I think the controversy over so-called "passing" (i.e., for a "white"
person) is central to understanding "race" in America. For a silly
suggestion with no reality at all, "race" has wreaked unbelievable harm for
a much longer time than the 200 years of our American post-colonial history.
And "race" runs on amok, threatening this century, too, with its hypnotic
defamation, its seductively suggesting that something sinister lurks in
human racial heredity, more than meets the eye. I hope the following
will help to deconstruct "race," by shedding light on it from a viewpoint
too often obscured in a moralizing fog of self-righteousness and recrimination.
I think Susan Courtney's Genders
discussion, below, of the movie censorship dilemma created by the character
Peola for the 1934 motion picture, Imitation of Life, is
one starting point for discussing "passing."
As Ms. Courtney's Genders (No. 27, 1998), "Picturizing Race"
essay shows, the former Hollywood Production Code Administration's (PCA)
commitment to preventing any depiction of "white" interracial sex on screen
(1927-1956) was challenged by novelist Fannie Hurst's Peola character. In
the Imitation of Life movie, Peola (played by "black"-identified
actress, Fredi Washington) "passed." And 1930's era censors experienced
utter confusion simply identifying Peola. Was she a "white-looking" "black"
girl wishing she were "white," who became "white," if only for a while? Or
was she just one of two Negroes? It seemed that regardless how perfectly
archetypally "white" Peola may be, she could be identified by the morality
gatekeepers only as a type of Negro. Peola's mother in the movie was
prominently "black." But under the late "One-Drop Rule's" tyranny (i.e.,
the persistent, moribund, militant myth that any "black" ancestry makes one
sub-Saharan African -- hereafter African, unless otherwise indicated), it
inevitably would be the same all over again for any "white" child of
Peola's. "One-Drop" made no exceptions for either remoteness or hue of any
"black" ancestry. In principal "black" identity could never "wash away,"
since "black" people can "be any color."
Clearly, it was not merely a tinge of dark complexion which 1930's "white"
America abhorred in "passers" such as Peola. Indeed, she was comely and
white, not dark at all. As we shall see, it was this lack of "warning" from
Peola's perfect-looking "whiteness," rendering her especially "dangerous."
And Peola "passing," not wearing her "blackness" reassuringly on her sleeve,
so to speak -- as we shall see -- evoked strange, troubling apprehensions.
As the Courtney essay shows, movie censors in the 1930's resented even
acknowledging the possibility of "white" interracial sex. Marriage was
irrelevant. Thirty of 48 U.S. states then prosecuted such pairings as a
felony, anyway. The values of the day stipulated that "white" interracial
sex -- more to the point -- procreation, was a highly sensitive moral issue.
One PCA researcher noted his finding no information, because, he concluded,
the subject had always been "taboo." "Black"/"white" interracial sex,
procreation, was the most abhorrent of all. Therefore, the PCA censors,
reflecting "white" America, were deeply troubled by Peola's mere existence
regardless the movie story line emphasized that her father had been a "very
light-skinned black man." And again the censors squirmed over the
fictional, unseen father, too, because ultimately he had acquired his
"lightness" from some "white" fictional ancestor. The powerful Universal
Studios producing Imitation of Life (based on Ms. Hurst's 1933
best-seller novel by that name) offered, in its negotiations, to present
Peola as a genetic freak, with an offer of proof it was not medically
impossible for a "white" child to emerge from a line of "blacks." (That
idea was dropped!)
What was the "problem"? Marriage, as said, was harshly criminalized
as a deterrent to interracial procreation, as was fornication. So, although
Imitation of Life depicted no forbidden romancing or "miscegenation"
per se, Peola with her "black blood" physically embodied the true object of
the disgust, revulsion, or morbid fear underlying both the felony
anti-miscegenation laws and movie censorship of the time. In a penultimate
sense then, young Peola was the "thing" which censors attempted to
protect "white" moviegoers' sensitivities from, in the name of film morality
and decency. Few decency limits today approach this intensity of public
unacceptability short of filming actual murder, animal torturing, and child
pornography.
