In my family, racial passing and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal. |
In my family, racial passing and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal. It was what the writer Nella Larsen called a hazardous business, “this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.” The first time someone perceived me as white, it made me wonder if they thought I was passing or trying to pass. But unlike the character Clare in Larsen’s novel Passing, I did not become untethered or unhinged from my identity; I did not feel a desire to cross into whiteness. Instead I grabbed hold of my identity even tighter, as if somehow my blackness could slip away.
W. Ralph Eubanks, “Passing Strange,” The Common, November 4, 2016. http://www.thecommononline.org/features/passing-strange.
Tags: The Common, W. Ralph Eubanks