{"id":42518,"date":"2015-09-02T01:24:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-02T01:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42518"},"modified":"2016-06-11T18:08:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-11T18:08:04","slug":"more-than-that-the-sneetches-taps-into-one-of-the-fears-that-segregationists-held-and-which-was-represented-as-an-ever-present-danger-in-the-northern-as-well-as-the-southern-states-the-fear-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42518","title":{"rendered":"More than that, The Sneetches taps into one of the fears that segregationists held, and which was represented as an ever-present danger in the Northern as well as the Southern states: the fear of \u201cpassing\ufeff.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>More than that, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Sneetches_and_Other_Stories\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Sneetches<\/em><\/a> taps into one of the fears that segregationists held, and which was represented as an ever-present danger in the Northern as well as the Southern states: the fear of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">passing<\/a>.\u201d In a country where <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cone drop of African blood\u201d made a person black and not white<\/a>, worries about being able to place people in the racial hierarchy if they could \u201cpass\u201d for white emerged through various forms of cultural production. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mark_Twain\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Twain<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles_W._Chesnutt\" target=\"_blank\">Charles Chestnutt<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nella_Larsen\" target=\"_blank\">Nella Larsen<\/a> all wrote novels about African-Americans passing for white. The 1930s musical \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Show_Boat\" target=\"_blank\">Showboat<\/a>,\u201d twice made into a film (in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Show_Boat_(1936_film)\" target=\"_blank\">1930s<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Show_Boat_(1951_film)\" target=\"_blank\">1950s<\/a>), has a tragic plot involving passing. Another film, based on a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imitation_of_Life_(novel)\" target=\"_blank\">Fannie Hurst novel<\/a>, was made twice by Hollywood (again in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imitation_of_Life_(1934_film)\" target=\"_blank\">1930s<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imitation_of_Life_(1959_film)\" target=\"_blank\">1950s<\/a>). \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Imitation_of_Life_(1959_film)\" target=\"_blank\">Imitation of Life<\/a>,\u201d in its second incarnation became the fourth-most successful movie of 1959\u2014just two years before <em>The Sneetches<\/em> was published.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Karen Sands-O\u2019Connor, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42490\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Seuss and Racial Passing<\/a>,\u201d <em>theracetoread: Children&#8217;s Literature and Issues of Race<\/em>, February 11, 2015. <a href=\"https:\/\/theracetoread.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/11\/dr-seuss-and-racial-passing\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/theracetoread.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/11\/dr-seuss-and-racial-passing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than that, The Sneetches taps into one of the fears that segregationists held, and which was represented as an ever-present danger in the Northern as well as the Southern states: the fear of \u201cpassing.\u201d In a country where \u201cone drop of African blood\u201d made a person black and not white, worries about being able [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17444,568,20884,20885,17445,20883,20882],"class_list":["post-42518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-dr-seuss","tag-karen-sands-oconnor","tag-the-sneetches","tag-theodor-geisel","tag-theodor-seuss-geisel","tag-theracetoread","tag-theracetoread-childrens-literature-and-issues-of-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42518","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=42518"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42519,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42518\/revisions\/42519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}