From the middle eighteenth to twentieth centuries, encompassing the time
when Imitation of Life was made (1934), it was popularly believed the
"white" and "black" "races" occupied "top" and "bottom," respectively, of
separate zoological racial "types" in a top-down design, or some
evolutionary "ladder." In a paradigm of intra-human social "speciation,"
racial "inequality" was an article of faith (rationalizing clearly a caste
system). Analogies in Nature abounded. Two or more subspecies of most wild
mammals had been identified. And valuable, prize-winning, artificially
pure-bred animals defined the cheapness of mongrels and mutts. Man
domesticated his distinct breeds of livestock. Purposely bred animals
clearly demonstrated inequality of coat (e.g. sheeps' wool) or of inbred
behavior (e.g., sheep dogs), reflecting the breeder's craft. Just so, a
Virginia superior court judge, writing 25 years later, seemingly
comprehended God as a pastoral breeder of people:
In retrospect it is not clear how much of the blame for Jim Crow "white"
racialism belongs at the feet of rank and file "white" people, even their
popular leaders' feet. This uncertainty was broached in Imitation of
Life, when Peola's mother, Delilah, seemed unable to fix blame for the
"mean," "cruel" identity burden her daughter was obliged to accept -- as
when the "white" woman, Bea's, daughter, Jessie, called Peola
"black," and made her cry:
America's mesmerized belief in the reality of "race" had sad consequences.
The postbellum ninteenth-twentieth century Jim Crow discriminatory
laws and customs methodically carried out a logical purpose. They
maintained racial segregation in the South, where most "blacks" then lived,
in order to eliminate or at least structure interracial contacts. The Jim
Crow segregation mentality was in full swing in 1934 when Imitation of
Life was made.
I think the pronouns "we" and "they" underlay "white" racism.
"White" America repeatedly through
history had difficulty digesting the different immigrant waves from
Europe (Irish, Polish, Italians, Greeks Armenians, Jews, etc.), due to
defensively interpreting the meaning of "we," identifying who was
also of the "white race."
Thanks to the spurious little zoological "race" labels European thinkers
pinned on Mankind in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, "whites"
effectively were color-struck -- prevented from seeing people like
themselves over the metaphysical, separating "race lines." "Whites" found
it easier, under the "us or them" "race" paradigm, to accept
chocolatey Arabic or Hindu alien immigrants from far corners of Blumenbach's
Caucasian "geographic race" map (or Latinos denying any "black blood"), than
to share school classrooms with "white" or "black" fellow Americans
"tainted" "non-Caucasian" by "one drop" of the "awful" sub-Saharan "blood."
This could only be explained as social speciation, mapping an outlandish
conception of geographic "race" zoology. Other evidence abounds that this
surreal vision of defending the "refined," "supreme white" gene pool from
zoological vandalism (i.e., as if "white" was being defaced or debased by
pilfering inferior polluters, greedily trespassing from beyond the racial
"dividing line" where they belonged, allegedly) both defined "whiteness" and
charged its xenophobia. What else might explain some hospitals into the
1940's keeping donated blood supplies, even mother's milk, carefully
segregated by "race"?
This is why I think abhorrence of "race mixing" -- morbid fears around race
zoology -- ultimately drove America's historical racism. Even colonialist
avarice sought out the exonerating benediction of racial superiority.
"Whites," by 1930, as will be explained, felt the fitness (purity) of their
bloodline was threatened, and they had gotten themselves in the position
where their ethnic identity was defined by purity. The key to "white"
attitudes then was the perceived "inequality" in competing human "types" --
"us or them" -- siege bunker mentality. (Compare the plight of
so-called "triracial
isolates," protesters often identifying "white." In remote Appalachia
they suffered inbreeding diseases, resisting racial integrity laws declaring
them "black.") Of course, "inequality" would have been an unthreatening
non-issue were "black" and "white" human beings not the same
species, and hence perfectly fertile and fecund in one another's arms.
