When Black People Pass As White, and Vice-Versa

A few weeks ago, a good friend sent me a NYTimes Magazine article by Toure (here), Preconceptions, which was really about race and identity, although the sub-text debated the pros and cons of corporal punishment. In that article, the black culturalist Toure confronted a white-looking woman on Martha’s Vineyard, who turned out, to his amazement, to be black. The woman’s sister, blonde with blue eyes, became indignant as well that Mr. Toure thought she was also white. White people who are black? Black people who look 100% white? Huh?

When I was a kid growing up in Denver, there was a family, call them the George’s, who began my education on how white people could be black. The parents had twin daughters my age who looked every bit as white as mom and dad, while also being black. Now my own father was very light, but I still had difficulty accepting what my brown-skinned mother said, that the ever-so-white-looking George’s were in fact black. There is a big difference between light-skinned blacks and white-skinned blacks. In the end, my child’s-mind concluded that the George’s were black as it suited them, and/or others. On one hand, black people seemed a lot more social (read fun to a kid) than whites, but this did not change the preference.

Later on, when I was in college, one of the George daughters was in a spectacular downhill skiing accident and nearly died. The news coverage of the day never mentioned that she was black, although stories back then invariably spoke of race if the incident was extraordinary involving a black. In those days, before political correctness, race always mattered and media coverage reflected this. (What was a black person doing trying to ski in the first place!) The bottom line is that people often let others believe what they want, as long as it is to their advantage to do so.

The white-looking black woman Toure wrote about on Martha’s Vineyard certainly benefited from her fair features, whether she would admit it or not. Blacks that ‘pass for white’, by letting others believe their eyes, benefit the most. Studies (one here) show whites, and blacks, continue to favor light-skinned blacks. Toure’s MV subject certainly benefited socially from black acceptance, merited or not. What she or her sister did not count on was Toure’s negative implication that they might be having it both ways.

UP NEXT: My Black Cousin Passing As White

James C. Collier

READ MOST RECENT POSTS AT ACTING WHITE...

Technorati Tags: When Black People Pass As White, and Vice-Versa, Race, Skin-Color, Toure, Ethnic Identity, Acting White