Mixed Race Studies

Crossing Over: Racial Passing and Racial Uplift in Nella Larsen’s Fiction

University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee
2009
34 pages

Karly D. Beavers

Senior Honors Thesis in American Studies

Fundamental to the American myth is a juxtaposition of the “civilized” or “superior” majority with the “inferior” other. By classifying African Americans as inherently different from and inferior to whites, the white majority justified the enslavement and, later, the political and social oppression of black Americans. Our concept of race relies heavily on the visible differences between whites and African Americans. Interracial couples posed a threat to the socially constructed color line almost immediately, producing offspring who did not fit under the simple label of black or white. Although legally considered African American because of their “Negro blood,” some individuals found it possible to pass for white. Passing began long before emancipation, but it became a prevalent topic in African American fiction during the early twentieth century. Nella Larsen in particular explores the idea of passing in her two novels Quicksand and Passing. As her main female protagonists search for their true identity within a racist and patriarchal society, they struggle with DuBois’s idea of “double consciousness.” Within the African American community during the early twentieth century, middle class blacks sought to uplift the race through upholding and exemplifying white middle class values. Larsen’s characters are thus trapped in a complicated system that rails against social inequality while it espouses the oppressive structures of the dominant white culture. From various newspaper articles and book reviews, one sees a varied reaction to passing within the African American community. For men, racial passing rendered them more effeminate in the eyes of black Americans. Larsen focuses more on the experiences of black women, who found themselves forced into an oppressive domestic role in an effort to uplift the race and reaffirm the masculinity of black men.

An attractive young woman sits on a train destined for New York. Leaving behind the remnants of her oppressive past, she begins to make plans for the future—a bright future bursting with opportunity and adventure. Pain, isolation, shame—all fade into the distance. Surely New York will be the answer. Surely the happiness that has eluded her for so long awaits her there. She. Helga Crane, will no longer be the illegitimate daughter of a Danish runaway and an African American gambler. She will simply become another young woman trying to make a life for herself in the city. A remark from her new employer interrupts Helga’s pleasant thoughts. “How is it that a nice girl like you can rush off on a wild goose chase like this at a moment’s notice. I should think your people’d object, or’d make inquiries, or something.’ In an instant. Helga’s excitement gives way to embarrassment. After the young woman admits to a less than ideal parentage, her employer replies coldly. “I wouldn’t mention that my people are white, if I were you. Colored people won’t understand it. and after all it’s your own business.”

So begins Helga Crane’s journey to New York in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand. Published in 1928. Larsen’s debut novel tells the story of a mixed race woman searching for a stable identity within a racist and unstable society. The daughter of a white woman and a black man. Helga constantly reminds herself and others of the threat lurking beneath America’s strict racial code. When her employer discovers Helga’s heritage, Larsen writes. “The woman felt that the story, dealing as it did with race intermingling and possibly adultery, was beyond definite discussion. For among black people, as among white people, it is tacitly understood that these things are not mentioned—and therefore they do not exist.” Helga is thus robbed of her true identity. Because she threatens the strict “color line” that guides all of American life, the mixed race Helga—the real Helga—cannot exist. According to Martha J. Cutter. “Helga Crane attempts to use ‘passing’ as a way of finding a unitary sense of identity—a sense of identity structured around one role, a role that somehow corresponds to her ‘essential self.'” Although Helga’s dark skin prevents her from passing for white, she in a sense passes for black by denying, or at least omitting, her white ancestry. Instead, she finds solace in a number of different identities. In Cutter’s words, she passes as “an exotic Other, a committed teacher, an art object, a devout Christian, a proponent of racial uplift, [and] a dutiful mother.”…

Read the entire thesis here.