"White" people's whipped-up revulsion at interracial sex and procreation
took corporeal form in their vehement objection, in that period, to
"passing." They clearly were afraid. "White" people feared infiltration of
their community by undetected "carriers," such as young Peola, having
flowing in her lovely veins the dreaded "black" racial inheritance "gene"
from sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, "whites" feared "victimization" by
unknowingly marrying a "tainted" person such as Peola, "passing."
This fear of "genetic victimization" by intermarriage with a "white Negro,"
such as comely Peola, underlay "whites'" abhorrence of "passing." Mulatto
and Creole populations had been an American presence for centuries. Most
were descendants of generations of "white" planters' intercourse with female
slaves. One demographic consequence had been a slight broadening of the
legal definition of "white" person in the states of the antebellum South.
State laws varied, but generally, free persons with less than a fractional
one-eighth, sometimes more, of African "blood," had for years qualified as
legally "white" persons in the South. Even more "white" tolerance for
Indian "blood" was the rule, and some "part-blacks" had segued into that
in-between caste racial identity. Although "white" social intolerance of
any ancestral "colored blood" -- the run-up to a "one-drop rule" -- had
mounted since the 1890's, the state blood-quantum statutes continued
functioning as transracial conduits -- if narrow ones -- into the 1920's.
Consequently, no one knew how much "black blood" had quietly back-flowed
through these old statutory conduits, "passing" legally into "white."
Growing alarm about "white" racial integrity had both inspired and been
further raised, too, by the outrageously racist 1915 silent film, Birth of a
Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith. The uproar over the film had
led to the PCA's 1927 rule banning portrayal of interracial sex in film.
Concern for "white race" protection had reached fever pitch in the 1920's.
This, as said, was what enactment of Racial Integrity-style
anti-miscegenation laws (Va., 1924), and the Jim Crow era, were all about.
The unthinkable abhorrence of "black blood" (e.g., lurking in one's spouse,
children; God forbid in oneself!) stemmed from hoary pseudo-science
superstitions about human genetics -- namely, belief in the reality of
"race." (That's another thread, but consider the false breeding kennel
analogy mentioned above -- especially the absence of any kennel "walls" ever
separating human breeding populations.) To explore the personal insecurity
and horror which "passing" presented to "whites," suggested reading is Mark Twain's
1894 novel The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson. (Note that
the central character in the novel discovers "black" blood is in his own
veins, a realization which in his case is truly nightmarish. Afterward,
read these original
manuscript lines which Mark Twain omitted from the published novel. Why
did he delete them?) These were the associations so troubling that the
1930's PCA film censors tried earnestly to protect the sensibilities of
"white" moviegoers from the distress of seeing them personified on film by
little white Peola.
The "passing" "black" taboo still is with us, as socialite Ms. Jillian Sim's
self-expose, "Fading To
White," shows. Sim's story (i.e., her ancestors') reminds us that
"passing" is not typified by Mulattos and so-called "light-skinned blacks."
"White"-identified people may or may not know of a "black" ancestor. They
may not have heard of the "one-drop rule." They may be unsure what the term
Mulatto means. (Caribbean pirate? That's what I thought before IV.) Such
"white" "one-droppers" cannot be accused of disloyalty for "running away
from blackness" that they never had, or of "acting" what they are --
"white." (E.g., see "black"-identified journalist, Lonnae O'Neal Parker
reluctantly accepting that her cousin Kim
is a "White Girl".) But what continues "tainting" African
ancestry so that people still hide it? Do the same incentives and dreads
surround "passing." Or are different ones working now?
There has been a sea change since the U.S. Supreme Court's 1967 decision,
Loving v. Virginia, supra, 388 U.S. 1. Loving
overturned all the anti-miscegenation laws, and created a new constitutional
right to marry interracially. In creating a new fundamental freedom of
marriage right, the High Court overturned the "One-Drop" rule, too. In fact
the sweeping Loving opinion overturned the whole notion of
ancestral "blood"-defined "race" for purposes of abridging anyone's freedom
to marry. Sexual access/restriction seems to be so central to the "race"
concept that one might argue Loving invalidated "race" altogether.
