{"id":41453,"date":"2015-06-17T19:29:28","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T19:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41453"},"modified":"2015-06-17T19:29:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T19:29:28","slug":"passing-for-black-now-thats-a-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41453","title":{"rendered":"Passing for black? Now that’s a twist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing for black? Now that’s a twist<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Cable News Network<\/a> (CNN)
\n2015-06-12<\/p>\n

Lisa Respers France<\/strong><\/a>, Senior producer, CNN Digital<\/p>\n

(CNN)\u2014”In this day and age who in the world willingly wants to be black?”<\/p>\n

I jokingly said that to my husband when news about Rachel Dolezal<\/a> broke.<\/p>\n

Dolezal, 37, is president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP<\/a> whose racial identity is being questioned, now that her parents have produced what they say is her birth certificate. It appears to show that she is white.<\/p>\n

They said their daughter, who reportedly earned a master’s degree from the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., and is a professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University, began to “disguise herself” as black after the family adopted four African-American children.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong, I am a proud black woman who grew up in a family that is incredibly diverse and has such a heritage of hues that my parents were once questioned in a store as to where they “got that white baby from,” as they carted around my fair-skinned and light-eyed infant nephew.<\/p>\n

But with all the heated debate over race relations and the treatment of minorities by law enforcement, which has resulted in unrest and more than a few black mothers burying their sons and daughters, I was both flabbergasted and intrigued by any claim that a white woman would willingly pass as black<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Race isn’t necessarily skin color<\/strong><\/p>\n

The concept of “passing” is something many African-Americans are familiar with. Some members of my own family were so light-skinned, with European features, that they willingly chose to live as white rather than deal with the discrimination of being black in America.<\/p>\n

My mother, Patricia, who is fair and has greenish-gray eyes, tells the story of when her grandmother arrived at the bank where my mother worked after it closed. My biracial great-grandmother, Rose Evans, knocked on the window as my mother stood next to her white co-worker, counting out their drawer.<\/p>\n

“There’s a woman trying to get your attention,” the co-worker told my mother.<\/p>\n

When my mother responded “I know. That’s just my grandmother,” the co-worker continued: “No. There’s a white woman trying to get your attention.” “No. That’s my grandmother,” my mother repeated as her co-worker turned bright red with embarrassment.<\/p>\n

The truth of the matter is that when it comes to race, you just can’t tell from looking…<\/p>\n

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

Passing for black? Now that’s a twist Cable News Network (CNN) 2015-06-12 Lisa Respers France, Senior producer, CNN Digital (CNN)\u2014”In this day and age who in the world willingly wants to be black?” I jokingly said that to my husband when news about Rachel Dolezal broke. Dolezal, 37, is president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter […]<\/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":[9447,3142,20264,20241],"class_list":["post-41453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-cable-news-network","tag-cnn","tag-lisa-respers-france","tag-rachel-dolezal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41453","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=41453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}