Whites pass for black to gain empathy, experts say in wake of Dolezal case |
Whites pass for black to gain empathy, experts say in wake of Dolezal case
USA Today
2015-06-13
Melanie Eversley, Breaking News Reporter
In history and in many black American families, there’s talk of black people passing for white, especially during the days of Jim Crow laws or slavery when it benefited them or even saved their lives.
But not as much has been written about the white people who pass for black or adopt black culture — from celebrities who adopt traditionally black hairstyles and vernacular, or, as social media has been abuzz with since Thursday, Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP Spokane, Wash., branch president whose parents say she is white.
English professor Alisha Gaines, who is publishing a book about white people who pass for black, says the phenomenon is rooted in a need to identify and empathize with black culture. Some people throughout history have passed for black as a way to immerse themselves in the experience, says Gaines, who teaches at Florida State University in Tallahassee.
One of the people referenced in her book, Black for a Day: Fantasies of Race and Empathy, is Grace Halsell, a late journalist who posed as a black woman for a few weeks in the deep South and wrote about her experiences in a book titled Soul Sister…
…The main reason people choose to pass for black is they have a need or desire to promote civil rights and racial justice, says Marcia Dawkins, author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity…
…Author and educator Nikki Khanna believes it also can be about being accepted.
“Maybe for this particular woman — it seems as if she cares about African-American issues, she heads the chapter of the NAACP in Spokane, I don’t know if she felt that was her way of fitting in,” says Khanna, who has studied how biracial Americans identify in terms of race…
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Tags: Alisha Gaines, Grace Halsell, Marcia A. Dawkins, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Marcia Dawkins, Melanie Eversley, NAACP, Nikki Khanna, Rachel Dolezal, USA Today