{"id":10806,"date":"2010-12-14T20:04:01","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T20:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10806"},"modified":"2015-01-02T20:09:14","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T20:09:14","slug":"passing-for-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10806","title":{"rendered":"Passing for Black? Biracial Americans Are Increasingly \u2018Passing for Black\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing for Black?\u00a0\u00a0Biracial Americans Are Increasingly \u2018Passing for Black\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Root
\n<\/a>2010-12-14<\/p>\n

Thomas Chatterton Williams<\/strong><\/p>\n

A new study<\/a> posits that black-white biracial adults are increasingly choosing, like President Obama<\/a>, to emphasize their blackness. But in this country, \u201cblack\u201d has always been a mongrel<\/a> affair. <\/em><\/p>\n

It created a minor media frenzy last spring when President Barack Obama checked the \u201cBlack, African Am., or Negro\u201d box on his census form and, as an item on The Root<\/em> put it, \u201cset the post-racial dream back 400 years.\u201d Elizabeth Chang, a mother of (Asian-Caucasian) biracial daughters and an editor at the Washington Post<\/em>, excoriated him on that paper’s op-ed page for failing to \u201ccelebrate\u201d his biracial ancestry<\/a>. And Michelle Hughes, president of the Chicago Biracial Family Network, voiced a complaint that many seemed to share when she observed that \u201cthe multiracial community feels a sense of disappointment that he refuses to identify with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new study in the December 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly<\/a><\/em>, entitled \u201cPassing as Black: Racial Identity Work Among Biracial Americans<\/a>,\u201d is likely to rekindle the debate by providing evidence that black-white biracial adults are increasingly choosing, like Obama, to emphasize their blackness and downplay their white ancestry. In what the study calls \u201ca striking reverse pattern of passing<\/a>,\u201d a majority of respondents reported that they \u201cpass\u201d as black….<\/p>\n

…Expressing pride in their blackness\u2014that is a good thing, and the authors of the study use their data to make the case that this phenomenon of reverse passing demonstrates that blackness itself is less stigmatized today than in the past, which is certainly evidence of progress. However, what is troubling about the study is also what I find so disturbing about the criticism surrounding Obama\u2019s census decision\u2014namely, the flawed premise that in America, an opposition can exist between \u201cbiracial\u201d and \u201cblack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday’s passing,\u201d Nikki Khanna<\/a>, a sociologist at the University of Vermont and the study’s lead author, says, \u201cis about adopting an identity that contradicts your self-perception of race\u2014and it tends to be contextual.\u201d In other words, biracial blacks, who are themselves aware that they are not simply black but, rather, are something other, are making the conscious decision\u2014at least in certain social situations\u2014to project what must therefore be a less-than-authentic black identity.<\/p>\n

But what the advocates for biracial self-identification, as well as the authors of this study, fail to grasp is precisely what I have always been so proud of Obama for recognizing and exemplifying: Blackness in America is by definition a mongrel affair. Biracial blacks do not have to \u201cpass\u201d as black; they just are black…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passing for Black?\u00a0\u00a0Biracial Americans Are Increasingly \u2018Passing for Black\u2019 The Root 2010-12-14 Thomas Chatterton Williams A new study posits that black-white biracial adults are increasingly choosing, like President Obama, to emphasize their blackness. But in this country, \u201cblack\u201d has always been a mongrel affair. It created a minor media frenzy last spring when President Barack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,6462,394,20],"tags":[352,3045,3234,4726,4725,4727],"class_list":["post-10806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-nikki-khanna","tag-nikki-khanna-sherwin","tag-the-root","tag-thomas-c-williams","tag-thomas-chatterton-williams","tag-thomas-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}