In the wake of the Loving sea change "black" people (nowadays,
African Americans), object more vehemently to "passing" than do "white"
people. Polls indicate that only around 30 percent of the "whites" in
traditionally racist southern states still oppose "black/white" interracial
marriage. We don't know whether this minority would also feel victimized
married to a "passer." (Do "whites" still regard "black" as meaning
"one-drop" of African ancestry? Or do they only recognize a "black"
"visual race" -- the Canadian term?) But regardless how "whites"
might object, they have no legal protection anymore in the wake of
Loving. "Whites" since Loving are completely
exposed to social climbers concealing "black" ancestry -- to the "passing
hazard," Peola embodied. It stands to reason, "white" people's opposition
to "passing" has dwindled. Their "purity" means far less to them than it
did in the 1930's. They can do little to "protect" it. "Race" now is
deemed a "suspect classification," so that any law or remedy based on "race"
must pass "strict scrutiny" constitutionality review. (Translation: Even
rabid, dangerous, white supremacists recognize they're "doomed.") "Black"
people in the 1930's, by contrast, seemed more tolerant of "passing."
Perhaps they saw righteousness in such under-cover sorties against the
blatant Jim Crow racial discrimination legally directed against them then.
In this new century will the "white" people begin actively concealing "the
passers," protecting such persons (e.g, the late Anatole Broyard) from the
vehement denunciations by Soul Patrol Black Nationalists, seeking to "out"
"passers" -- trying to Shanghai them into accepting "black," uprooted
African identity?
Distinguishing "passing" from purportedly "pure white" racial identity in
the post-Loving world becomes difficult, an exercise in
vagueness. Peola, in the movie, Imitation of Life, earned herself
undying theater audience scorn by disowning her "black" mother (who
consequently died of a broken heart), so Peola could "pass."
"Black" people denounce "passing" nowadays, excoriating the Peola-style
break with family. But as said, since Loving that is an
obsolete argument. For instance, Ms. Lonnae O'Neal Parker's "White
Girl" cousin Kim, mentioned above, had grown up regarding herself
"white." Her "black" father, Ms. O'Neal Parker's maternal uncle, had never
questioned Kim's "white" identity. In fact, "we've never had a
conversation about race in my house," she said casually. (Not unusual
for "white" families, I might add.) But there clearly was no cutting
family ties. Kim knew who she was. For example, she described sucking in
her lips underneath a menacing KKK poster in a schoolmate's home as little
Kim nervously hid her "blackness" from the other child's "racist" dad. All
of Ms. O'Neal Parker's "black" consciousness indoctrination efforts (A.
Haley's "Roots" on videotape, etc.) were to no avail. Cousin Kim
proceeded right on self-identifying "white," notwithstanding everyone in her
"white" hometown knowing her daddy was "black." Kim's case shows clearly,
"white" people can no more force an identity upon someone against their will
than "black" people can; and noncommittal "whites" are less likely to even
try. It follows, the true reason for "black" objection to "passing" now is
political (even tribal). It boils down to: "You're either with us or
you're against us!" (The tenor of O'Neal Parker's article suggests
these words hovered on her lips.) Mulattos and multiracials striving to
build their new identity are targeted too, for the same reason. It is
apparent that "black" people, having found opportunities for growing
political power on the agar slant of their "race," are eagerly organizing,
rounding up "black troops," and pressing onward their campaign.
"Passing," in 1934, when Imitation of Life was made, was a violation
of the "one-drop rule" -- a felony in 30 states if intermarriage with a
"white" person resulted. "One-Drop's" ban on "passing" ostensibly protected
the racial "purity" of Caucasian "whites" from "white Negros" like Peola --
from anyone "tainted" with even "one drop" of "black blood" (i.e., African
ancestry, however remote). The U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving,
in 1967, overturned "race"-based marriage prohibitions altogether.
