"Conventional wisdom tells us that a history of passing cannot be written: those who passed left no trace in the historical record, and only novelists, playwrights, and poets could write about this clandestine practice. But I believed that the sources were out there, just waiting to be discovered."

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

I agree that the one drop rule had its origins in racist notions of White purity. However, many scholars have misunderstood the way that this rule has shaped the Black experience in America, and this misunderstanding has distorted their proposals for a new multiracial category on the census forms. As we examine the one drop rule and its importance in the current discourse, we should recall the famous exchange between Faust and Goethe’s Devil:

Faust: Say at least, who you are?

Mephistopheles: I am part of that power which ever wills evil yet ever accomplishes good.

So it was with the one drop rule. The Devil fashioned it out of racism, malice, greed, lust, and ignorance, but in so doing he also accomplished good: His rule created the African-American race as we know it today, and while this race has its origins in the peoples of three continents and its members can look very different from one another, over the centuries the Devil’s one drop rule united this race as a people in the fight against slavery, segregation, and racial injustice.

Christine B. Hickman, “The Devil and the One Drop Rule: Racial Categories, African Americans and the U.S. Census,” Michigan Law Review, Volume 95, Number 5 (March 1997): 1166.

“Conventional wisdom tells us that a history of passing cannot be written: those who passed left no trace in the historical record, and only novelists, playwrights, and poets could write about this clandestine practice. But I believed that the sources were out there, just waiting to be discovered.”

“Conventional wisdom tells us that a history of passing cannot be written: those who passed left no trace in the historical record, and only novelists, playwrights, and poets could write about this clandestine practice. But I believed that the sources were out there, just waiting to be discovered. So I went into the archives looking for ghosts, hoping to tell their stories.” —Allyson Hobbs

Aram Goudsouzian,“Ghost Stories: Allyson Hobbs uncovers the fascinating history of racial passing in the United States,” Chapter 16: a community of Tennessee writers, readers & passersby, December 11, 2015. http://chapter16.org/content/allyson-hobbs-uncovers-fascinating-history-racial-passing-united-states.

Tags: Allyson Hobbs, Aram Goudsouzian, Chapter 16

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2015 at 03:13Z 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.

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Mixed Race Studies

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