Category: Passing

  • The Trouble with Transcendence: Is Defying the Gender Binary the New Racial Passing? Nursing Clio: Because the Personal is Historical 2014-01-21 Mallory Nicole Davis University of Oregon In 2010, Thomas Araguz III, a Texas firefighter died on the job, leaving behind his two children and transgender wife, Nikki.[1] The couple was legally married because although…

  • Passing Strange The New York Times 2007-10-21 Joyce Johnson In 1855, Henry Broyard, a young white New Orleans carpenter, decided to pass as black in order to be legally entitled to marry Marie Pauline Bonée, the well-educated daughter of colored refugees from Haiti, who was about to have his child; their marriage license describes them…

  • Rite Of “Passing” CBS News 2007-10-28 Russ Mitchell For 23 years Bliss Broyard was white, living in tony Greenwich, Conn., isolated from people of color and influenced by the racial attitudes of her surroundings, reports CBS News’ Russ Mitchell. Asked if she used to tell black jokes, Broyard said: “I did, in high school and…

  • A Daughter Discovers Branches of the Family Tree Pruned by Her Father The New York Times 2007-11-07 Mimi Read NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 6 — In a white-box living room in an apartment on lower St. Charles Avenue here, the dining table was set for a family party: plastic bowls of chips, dip and salsa; a…

  • Ellisville, Miss.—(AP)—A young veteran who served in the navy as a white man and later married a white woman has been convicted of miscegenation and sentenced to five years in prison.

  • The trouble with ‘passing’ for another race/sexuality/religion… The Guardian 2014-01-02 Koa Beck Brooklyn, New York The broadening of the definition historically used for those of mixed-race who ‘passed’ as white exposes the power of privilege “Racial passing“, or “passing”, was originally coined to define the experience of mixed raced individuals, particularly in America, who were…

  • Landmark ’49 Film About Family Passing for White Recalled The Los Angeles Times 1989-07-25 Margaret Lillard The Associated Press KEENE, N.H. — For 12 years, Dr. Albert Johnston and his wife had a secret–a secret they kept from friends, neighbors, even their children. But in 1941, their secret came out–each was part black. The fair-skinned…

  • Thyra Johnston, 91, Symbol Of Racial Distinctions, Dies The New York Times 1995-11-29 Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. (1939-2000) Thyra Johnston, a blue-eyed fair-skinned New Hampshire homemaker who became a symbol of the silliness of racial distinctions when she and her husband announced that they were black, died on Nov. 22 at her home in Honolulu.…

  • Stanford historian re-examines practice of racial ‘passing’ Stanford News The Humanities at Stanford 2013-12-18 Nate Sloan, Doctoral Candidate in Musicology Stanford University In the margins of historical accounts and the dusty corners of family archives, Stanford history Professor Allyson Hobbs uncovers stories long kept hidden: those of African Americans who passed as white, from the…

  • Passing for white and straight: How my looks hide my identity Salon 2013-12-08 Koa Beck Brooklyn, New York I’m neither straight nor white, but I’m frequently mistaken for both — and it’s taught me a lot about privilege I first became aware of my passing as a young child confronted with standardized testing. My second…