Loving expressly overturned "One Drop's" ban on "white"
interracial marriage, which at the time of the opinion was the "one drop"
racial definition's only remaining lawful purpose. The Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendment-enforcing civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965 already had
presumptively invalidated "race" as legal ground for discriminating
everywhere but the marriage alter/bed.
Continuing to apply the "one-drop rule," as "black" nationalists insist
society demands, means that the overwhelming
majority of African Americans today are "passing" -- identifying
"white." This conclusion follows from data presented by Slate staff
writer, Brent Staples. Staples described research done in the 1940's by
Ohio State University sociologist, Dr. Robert Stuckert, whose report was
filed in the U.S. Supreme Court with the Loving brief.
Stuckert's results had shown that by 1950 more than one in five (21%) of
"white" Americans had African ancestry within four generations (approx. 100
yrs. past), due to more than 330 years' intimate contacts (and "passing").
California's Supreme Court saw the wisdom of calling off the criminalizing
of interracial marriage (Perez
v. Sharp, 32 Cal.2d 711 (1948)), and by 1950 -- 16 years
after white "black" Fredi Washington played Peola, in Imitation of
Life -- Dr. Stuckert had shown that the "One-Drop" "anti-miscegenation"
laws had failed. He predicted the proportion of "white" people with
"black blood" (1/5 in 1950) would increase in following generations. (By
population math, "pure whites'" chances of marrying a "passer" are doubled
almost, with each generation.) That was half a century ago (4/5 today?).
So -- must the U.S.A. come out an African country ("black"); or can't we all
just "pass" for "white"?
George Winkel
The "passing" allegation has problems.
Surely children should know their whole family -- all their heritage. But
is it anyone else’s business if parents choose not to tell their children
about certain ancestors? Is there possibly a best time, place, or
circumstance when "white"-living people should disclose "black" ancestry to
small children, who are apt to spread the remarkable news to neighbors?
(This I’ve seen.) Might disclosure to children be best left to their
parents’ discretion?
Anatoly Broyard,
the late N.Y. Times book critic, drew posthumous criticism for
"passing," for his not even sharing knowledge of his "black" ancestry
with his children -- not until he was on his death-bed, that is. He chose
his time. He did disclose.
Jillian Sim
unhesitatingly tarbrushed all her dead ancestors "black" upon
discovering that her long-dead great-grandparents had crossed the
"color-line," and "passed" (and Sim’s grandmother, too, had just passed away
without disclosing what she very recently had uncovered). Two of three
generations preceding Sim had died without disclosing the "family secret" of
"black" ancestry to their descendants. Sim’s grandmother, father, herself,
and now her children, too, all had been living as "white," unware of their
seeming descent from one of Thomas Jeffeson’s "black" slaves (although not
from Thomas himself, or Sally Hemings). Moreover, at least three "white"
spouses had innocently married into Sim’s family. The widening circle of
affected parties was not limited to Sim’s children (i.e., Sim’s grandfather,
mother, and her own husband, all three presumably "pure white" partners,
were unaware too).
Broyard, and Sim’s grandmother, too, apparently both held off disclosing
"black" family ancestry to their descendants, although Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),
had long since decriminalized "black blood." However, before Loving
-- during Sim’s father’s generation and at all times before --
anti-miscegenation laws gave "passing" parents a felony-imprisonment
incentive to spare their children the incriminating knowledge of their
"black blood taint." (I.e., the common law mens rea doctrine was a
defense to anyone honestly ignorant that they or their spouse were
"One-Drop" "black.") Loving was a case of a "white" husband
prosecuted together with his "black" wife for "miscegenation." The
Loving married couple never "passed." But their case demonstrates
the powerful former incentive which existed for persons living as "white" to
"pass" totally -- conceal from their spouse and/or children, everyone -- and
die with the secret! That dismal legal disincentive was entirely
eliminated by the Loving decision. Loving legalized all
interracial marriages, including those contracted with/by "whites."
