Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

To pass is to sin against authenticity, and “authenticity” is among the founding lies of the modern age. The philosopher Charles Taylor summarizes its ideology thus: “There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.” And the Romantic fallacy of authenticity is only compounded when it is collectivized: when the putative real me gives way to the real us. You can say that Anatole Broyard was (by any juridical reckoning) “really” a Negro, without conceding that a Negro is a thing you can really be. The vagaries of racial identity were increased by what anthropologists call the rule of “hypodescent”—the one-drop rule. When those of mixed ancestry—and the majority of blacks are of mixed ancestry—disappear into the white majority, they are traditionally accused of running from their “blackness.” Yet why isn’t the alternative a matter of running from their “whiteness”? To emphasize these perversities, however, is a distraction from a larger perversity. You can’t get race “right” by refining the boundary conditions.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., “White Like Me,” The New Yorker, June 10, 1996. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/17/white-like-me.

I want to show what was lost by walking away from a black racial identity.

“I want to show that passing is a deeply individualistic practice, but it is also a fundamentally social act with enormous social consequences. I want to show what was lost by walking away from a black racial identity.” —Allyson Hobbs

Nate Sloan, “Stanford historian re-examines practice of racial ‘passing’,” Stanford News, (December 18, 2013). http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/december/passing-as-white-121713.html

Tags: Allyson Hobbs, Nate Sloan, Stanford News

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2013 at 16:12Z and is filed under Excerpts/Quotes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Pages
Categories
- Africa (404)
- Anthologies (293)
- Anthropology (1,163)
- Articles (8,690)
- Arts (1,264)
- Asian Diaspora (1,414)
- Audio (466)
- Autobiography (1,057)
- Barack Obama (717)
- Biography (1,040)
- Book/Video Reviews (734)
- Books (2,100)
- Brazil (514)
- Campus Life (462)
- Canada (468)
- Caribbean/Latin America (1,403)
- Census/Demographics (1,072)
- Chapter (45)
- Communications/Media Studies (487)
- Course Offerings (158)
- Definitions (43)
- Dissertations (446)
- Economics (112)
- Europe (548)
- Excerpts/Quotes (946)
- Family/Parenting (619)
- Forthcoming Media (56)
- Gay & Lesbian (167)
- Health/Medicine/Genetics (763)
- History (3,428)
- Identity Development/Psychology (2,106)
- Interviews (694)
- Judaism (191)
- Latino Studies (496)
- Law (946)
- Letters (11)
- Literary/Artistic Criticism (1,466)
- Live Events (662)
- Louisiana (247)
- Media Archive (12,295)
- Mexico (235)
- Mississippi (80)
- Monographs (1,442)
- My Articles/Point of View/Activities (52)
- Native Americans/First Nation (671)
- New Media (451)
- Novels (248)
- Oceania (212)
- Papers/Presentations (233)
- Passing (1,238)
- Philosophy (201)
- Poetry (95)
- Politics/Public Policy (1,797)
- Religion (489)
- Reports (64)
- Slavery (793)
- Social Justice (341)
- Social Science (2,989)
- Social Work (194)
- South Africa (138)
- Statements (9)
- Teaching Resources (136)
- Texas (65)
- Tri-Racial Isolates (100)
- United Kingdom (1,066)
- United States (8,760)
- Videos (564)
- Virginia (219)
- Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers (145)
- Women (1,386)
Calendar of Posts

April 2024

M T W T F S S

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

« Mar
Links
Meta

Mixed Race Studies

I want to show what was lost by walking away from a black racial identity.

Pages

Categories

Calendar of Posts

Links

Meta