Neo-Passing

Performing Identity after Jim Crow

Mollie Godfrey, Vershawn Young, Mollie Godfrey, Vershawn Young

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780252050244
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Sociologia

African Americans once passed as whites to escape the pains of racism. Today's neo-passing has pushed the old idea of passing in extraordinary new directions. A white author uses an Asian pen name; heterosexuals live "out" as gay; and, irony of ironies, whites try to pass as black. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti Young present essays that explore practices, performances, and texts of neo-passing in our supposedly postracial moment. The authors move from the postracial imagery of Angry Black White Boy and the issues of sexual orientation and race in ZZ Packer's short fiction to the politics of Dave Chappelle's skits as a black President George W. Bush. Together, the works reveal that the questions raised by neo-passing—questions about performing and contesting identity in relation to social norms—remain as relevant today as in the past. Contributors: Derek Adams, Christopher M. Brown, Martha J. Cutter, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Michele Elam, Alisha Gaines, Jennifer Glaser, Allyson Hobbs, Brandon J. Manning, Loran Marsan, Lara Narcisi, Eden Osucha, Gayle Wald, and Deborah Elizabeth Whaley

PART I

New Histories

INTRODUCTION

Passing at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

ALLYSON HOBBS

Just a few days after January 1, 1932, Lieutenant William J. French was found on a desolate road near Gilroy, California, with his pistol in his crashed car and a gunshot wound to his head. Police ruled his death a suicide. The uproar among military personnel at the Presidio in San Francisco was just beginning when a far more startling revelation appeared on the front page of the New York Times: “Army Man’s Suicide Reveals He Is Negro.” The Times announced that French had spent eighteen years “masquerading” as a white man. French had given the army almost two decades of “brilliant” service, reported the Times, and distinguished himself during World War I as a commissioned officer who led white troops. French had not heeded the warnings of his relatives, who had cautioned him against advancing too far in the military and had tried to convince him that commanding white men was far too risky. Maybe French had not expected to be promoted as quickly as he was, and once the army granted him the commission, perhaps he simply could not turn it down. Maybe French worried that to decline such a prestigious promotion would arouse suspicion. The last person to see French alive, Gertrude McEnroe, was in the car with French at the time of the crash. She claimed that French tried to kill her. McEnroe survived and later told officials that French had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was McEnroe’s contention that French had been driven to a state of insanity after years of fearing that his racial identity would be exposed.1

It is impossible to know exactly what happened in French’s car before it careened and crashed into a tree on January 3, 1932. No one will ever know the nature of the relationship between McEnroe and French, who was married to a white woman. Newspaper accounts do not explain why a truck driver stopped and rescued McEnroe from the wreck but left French in the car. Reports about the case do not explain why French allegedly tried to kill McEnroe. French’s mother would not comment on when he decided to pass as white, nor would she reveal any other details about his life. The Times notes that French visited his mother in Pasadena at Christmas and that “scores of Negroes” in that city knew that French was passing as white. But these friends and family members were uniformly silent about his personal life and his decision to pass. Most relatives protected those who passed and kept their secrets. French’s family and friends were no different. Without the silence of “scores of Negroes,” French’s masquerade could have collapsed at any moment. But, if McEnroe’s assertion is correct—that despite his family’s tacit support, French’s secret drove him to an acute state of mental breakdown and the desperate decision to take his own life—then the devastating and even deadly consequences of passing come into sharper view.2

Almost a century later, the world of Jim Crow and binary racial identities that had enveloped French has given way to new possibilities. By the late 1940s, many African Americans who had previously passed as white declared that they could no longer endure the emotional turmoil that French and others experienced. In the black press, testimonials of light-skinned blacks who disavowed passing and returned to the race registered a palpable sense of relief. African Americans described a surging race consciousness and a sense of hopefulness about the possibilities of a burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. These reports in the black press suggested that America had been made anew in the aftermath of World War II and through the early postwar period. The racial dynamics of these times might allow one to live as black and enjoy economic, political, and social freedom that had been denied to those who had been part of a previous generation. Passing had been one of a limited number of strategies that opened doors for African Americans to participate more fully in American life. Perhaps in postwar America, passing would “pass out” and no longer be necessary, especially if postwar economic prosperity extended to African Americans.3 Perhaps African Americans could claim a black identity with pride and step out from the dark shadows that descended upon Lieutenant William J. French.

Racial passing in the American context must be acknowledged as a subset of a much-larger phenomenon that encompasses multiple disguises. Ralph Ellison characterizes disguise as an elemental aspect of American identity: “America is a land of masking jokers. … Benjamin Franklin, the practical scientist, skilled statesman and sophisticated lover, allowed the French to mistake him for Rousseau’s Natural Man. Hemingway poses as a non-literary sportsman, Faulkner as a farmer; Abe Lincoln allowed himself to be taken for a simple country lawyer.”4 These are only a handful of examples of a sweeping phenomenon that demonstrate passing’s flexibility and adaptability to various historical contexts. The poor passed as the rich, women passed as men, Jews passed as Gentiles, gay men and women passed as straight, and whites sometimes passed as black—and, of course, the reverse of each of these dyads was plausible given specific conditions and circumstances. As Ellison’s quote suggests, the permutations on passing were myriad.