Loving thereby lifted the threats of the marriage’s being voided by
operation of law (turning the children into bastards), and potential felony
criminal prosecution formerly hanging over "passers," all their
descendants, and all existing and future "white" spouses marrying
into the family forevermore. It was a nightmare! Perhaps not everyone
fully realizes it is over now. (No "minority" rights org ever
supported or publicized Loving. As if taking a cue, media never
publicized Loving beyond quietly producing a 1996 cable-movie.)
Moreover, arguably Loving has not yet fully socially
decriminalized "black blood," or lifted quite all disincentives for treating
it as a family secret. The condemnation of Broyard, and the public
tarbrushing of Sim’s ancestors is an object lesson not lost on others.
Seemingly, the business of closing the deep wounds cut in families by
"One-Drop" "race" definitions and "anti-miscegenation" laws is delicate
surgery best left to the families themselves. They are the only ones to
decide when to disclose to the children. Moralizing outsiders raising a
ruckus, as in Broyard’s case, will only drive this sort of family secret
back underground.
I think it is tragic each time "black" ancestors are forgotten -- lost -- as
families move into the American mainstream. I enthusiastically support
Sim’s resuscitating her own "black" family roots. I fault only her action
publicly tarring her deceased grandparents socially -- as dead niggers,
guilty of "passing" -- Sim reincarnated hypodescent and "One Drop." And has
Sim not thus imposed an awful consciousness of duty on her own children,
such that in good conscience they cannot marry "white" sweethearts now
without first baring this "loathsome family secret" to their betrotheds?
If "black blood" in a family is the important fact demanding disclosure that
Sim, and also Broyard’s irate attackers say it is, then aren’t the "white"
betrothed, the spouses-to-be, first in right before the children -- indeed
senior to everyone else’s right to know? Doesn’t a weighty principle of
justice give innocent "white" betrotheds a far higher right to hear the
"nigger blood" confession than anyone else has? Basic equity dictates that
an innocent "white" person must be allowed to knowingly consent to marry
into such a "tainted" family, and produce "tainted" offspring of their body
-- or not. Don’t innocent parties deserve the right to decline to parent
"tainted" children with before them whole lifetimes to learn their ancestral
"taint," which they can do nothing to expunge -- nothing, that is, except
covertly "pass" -- try to take the secret with them to their grave forever
(e.g., Sim’s 2 generations of grand ancestors). Does that not give an
innocent "white" betrothed a senior right to know, and choose or reject
burdening his/her own descendants with this "black blood taint" forevermore?
(But hasn’t Sim’s "white" husband involuntarily fathered such "black"
children by Sim?)
I think the interest of betrotheds and children certainly is greater than
any "black" polity’s interest in its census count. Of course, betrothed
should be forthcoming. I believe in their sharing everything with one
another. Is "white" blood in a "black" family equally momentous then,
needing the same full disclosure treatment too? Why not? Is there any
medical reason for "black," or any mere racial ancestry to be disclosed
prenuptially? I doubt it. I think nothing substantive, nothing but mere
social prejudice inflates "black" ancestry (whatever that is). If
prenuptial disclosure of "black" blood" is morally mandatory (and as
explained above, there’s no higher entitlement to hear of it than an
innocent outsider betrothed’s), then is there any limit to the number of
other "bloods" and ancestries which all must come gushing out, and be
disgorged onto the appalled "white" betrothed at the time of the great
letting-it-all-hang-out antenuptial disclosure of awful family secrets?
Finally, I demand to know what is so special about "black blood," now 34
years after Loving? Loving eliminated "One Drop," which first
and foremost was "white" America’s government meat guarantee of racial
"purity." (See id, p. 5, fn. 4.) Loving served notice 34
years ago, INvalidating our damned government-certified, doggie-style
"white" pedigree -- it is uninspected, unprotected. Aren’t we all
presumptively "impure whites"? (Cf., Latinos.) What is there to protect
anymore?
