{"id":44679,"date":"2015-12-22T23:52:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T23:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44679"},"modified":"2015-12-22T23:52:47","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T23:52:47","slug":"free-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44679","title":{"rendered":"Free at Last?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free at Last?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Commentary<\/a>
\n1992-10-01<\/p>\n

Glenn C. Loury<\/strong><\/a>, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences; Professor of Economics
\nBrown University<\/em><\/p>\n

A formative experience of my growing-up on the South Side of Chicago<\/a> in the 1960\u2019s occurred during one of those heated, earnest political rallies so typical of the period. I was about eighteen at the time. Woody, who had been my best friend since Little League<\/a>, suggested that we attend. Being political neophytes, neither of us knew many of the participants at this rally, which had been called to galvanize the local black community\u2019s response to some pending infringement by the white power structure. Although I no longer remember the offense, I can still vividly recall how very agitated about it we all were, determined to fight the good fight, even to the point of being arrested if it came to that. Judging by his demeanor, Woody was among the most zealous of those present.<\/p>\n

Despite his zeal, it took courage for Woody to attend the meeting. Though he often proclaimed his blackness, and though he had a Negro grandparent on each side of the family, he nevertheless looked to all the world like your typical white boy. Everyone assumed as much and I had, too, when we first began playing together nearly a decade earlier, after I had moved into the middle-class neighborhood called Park Manor where Woody\u2019s family had been living for some time.<\/p>\n

There were a number of white families on our block when we first arrived; within a couple of years they had all been replaced by aspiring black families like our own. I often wondered why Woody\u2019s parents never moved. Then I overheard his mother declare to one of her new neighbors, \u201cWe just wouldn\u2019t run from our own kind.\u201d The comment befuddled me at the time, but somewhat later, while we were watching the movie Imitation of Life<\/a><\/em> on television, my mother explained to me how someone could be black even if he looked white. She told me about people like that in our own family\u2014second cousins living in a fashionable suburb on whom one would never dare simply to drop in because they were \u201cpassing for white<\/a>.\u201d This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America is inherently a social and cultural, not simply a biological, construct\u2014that it necessarily involves an irreducible element of choice.<\/p>\n

From the moment I learned of the idea of \u201cpassing\u201d I was intrigued (and troubled) by it. I enjoyed imagining my racial brethren surreptitiously infiltrating the citadels of white exclusivity. The fantasy allowed me to believe that, despite all appearances and despite the white man\u2019s best efforts to the contrary, we blacks were nevertheless present, if unannounced, everywhere in American society. But I was also disturbed by the evident implication that for a black, denial of one\u2019s genuine self was a necessary prerequisite to \u201cmaking it\u201d in American society. What \u201cpassing\u201d seemed to say was that it was necessary to choose between racial authenticity and personal success. Also, to my adolescent mind it seemed grossly unfair that, because of my own relatively dark complexion, the option was not available to me!…<\/p>\n

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

Free at Last? Commentary 1992-10-01 Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences; Professor of Economics Brown University A formative experience of my growing-up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960\u2019s occurred during one of those heated, earnest political rallies so typical of the period. I was about eighteen at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,6462,26,394,20],"tags":[22354,22355,22352,22353],"class_list":["post-44679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-commentary","tag-commentary-magazine","tag-glenn-c-loury","tag-glenn-loury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44679","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=44679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44680,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44679\/revisions\/44680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}