{"id":47329,"date":"2016-06-05T01:22:54","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T01:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47329"},"modified":"2016-06-05T01:22:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-05T01:22:54","slug":"on-becoming-black-becoming-white-and-being-human-rachel-dolezal-and-the-fluidity-of-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47329","title":{"rendered":"On Becoming Black, Becoming White and Being Human: Rachel Dolezal and the Fluidity of Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Becoming Black, Becoming White and Being Human: Rachel Dolezal and the Fluidity of Race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Truthdig<\/a>
\n2015-06-18<\/p>\n

Channing G. Joseph<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nLibrary of Congress<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

For decades, no one knew my cousin Ernest Torregano<\/a> was black. At least, no one who mattered in his new life.<\/p>\n

Not the clients or associates of the prominent bankruptcy law firm with which he had built his reputation and his fortune. Not the other members of the San Francisco<\/a> Planning Commission, of which he had been president. And certainly not the mayor, Elmer Robinson<\/a>, with whom Ernest had been close since their days as fresh new lawyers in the city. It is quite likely, I think, that Ernest never admitted, even to Pearl, his second wife of 30 years, that she had married an African-American man.<\/p>\n

Few understood the true extent of my cousin\u2019s labyrinth of secrets until he was already dead and buried. By then, he had successfully \u201cpassed for white<\/a>\u201d for more than 40 years.<\/p>\n

When his only child, Gladys Stevens, learned that her father had not died in 1915 but had been alive until 1954, she filed suit to claim her share of his estate\u2014worth about $300,000 then, or about $2.6 million today. After a protracted legal battle to prove she really was Ernest\u2019s daughter, she won<\/a>. Meanwhile, her story\u2014and Ernest\u2019s\u2014made national headlines for nearly seven years. One Oklahoma<\/a> newspaper announced: \u201cWidow Claims Rich Lawyer Was Really Her Negro Father.\u201d A Connecticut<\/a> paper proclaimed: \u201cDaughter\u2019s Suit Reveals Double Life of Man Who Passed Over Color Line.\u201d But Newsweek<\/em> magazine\u2019s headline captured the essence of the story in just three words: \u201cThe Second Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born into a mixed-race family in New Orleans<\/a> in 1882, the First Man was the fair-skinned son of a white father and a mixed-race mother. And because he so loved to sing and to laugh and to travel, he joined a touring minstrel troupe, performing in blackface makeup for cheering crowds across the South. In that show, he met Viola, who played the guitar, and they married. After their daughter, Gladys, was born, the First Man took a job as a Pullman porter<\/a> on the Southern Pacific Railroad<\/a> line from New Orleans to San Francisco\u2014to make a better living for his new family. But at some point along the way\u2014perhaps as he gazed through a train car window at the countryside rolling by or as he wandered along Market Street among white people who did not sneer at him or call him \u201cboy\u201d\u2014he decided he would never return home. (According to one account, his mother, who supported the idea of his passing, convinced him that Viola and Gladys had been killed and that he should forget them forever.)…<\/p>\n

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

On Becoming Black, Becoming White and Being Human: Rachel Dolezal and the Fluidity of Race Truthdig 2015-06-18 Channing G. Joseph Library of Congress For decades, no one knew my cousin Ernest Torregano was black. At least, no one who mattered in his new life. Not the clients or associates of the prominent bankruptcy law firm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,369,8,6462,20],"tags":[23980,23981,2767,20144,3083,2408,2406,3561,1438,20241,4274],"class_list":["post-47329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-channing-g-joseph","tag-channing-joseph","tag-daniel-sharfstein","tag-ernest-torregano","tag-marcia-a-dawkins","tag-marcia-alesan-dawkins","tag-marcia-dawkins","tag-martha-sandweiss","tag-new-orleans","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-truthdig"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47329","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=47329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47330,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47329\/revisions\/47330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}