Category: Passing

  • Why I Passed For White The Archipelago: Stories about community, identity, and the ongoing quest to belong. Medium 2014-12-19 Shawna Ayoub Ainslie I erased my own heritage to feel safe. I hope to teach my children not to do the same. When I was 16, I started letting people believe that I was white. In…

  • English 49, “Whiteness” and Racial Difference Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania Spring 1997 Peter Schmidt, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English Literature A look at the conflicted ways in which “racial” identities and differences have been constructed in past and contemporary cultures, especially in the U.S. Topics given emphasis in the syllabus include why saying…

  • EN-255 Passing Narratives Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania Fall Semester Passing narratives investigate how the boundaries of identity can be reimagined. Most often depicting racial passing (when a person “passes for” someone of another race), these narratives also can be about performing another gender or sexual identity. In this course, we will examine a variety of…

  • Ming Wong’s Imitations Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-speaking World Volume 9, Number 2 (2014) Special Topic: Contemporary Remediations of Race and Ethnicity in German Visual Cultures 32 pages Barbara Mennel, Associate Professor of English University of Florida The article “Ming Wong’s Imitations” analyzes the installation Life of Imitation, created…

  • On Being Non-White, But Passing Terribly Well Everyday Feminism 2014-05-08 Patricia Gutierrez Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania “Psst… Hey, Patty! You speak Spanish? Ignoring me? Hey! You speak Spanish?” P.E., third period, seventh grade. Every time Ricardo saw me, he would ask me the same question. At first, I would answer yes, but he would always…

  • The Talk: After Ferguson, a Shaded Conversation About Race The New York Times 2014-12-13 Dana Canedy, Senior Editor LIKE so many African-American parents, I had rehearsed “the talk,” that nausea-inducing discussion I needed to have with my son about how to conduct himself in the presence of the police. I was prepared for his questions,…

  • THE VERY NOTION of racial “passing” implies a test. Those who believed clear racial categorization was possible might test for race by measuring physical traits to indicate “blood purity”: slight physical traits that could be identified, such as the half-moon of a nail bed or the whites of ones eyes.

  • 11-2 Insight Dr. Yaba Blay Author of One Drop – Shifting the Lens on Race Power 99FM, WUSL-FM Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2014-10-30 Loraine Ballard Morill, Host Yaba Blay, Assistant Teaching Professor of Africana Studies Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Dr. Yaba Blay author of (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race talks about the changing definition of race…

  • Allyson Hobbs (Book) A Chosen Exile Joe Madison The Black Eagle SiriusXM Urban ViewAfrican-American Talk 2014-11-13 Joe Madison, Host Allyson Hobbs, Assistant Professor of History Stanford University

  • ‘A Chosen Exile,’ by Allyson Hobbs [Senna Review] The New York Times Sunday Book Review 2014-11-21 Danzy Senna A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life By Allyson Hobbs; Illustrated. 382 pp. Harvard University Press. $29.95. One of the best birthday presents anybody ever gave me was a “calling card” by the…