Given the multiple iterations of passing, it is not surprising that this phenomenon continues well after the US Supreme Court declared the legal apparatus of segregation unconstitutional. Without question, racially ambiguous people in the twenty-first century are living through a very different moment than those who lived in the 1930s or the 1830s. The racial dynamics of the new millennium have created an array of choices that were unavailable to mixed-race people in the past. In the 1920s novelist Jean Toomer wondered why he had to choose a racial identity, but his appeal for a “hybrid” identity fell on deaf ears.5 Toomer was marked, regardless of his personal choices, as “a great Negro writer,” even by close friends he assumed knew better. When he resisted this title, refused to published his poems in James Weldon Johnson’s revised edition of The Book of American Negro Poetry (1931), moved to Greenwich Village, and became a follower of the Russian spiritual leader Georges Gurdjieff, it was assumed then (and now, among some scholars) that he had chosen to pass for white. In Toomer’s time, racially ambiguous people had only two options: pass as white or live as black. Regardless of how eloquently Toomer argued for a mixed-race identity, his idea never gained traction. The racial constraints of the Jim Crow era would not allow it.

But by the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the racial landscape had changed, and new choices and possibilities emerged. American society had moved toward the side of the spectrum that recognized mixed-race identities. This change was reflected not only in personal attitudes and experiences but also in federal racial classifications. In 1993 multiracial activists challenged the one-drop rule and argued that mixed-race people should be officially recognized on the 2000 census. In 1997 the US Census Bureau’s policy changed for the first time in almost eighty years to allow individuals to “mark one or more” categories.6 Suddenly, as many cultural critics and authors observe, mixed-race men and women were in vogue. A 2003 article in the Style section of the New York Times names a new crop of Americans “Generation E.A.” (an abbreviation for “ethnically ambiguous”) and notes the marketing power of this group. The article observes that casting calls for blond-haired, blue-eyed actors were replaced by calls for actors of color, such as one for a CBS soap opera: “Light complexioned African-American. Could be part Brazilian or Dominican.” According to the New York Times, the look of racial ambiguity was especially profitable for companies that marketed products to a younger set. Linda Wells, Allure magazine’s editor in chief, explains the fixation on the “mixed-race look”: “Five years ago, about 80 percent of our covers featured fair-haired blue-eyed women, even though they represented a minority. … Uniformity just isn’t appealing anymore.”7

As mixed-race author Danzy Senna explains, America had entered the “Mulatto Millennium.” In a futuristic parody of the same name, Senna describes her surprise when she wakes one morning to discover she is “in style … that mulattos had taken over. They were everywhere—playing golf, running the airwaves, opening restaurants, modeling clothes, starring in musicals with names like Show Me the Miscegenation! The radio played a steady stream of Lenny Kravitz, Sade, and Mariah Carey. … Pure breeds (at least black ones) are out; hybridity is in.”8 Senna had previously identified as an African American woman, “an enemy of the mulatto nation,” who frowned upon those who described themselves as racially mixed. This stance on race was largely because of Senna’s upbringing in the 1970s in Boston where “mixed wasn’t an option. … No halvsies. No in between.”9 Senna chose not to claim a mixed-race identity, but she found Boston of the 1970s to be similar to Toomer’s experience of Harlem in the 1920s: few Americans—black or white—were comfortable with the concept of mixed race. But by the late 1990s and the early 2000s, racial politics had changed. New marketing priorities were the result of societal and demographic changes caused by increased levels of immigration and interracial marriage. Interracial marriage increased tenfold between 1960 and 1990 (from approximately 150,000 to 1.5 million); the number of mixed-race children born to these marriages skyrocketed from approximately 500,000 to 2 million.10

However, the friendly embrace of hybridity in the twenty-first century does not signal the realization of a “postracial” age, nor does it support the colorblind thesis that race no longer matters. On the contrary, the increasing acceptance of mixed-race identities underscores just how germane race continues to be to contemporary American society. Mixed-race identities are still raced identities. Race continues to be reproduced all around us, at every level of society, including in our everyday lives. The long history of passing reveals that older racial formations never give way entirely; shards of past racial regimes are always visible in contemporary ones. Even in historical moments widely heralded as turning points, the past still can be seen in the present. This observation does not suggest that nothing is new or nothing has changed but, rather, that new arrangements are never wholly free of some elements of the old. Racial ideologies are plastic, and they are quick to adapt and reproduce under new social structures, but the past is stubborn.

Neo-passing narratives reveal the multiple and fluid means of racial categories while emphasizing that race and racism still persist. Sometimes racial identities are blurred or obscured; other times they remain clear and unmistakable, allowing readers and viewers to see the role of intersectionality. Even though we often think of race as a “metalanguage,” to borrow historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham’s term, that subsumes other categories,11 the practice of racial passing relies on intertwined nature of identities of class, gender, sexuality, disability, and criminality. For example, in the neo-passing narratives of farcical depictions of black presidents onscreen that Eden Osucha discusses in chapter 4, black actors from Richard Pryor (1977) to Dave Chappelle (2005) pass by mimicking the intersectional white (raced) and male (gendered) identities of the office. But black men can only pass as president momentarily before aspects of an intersectional and stereotyped black male identity return, comically and plainly disqualifying them from the job.

Passing did not end in the 1950s when the black press enthusiastically announced that the practice had “passed out.” Instead, just like race, it has taken on new forms and shapes and has adapted and adjusted to the particular circumstances, conditions, and technologies of the time period. The new histories that follow are indeed “new”: they bring to life new sources, themes, and possibilities to try out different ways of living and being. Still, they have much in common with histories that we might consider “old.” Most important, these new histories underscore the unden...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Passing and “Post-Race”
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Neo-Passing Narrative
• Appendix to the Introduction. Neo-Passing Narratives: Teaching and Scholarly Resources
• Part I. New Histories
• Part II. New Identities
• Afterword: Why Neo Now?
• Contributors
• Index