{"id":34199,"date":"2013-10-09T02:41:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T02:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=34199"},"modified":"2020-07-16T22:57:38","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T22:57:38","slug":"deconstructing-the-mixed-race-experience-of-passing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=34199","title":{"rendered":"Deconstructing the Mixed-Race Experience of Passing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deconstructing the Mixed-Race Experience of Passing<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

California State University, San Marcos
\nMay 2006
\n172 pages<\/p>\n

Victoria Baldo Segall<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Thesis Submitted for Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literature and Writing Studies<\/em><\/p>\n

In “Beauty and the Beast: On Racial Ambiguity<\/a>” Carla Bradshaw describes passing<\/a> as an attempt to achieve acceptability by claiming membership in some desired group while denying other racial elements in oneself thought to be undesirable (79). In literature on passing, the mixed-race individual may, as Bradshaw suggests, become a “chameleon” if s\/he desires; s\/he may choose to pass as one race over another and blend with one race for reasons such as self-preservation. Bradshaw’s description of passing as gaining “false access” to a particular group or identity aides in setting thetone for passing as a harmful experience for the mixed-race individual. Specifically, this thesis will show that, as we’ll see with Nella Larsen’s<\/a> “Passing<\/a>,” Danzy Senna’s<\/a> Caucasia<\/a><\/em>, and Hanif Kureishi’s<\/a> The Buddha of Suburbia<\/a><\/em>, not only does passing present the instability of race, but it emotionally and physically destroys the mixed-race individual; the characters have the power and ability to perform and live within different racial worlds, but through their passing they ultimately disempower the non-dominant race of which they are a part and empower the dominant race.<\/p>\n

To support this argument, Chapters One through Three will explore how, imbedded within all three texts, there are four themes in particular that play influential roles in the discussion of mixed-race identity and its relation to passing:<\/p>\n