There were two:
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin.
Soul Sister by Grace Halsell.
Because in America, if you have a black parent, then you’re black. And that means your black parent could have had a white parent and a black parent, and would still be black. And that black grandparent could have had a white parent and a black parent, but would still be black.
So anyone with any parent who is socially defined as black is therefore black as well, regardless of how what mix of African or European or Native American ancestry the person had.
It’s not equally true, though. Most African-Americans probably have some white ancestry within the past couple of hundred years, but it would be very surprising if the same for most people in, say, Cameroon.
In that linked photo, he kinda looks black, but look at this one:
In what way does he look black? At all? He kinda looks like my brother. Certainly his skin tone gives no indication. Nothing about his features says “black”.
Of course, it may be something that a mixed race person has more experience and more incentive to learn about, so is better at, but I see no indications in that picture, which is more commonly how he is seen.
Despite the red hair and fishbelly white complexions, my brother and I also have veeerrry curly hair (his is actually more kinky than curly,) broad noses, and thick lips. Truly, my brother looks like a photo negative of the actor Morgan Freeman (who looks to me like he also has some Anglo and Native ancestry, just like we do.) And Grandmother always thought that my father’s family was low-class, and she’s racist as all hell, so us “low-class” grandkids must be the result of our mixed genes, in her mind.
And obviously, we have more than one black ancestor - at least one on Grandmother’s father’s side, and one or more on Daddy’s side…
His ancestry is more white than black. He looks more white than black, and he will have been reacted to as a white person his entire life. I don’t know what he identifies as, but absent that information it wouldn’t be strange to say he’s white.
FWIW, a couple of my siblings have remarked that, since they discovered they weren’t entirely white, other people have said aha! that explains the nose (not flat and broad, but a North African strongly-bridged nose) or the hair (dark and curly). Both of which everyone previously always assumed meant we were Irish because they are typical Irish traits too.
I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in people guessing anyone’s ancestry beyond a generation.
Is that really still true? I think that, in America, you are Black if you look Black (which really means mixed African and European ancestry, most of the time) or if you self-identify as Black. If I’m 1/32 Black and self-identify as White, are most people going to call me Black? Some will, I’m sure, but will most?
James Roday, who plays Shawn on USA’s “Psych”, changed his stage name to Roday from Rodriguez, in part because there was another James Rodriguez in SAG, but also because he didn’t want to be typecast in only “Hispanic” roles.
Do you realize the bolded portion is highly self-absorbed? You need to prepend both of those assumptions with “to me” for them to remotely factual statements. Please consider that an entire subculture of Americans might consider people members of their race different than how you perceive it.
Why do you think being white contradicts being black?
This is definitely in line with my experience as well because I have had people talk to me in every non-english language under the sun when they mistakenly think I am mexican/arab/persian/brazilian. I don’t claim to always be 100% accurate, but I can detect mulattos better than white people who tend to be oblivious to such things.
You happened to find a high contrast picture, everything in that picture is super bright. In this profile picture he looks a LOT like me (racially only, I’m obviously not movie star handsome 
), I have the exact same nose and I’m pretty sure his hair grown out looks even more racially ambiguous just like mine. I cut mine pretty much the exact same length specifically because my hair soon grows into a mullet-afro hybrid, it isn’t pretty. Not kinky enough to be a real afro, not white enough to do white hairstyles without chemical assistance.
To be fair he flips back and forth picture to picture from white to ambiguous looking, but he looks particularly part black here to me:
It’s definitely been a hobby of mine since early childhood mostly because I was a teenager before I knew any other mulattos personally so I would look for it in strangers.
Here’s what I think is going on wrt the “Black-dar” of Whites and Blacks.
Me, your average White guy, is only going to see someone like Wentworth Miller on his own, and I’m going to just assume he’s White. I’m not going to see him with his cousins at family reunions.
But your average Black person is going to see people like WM in Black neighborhoods and groups fairly often, so they are going to be more sensitive to the idea that guys like him can be Black. The human brain being what it is, they will, over time, clue in on the subtle differences that mark him as having some African ancestry.
It’s not about Blacks or Whites being intrinsically more or less perceptive, it’s about our having different life experiences. As much as we like to think we are an integrated society, we are far from that. Go to any public school with different races, and look at the lunch tables. Mostly segregated.
FWIW, I didn’t know Wentworth Miller had recent African ancestry until after I had watched “The Human Stain” and read about it on IMDB. I can see some features in him that are familiar, but they don’t jump out at me.
I have cousins who I am certain could fool me if I did not know them. When I go to family reunions, which is not often, it is still jarring for me to see them jumbled up with everyone else. And it is their mother, my aunt, who is black…not some far-off distant relative. So sometimes you can have more than a drop of “black” blood and still fool people.
