Understanding the element of passing

Handout
Pinky by Elia Kazan
Imitation of Life
The Dead Man by Jim Jarmus

Class passing, sexual orientation passing, gender

passing, race passing
Racial Passing: black characters with lightened
skin, identified as black but are allowed to be taken
as white.
Reasons for passing Consequences of passing
Stories both by white but also by African-american
writers
All these stories depart from the idea that Africanamericans have internalized their one-drop rule.
o-d-rule, the minimum amount of
status of subordinate racial group how to be
classified as black!
One Drop Rule means of supporting the slavery
Mixed race people immediately classified as
Slaves.
After the abolition, even then this system was also
alive. Problematic of mixed-race people.

Passing in Literature and Film

Introduction
Classic passing literary texts. Features and
Historical Context
Later passing narratives. Literary theory and
criticism
Neila Larsens Passing (1929)
Passing in films
Imitation of Life
Pinky
Imitation of life (color)
(Intro)

Racial Passing
One-drop rule: legal basis for classifying
individuals as black
African-Americans internalize and transform
the one-drop rule from marker of shame to
marker of pride
Occasional passer/ Permanent Passer (in lit.
there are numerous reasons for black people
to pass black pass as white to enjoy the
privileges that were only for white people)
Mechanism to get a room, a bed, a ticket.
Social and economic reasons + emotional
reasons. Way of getting the person they love.
(Issue of interracial weddings). Passive

narratives with a permanent passing fears of

impurity of race / same race weddings .
Racial passers symbolize the taboo of racial
impurity (intercourse between races)
Interconnections among race, class and
gender. Passing usually motivated by class
(opportunities of the privileges of white. Class
conflict is replaced by a racial conflict. Male
passers receive usually a punishment in
novels. For women that is usually death or sth
tragic :P)
Classic Passing in Literature
Peak years (1880-1925) Desire for white
privilege the tortures of racial denial
Historical context: black activism before and
after the WWI, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B.
Du Bois, NAACP (1906), Black Migration
Northwards, African-Americans and
Depression, WWII and Civil Rights Movement
Emergence of organizations for black activism
black participation in WWI - A-A- normally enlisted.
To France! (eye-opening experience of equality)
50s sexual and social taboos shattered but not
the racial taboos. (Obsession of fixing the racial
line eugenics, Hitler. Racial segregation, not
mixing races. Immigrant quotas (p.ex. in countries
of Latin America with doubtful races.
Idea of purification of the black race.

Revival of kkc counter-reaction. Marcus Garvin!

He claimed that (since they moved to the
south/north, living in urban ghettos. Famous for...)
the only solution is to go to mother land, Africa.
Black is beautiful exchange of grocers. Blacks
should help each other economically.
Depression: hard for white, harder for Afr-Am.
Unemployment.
Exscobra sth Case. Rape. Reopening case
because of lack of black juries. (miscarriages of
justice)
South voting rights
North Harlem? Business owners hired only white
ppl. Not reluctant to earn black money, but they
hired white ppl.
WWII has 1million black soldiers. Enlisted and
fighting. Segregated and separated, leaded by
white. Racial discrimination even in Red Cross.
Lots of violence against Afr-Am, also in military. 50
ppl killed in plain conflicts (not in war)
Important Case. Brown vs Board of Education
Case.
Result: order to dis-segregate all the schools!!
Federal troops were sent to help black enter highschools!
Martin Luther king
Lind Johnson (1964) civil rights Act

Tricky means to avoid black voting.

Black Power Black Panthers

Classic Passing in Literature

Conflict btw the desire for white privileges and
the tortures of racial denial
Conflict of performing whiteness and the
persistence ogf black consciousness that lied
beneath the white masquerade
Passers: betrayers of the black race
Blackness (self-denial and suffering/ whiteness
(selfishness and material comfort)
All texts condemn passing as a strategy of
resisting racism
Punishment of this form of upward mobility.
Keep black readers to stay in their places
(male/female differences)
(Rejected by both worlds)
Passers defy the binarisms upon the
constructions of racial identity depend
Mixed-race characters clear signs of
miscegenation
Passers indicate a contradiction btw
appearance and essential racial identity

within a system of racial distinctions based

upon differences presumed to be visible.
Nella Larsens - Passing (1929)
Canonical Status
Interconnections of race, class, gender,
sexuality and rivalry (accused of using race to
speak for sth else)
Within the Harlem Renaissance context
2 middle-class, light skinned African-American
women of the 20s (Irene Redfield and Claire
Kendry)
Ambiguities (Claires death)
Performances of identity (constantly
constructing their identity). Passing as a
strategy of self-making against stereotypical
representations; either tragic mulata or exotic
beauties)
Passing as a question ethics, since your race is
invisible in your skin (only back people can tell that
sb is passing, like gay do closeted ppl) what do you
have to hide? And why? Should (nt) you
acknowledge it?
(Summary find it online)