Krazy Kat and Racial IdentityPosted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2012-03-06 01:22Z by Steven |
Graphic Novels: ENGL 375TT (Spring 2009)
University of Mary Wahsington
2009-02-01
Zach Whalen, Assistant Professor of English
University of Mary Washington
After doing some research on George Herriman, the writer and artist for Krazy Kat, I discovered that there has been a lot of critical analysis applied to this comic looking specifically at racial identity. There seems to be some uncertainty as to Herriman’s ethnicity—his parents were listed as “mulatto” in the 1880 census, his own birth certificate says “colored” but his death certificate says “caucasian.” From what I can tell, Herriman was a person of mixed races, but it seems that he chose to “pass” as white for much of his life. Apparently many have speculated that he wore a hat all the time to cover up his “kinky” hair, which he thought was the only identifiably “black” physical trait that he had…
Read the entire article here.