{"id":31195,"date":"2013-05-20T03:57:46","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T03:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=31195"},"modified":"2016-11-19T23:53:54","modified_gmt":"2016-11-19T23:53:54","slug":"jean-toomer-the-fluidity-of-racial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=31195","title":{"rendered":"Jean Toomer: The Fluidity of Racial Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jean Toomer: The Fluidity of Racial Identity<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Face to Face: A blog from the National Portrait Gallery<\/a>
\nSmithsonian Institution
\n2012-07-20<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Brevard<\/strong>, Intern
\nCatalog of American Portraits
\nNational Portrait Gallery<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\nJean Toomer<\/em> \/ Marjorie Content \/ Gelatin silver print, c. 1934 \/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution \u00a9<\/sup>Susan L. Sandberg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

An author, philosopher, and spiritual adviser, Washington, D.C., native Jean Toomer<\/a> (1894\u20131967) challenged the accepted race and social labels during the mid-twentieth century. Toomer\u2019s father left his wife and son in 1895, forcing the single mother to move in with her father, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback<\/a>, the former governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction<\/a> and the first U.S. governor of African American descent.<\/p>\n

Toomer was of European and African American ancestry, which sometimes allowed him to pass in society as a white man. For example, his registration for the draft identifies him as African American, but both of his certificates of marriage to white women list him as white (Byrd and Gates<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Most of his formative years were spent in all-white neighborhoods, although he attended the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington. The profound and varied racial influences within Toomer\u2019s life would inspire his writing and his philosophical pursuit to transcend the self, as seen in his novel Cane<\/a><\/em> and his poem \u201cThe Blue Meridian.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his graduation from high school in 1914, Toomer questioned the labeling of race according to skin color, instead embracing his self-appointed identity as an \u201cAmerican.\u201d In his words:<\/p>\n

I wrote a poem called \u201cThe First American,\u201d the idea of which was that here in America we are in the process of forming a new race, that I was one of the first conscious members of this race. . . . I had seen the divisions, the separatisms and antagonisms . . . [yet] a new type of man was arising in this country\u2014not European, not African, not Asiatic\u2014but American. And in this American I saw the divisions mended, the differences reconciled\u2014saw that (1) we would in truth be a united people existing in the United States, saw that (2) we would in truth be once again members of a united human race (Turner, ed., The Wayward and the Seeking, p. 121)…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Jean Toomer: The Fluidity of Racial Identity Face to Face: A blog from the National Portrait Gallery Smithsonian Institution 2012-07-20 Elizabeth Brevard, Intern Catalog of American Portraits National Portrait Gallery Jean Toomer \/ Marjorie Content \/ Gelatin silver print, c. 1934 \/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution \u00a9Susan L. Sandberg An author, philosopher, and spiritual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,8,6462,20],"tags":[14734,14735,1996],"class_list":["post-31195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-elizabeth-brevard","tag-face-to-face-a-blog-from-the-national-portrait-gallery","tag-jean-toomer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195","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=31195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50067,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31195\/revisions\/50067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}