{"id":11532,"date":"2011-01-17T00:19:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T00:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=11532"},"modified":"2012-09-30T21:23:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-30T21:23:26","slug":"race-passing-and-american-individualism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=11532","title":{"rendered":"Race Passing and American Individualism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Race Passing and American Individualism<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

University of Massachusetts Press<\/a>
\nFebruary 2003
\n176 pages
\nCloth ISBN: 1-55849-377-8 (Print on Demand<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Kathleen Pfeiffer<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English
\nOakland University, Rochester, Michigan<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A literary study of the ambiguities of racial identity in American culture<\/em><\/p>\n

In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass<\/a> for white embody a paradox. By virtue of the \u201cone drop\u201d rule<\/a> that long governed the nation’s race relations, they are legally black. Yet the color of their skin makes them visibly-and therefore socially-white.<\/p>\n

In this book, Kathleen Pfeiffer explores the implications of this dilemma by analyzing its treatment in the fiction of six writers: William Dean Howells<\/a>, Frances E. W. Harper<\/a>, Jean Toomer<\/a>, James Weldon Johnson<\/a>, Jessie Fauset<\/a>, and Nella Larsen<\/a>. Although passing for white has sometimes been viewed as an expression of racial self-hatred or disloyalty, Pfeiffer argues that the literary evidence is much more ambiguous than that. Rather than indicating a denial of \u201cblackness\u201d or co-optation by the dominant white culture, passing can be viewed as a form of self-determination consistent with American individualism. In their desire to manipulate personal identity in order to achieve social acceptance and upward mobility, light-skinned blacks who pass for white are no different than those Americans who reinvent themselves in terms of class, religion, or family history.<\/p>\n

In Pfeiffer’s view, to see race passing as a problematic but potentially legitimate expression of individualism is to invite richer and more complex readings of a broad range of literary texts. More than that, it represents a challenge to the segregationist logic of the “one drop” rule and, as such, subverts the ideology of racial essentialism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Race Passing and American Individualism University of Massachusetts Press February 2003 176 pages Cloth ISBN: 1-55849-377-8 (Print on Demand) Kathleen Pfeiffer, Professor of English Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan A literary study of the ambiguities of racial identity in American culture In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,125,1196,8,17,6462,20],"tags":[330,1307,1996,92,3687,5209,87,819,668],"class_list":["post-11532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-frances-e-w-harper","tag-james-weldon-johnson","tag-jean-toomer","tag-jessie-fauset","tag-jessie-redmon-fauset","tag-kathleen-pfeiffer","tag-nella-larsen","tag-university-of-massachusetts-press","tag-william-dean-howells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532","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=11532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}