out that their great-grandmother was black, you know that’s crazy and unfair. So you’re going to be hush-hush with it. Only the uncouth would go in front of the press and unapologetically expose their racism.