So everyone has a different level of “expertise”. I’m probably better than an average white person at “spotting” the undercover sistas and brothas, while someone like rogerbox is better than me.
[/quote]
It’s not really that self-absorbed though, is it? A bloke with pale skin and blue eyes? Will he have had the same treatment as a bloke with dark brown skin and brown eyes? Maybe you mean looking beyond those aspects, but most people, of all colours, won’t. And it’d be hard to assign his facial features to any specific country; he’s just really generic.
Note also that I said ‘more white than black.’ Not ‘he doesn’t look black.’ I am not applying a one-drop rule.
And he is a member of my race. Or races, actually, if you want to get down to ancestry.
I didn’t say it did. The question was asked, how he could be seen as white, and I gave an answer. I can see how he could be seen as black too.
It’s self absorbed to assume that everyone uses your own metric for race, yes. The assumption is, I would treat him as white, therefore everyone does, and majority rules. Assuming you are white American this is akin to stating that the white definition of how to catagorize race is the right one.
I would say what gives him away as more than just white are his facial features (forehead and nose) and hair type.
Fair enough, I read your answer to read, he can only be seen as white and therefore not black.
My Phillipino step-sister always claimed she could spot any Phillipino at first glance. This surprised me, because the Phillipines is not exactly homogeneous, so I thought maybe a lot of it was down to body language or half-heard speech rhythms. But then, one time, when I was about 14, we were at an amusement park and a boy leaned down from an overhead trolley thing and shouted ‘Oy! are you Phillipino?’ because he’d spotted my step-sister. 
I’d really never considered before that you could tell people apart that well. I mean, I grew up in a fairly white town but in an unusually mixed part of it in a family that was unusually mixed - lots of different races intermarrying - but I also had no way of telling who was, say, Spanish rather than Greek. I still can’t tell them apart.
But having had a lot of students from some specific parts of the world, I could make a reasonable guess as to whether someone was Korean, Vietnamese or Japanese, or whether someone was Nigerian or Somalian, without them talking (there are some other peoples that I know well but still can’t tell apart without obvious signs). It’s in the bone structure. My students are also really good at guessing where someone’s from.
It’s just a vague guess on my part and nothing hinges on it, but it means I can kinda see what Rogerbox means about seeing someone’s ancestry by looking at their facial features (at least, I assume that’s what he meant - Wentworth Miller is pale with blue/grey eyes and you can hardly even see his hair, so it can’t be that).
But the thing is, Wentworth Miller is just SO generic. There’s nothing about him that speaks of any particular ancestry (even the eyes aren’t necessarily European). It’s one of the things that makes him stereotpyically handsome. It’s as if a committee got together and decided what makes a man handsome and actually came up with a good result for once.
Maybe a little off topic but I have a cousin who spent most of his life desperately hiding his Jewish ancestry. He and his sister are first cousins to my Mom and Uncle. The sister and her kids are reasonably close with my side of the family. No one in my generation has met the passing cousin. His wife knew the truth but his daughter didn’t find out until she was in her 30s. He thought that if it were known that he was Jewish, it would hurt him in the business world. He is very wealthy from starting a bunch of medical clinics. He’s a Republican country club WASP to all of his colleagues. His last name isn’t very common and sounds German but he changed his first name from Jacob to Jay.
His sister was forbidden to make any mention of his background to anyone if she was to continue her relationship with him. She maintained the fiction that she was a WASP who married a Jew to his daughter for decades. My Uncle travels a lot on business and likes to fuck with him by mailing him “care packages” of Jewish items from around the U.S.
I’m not American, and I’m also not biologically entirely white. I posted about this like three posts ago.
I mean that he wouldn’t encounter as much white-on-black racism as people with darker skin and eyes. That, basically, he’d get stopped less while driving a sports car.
BTW, how can you even see his hair?
Here are some pictures of Wentworth Miller and his family.
Interesting. There’s a whole lotta mixin’ going’ on!
So the way you define blackness is by receiving racism?
It looks exactly like mine, like I just said.
John Mace writes:
> 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.
Not in my experience. I distinctly remember talking in the late 1980’s about how a lot of Americans were proud of the fact that they were 1/32 American Indian.
That’s a cute story. I used to guess whether customers were Mexican or Filipino back when I was bored and worked retail. Then I spent enough time in the Philippines that “Mexican or Filipino” wasn’t a game, just an obvious matter of fact.
I think it’s a mix of a natural knack, and paying attention to these things. I can’t tell Japanese, Korean, Chinese or Vietnamese apart by looks even though I have a ton of asian friends. Most of my asian friends claim to be pretty good at it though.