George Winkel
Biography: I practice appellate defense law in the California
Fourth Appellate District, the State Supreme Court, and occasionally before
the U.S. Ninth Circuit.
"Passing," in the motion picture, Imitation of Life (1934), based
on Fannie Hurst's novel, provides a revealing window on "race" in America.
What was the nature of the abhorrent thing?
"[T]he action of the negro girl appearing
as white ... has a definite connection with the problem of
miscegenation," a memo recording a meeting between Universal and PCA
representatives concluded.
Clearly, everyone producing,
reviewing, and ultimately watching the film knew, whether they wanted to
face it or not, Peola's "white" skin resulted from someone's "miscegenation"
-- from the forbidden "black"/"white" interracial sex and procreation
"problem."Why was African ancestry so dreadfully reviled?
"Almighty
God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed
them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his
arrangement, there would be no cause for such [interracial] marriage. The
fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races
to mix."
(Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 3 (1967) --
hereafter Loving.) "White" supremacy dogma credited "racial
purity" with warrior fighting spirit, intelligence, and inventiveness --
especially powers of self-government and civilization. Bigots touted this
flagrantly, although Christian tradition and human decency discouraged most
"white" Americans from displaying blatant racism. The point is that
people's beliefs and attitudes inevitably were poisoned by the "Jim Crow"
machinery of segregation dangling from the stringent anti-miscegenation laws
exhorting them to maintain the purity of "their" Caucasian "white race.""It ain't [Jessie's] fault
Miss Bea. It ain't your'n and it ain't mine. I don't know exactly where the
blame lies."
However, medical doctors and scientists of
the period who should have known better failed to lead anyone away from
racialism. (They had to know better -- 18th century inventors of "race" had
known better. Buffon, Blumenbach, and Camper each clearly urged their
readers not to take too seriously the human classifying exercises.
Enlightenment scientists were not apparently racist, but they are faulted
for "leaving that door ajar.") To the contrary, from the ranks of the
scientifically educated came some of the very gravest offenders, pushing
racist eugenic racial "purification" agendas. There clearly were
blameworthy promoters of "race" mythology and "anti-miscegenation."
(Compare modernly the heartless Serb "ethnic cleanser" Slobodan Milosevic --
previously a psychiatrist. A long, sad litany of modern scientists' names
are soiled by their connection with "race"-intelligence "bell curve" claims.
E.g., see Dr. J. Philippe Rushton, U. of Western Ontario psychologist,
defending "biological race.")"White" people were afraid.
The "passing" controversy continues.
"You mustn't see me, or own me, or claim me or anything. I mean, even if
you pass me on the street, you'll have to pass me by."
Before Loving, "passing" required breaking all "black" family
ties. Racial integrity laws, such as Virginia's, made failure to disclose
"black" ancestry on marriage license applications a felony. Separate
facilities were set aside for "Colored" (separate restrooms, drinking
fountains, seating, etc., per Jim Crow), and "white" people discovering a
"passer" in their midst could turn vicious. (Lynchings occurred in the
1930's South.) "Passing" in those days was dangerous. Cutting all "black"
family ties, as Peola did, was a necessary prelude to emerging with a new
identity as a "white" person. But such sacrificial melodramatics are no
longer necessary, since Loving. Risks now associated with
"passing" are trivial compared to Peola's. "Passing" now is merely a
"white" identity choice, in fact. No longer does it need to be a family
tragedy. Moreover, without the stringent concealment of "black" ancestry
required in Peola's day it is unclear when the word "passing" even applies
anymore. Is it "passing," for instance, to conceal one's ancestry from
"black" Soul Patrol if the "white" neighbors know it, or if they simply
don't care?Epilog:
Appendage (Dated 03-06-01):
Challenging the "Passing" Allegation
Also by George Winkel:
See Also...
The IV Point-Counterpoint topic: "Who Is White?"
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