{"id":10899,"date":"2010-12-19T05:15:46","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T05:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10899"},"modified":"2011-06-25T20:03:57","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T20:03:57","slug":"reverse-passing-kidding-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10899","title":{"rendered":"Reverse Passing? Kidding… Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reverse Passing? Kidding… Right?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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

Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris<\/strong><\/p>\n

A report that biracial people are denying their white parents seems absurd to me\u2014but I\u2019m paying attention anyway.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ever heard of Barack Obama<\/a>? You know, the first black president? The one who won an election and near-deity status in the African-American community while openly discussing his white mother in books, interviews and stump speeches?<\/p>\n

Yeah, me, too. This is just one of the reasons I\u2019m scratching my head at the findings of a new study<\/a> that people with one white and one black parent \u201cdownplay their white ancestry,\u201d in part to gain the acceptance of other black people. The authors dub this phenomenon \u201creverse passing<\/a>\u201d and call it \u201ca striking phenomenon.\u201d I’m beyond stumped. In a summary of the results, the sociologists behind \u201cPassing as Black: Racial Identity Work Among Biracial Americans<\/a>\u201d report that this occurs especially in \u201ccertain social situations\u201d\u2014ostensibly, around other black people\u2014where having a white parent \u201ccan carry its own negative biases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let’s be clear: Although the study does conclude that people are \u201cexercising considerable control over how they identify\u201d racially these days, we’re not talking about having the freedom to elect to call oneself black. Rather, according to the lead author, University of Vermont sociologist Nikki Khanna<\/a>, those who self-identify as biracial or multiracial \u201cadopt an identity that contradicts their self-perception of race.\u201d In other words, they\u2019re being purposely disingenuous. They\u2019re exchanging honesty for social benefits, in a mirror-image version of the well-known phenomenon of passing as white…<\/p>\n

…While I don\u2019t relate to the results of this study, I won\u2019t dismiss them. My first reaction\u2014after sheer confusion\u2014was to feel superior to the study subjects. (Maybe they should have gone to an HBCU<\/a>, where I got the message loud and clear that you can be black in any way that makes sense to you. Maybe they should be in social circles like mine. When polled on Facebook, many black acquaintances said that they always figured I had a white or mixed parent, and\u2014surprise!\u2014they didn\u2019t de-friend me.)…<\/p>\n

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

Reverse Passing? Kidding… Right? The Root 2010-12-14 Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris A report that biracial people are denying their white parents seems absurd to me\u2014but I\u2019m paying attention anyway. Ever heard of Barack Obama? You know, the first black president? The one who won an election and near-deity status in the African-American community while openly discussing his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6462,394,20],"tags":[4760,352,3045,3234],"class_list":["post-10899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-passing-2","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-jenee-desmond-harris","tag-nikki-khanna","tag-nikki-khanna-sherwin","tag-the-root"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899","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=10899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}