{"id":37812,"date":"2014-10-19T21:40:11","date_gmt":"2014-10-19T21:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37812"},"modified":"2014-10-19T21:46:22","modified_gmt":"2014-10-19T21:46:22","slug":"passing-for-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37812","title":{"rendered":"Passing For White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing For White<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

South Florida Sun-Sentinel<\/a>
\nFort Lauderdale, Florida
\n2003-11-01<\/p>\n

David Crary<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\n

America is more diverse than ever and racial pride is strong, yet a new movie and book are highlighting a phenomenon that seems like a relic of the segregationist past — black people passing<\/a> as white.<\/p>\n

The film, The Human Stain<\/em><\/a>, is an adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel<\/a> about a classics professor, played by Anthony Hopkins<\/a>, who conceals his racial background.<\/p>\n

The book, Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are<\/em><\/a>, by Brooke Kroeger<\/a>, includes a sympathetic profile of a black man who passed as a white Jew during the 1980s and ’90s.<\/p>\n

Kroeger, a New York University journalism professor who spent four years researching her book, said passing has a profound resonance for many black Americans.<\/p>\n

“Over and over, I’d hear personal stories about members of their family who didn’t return for reunions, who led clandestine lives,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Traditionally, the attitude toward passing was you accepted it, you never exposed a passer. Post-1960s, when people are so proud of their racial and ethnic identities, it seems more like cultural treason, yet still people don’t give passers up.”<\/p>\n

Paul Johnston, a retired X-ray technician, knows of passing firsthand. His parents, Albert and Thyra Johnston<\/a>, passed as white along with Paul and his three older siblings while the family lived in two New Hampshire<\/a> towns during the 1930s and ’40s. Albert was a physician in the community.<\/p>\n

The truth of the Johnstons’ background came out in 1941, when Albert was rejected as a Navy officer. But despite the family’s fears, townspeople in Keene, N.H.<\/a>, were generally receptive to them even after the news spread, and the Johnstons’ experience was movingly depicted in a 1949 film, Lost Boundaries<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paul Johnston, 68, is now married to a woman of Irish descent who has nine children from a previous marriage.<\/p>\n

“Some of the kids were pretty prejudiced, but they grew to like me,” he said in a telephone interview. “They thought it was quite fascinating that something like this [his family’s passing] would happen.”<\/p>\n

Johnston, who says some of his relatives continue to pass for white, lives in a predominantly white town on Cape Cod<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Almost nobody knows of my background, not because I’ve kept it a secret, just because I haven’t talked about it much except to a few people in my church,” he said. “I don’t think it would make any difference to people, but you never can tell.”…<\/p>\n

…In The Human Stain<\/em>, Roth’s<\/a> fictional protagonist, Coleman Silk, was loosely modeled on the late Anatole Broyard<\/a>, for many years a prominent literary critic for The New York Times<\/em>…<\/p>\n

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

Passing For White South Florida Sun-Sentinel Fort Lauderdale, Florida 2003-11-01 David Crary The Associated Press America is more diverse than ever and racial pride is strong, yet a new movie and book are highlighting a phenomenon that seems like a relic of the segregationist past — black people passing as white. The film, The Human […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,6462,20],"tags":[16585,5427,11005,16275,18196,18198,18195,18194,16589,18197,1703],"class_list":["post-37812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-albert-johnston","tag-anatole-broyard","tag-anna-deavere-smith","tag-brooke-kroeger","tag-david-crary","tag-juanita-brooks","tag-paul-johnston","tag-south-florida-sun-sentinel","tag-thyra-johnston","tag-vertamae-grosvenor","tag-vin-diesel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37812","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=37812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37812\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}