{"id":48339,"date":"2016-07-20T02:26:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T02:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48339"},"modified":"2016-07-20T02:26:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T02:26:22","slug":"lost-kin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48339","title":{"rendered":"Lost kin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lost kin<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University of Chicago Magazine<\/a>
\nMay\/June 2015<\/p>\n

Allyson Hobbs<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of History
\nStanford University<\/p>\n

Excerpt from <\/em>A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life<\/a> by Allyson Hobbs, published by Harvard University Press. Copyright \u00a9 2014 by Allyson Hobbs. Used by permission. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cGoing as white\u201d permanently created confusion as some family members disappeared across the color line, creating gaps in family genealogy. One woman explained, \u201cMy father\u2019s people, half of them pass<\/a> for white so naturally I know nothing about hardly any of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

For others, embarrassment and shame prevented an open discussion of family history: \u201cNot much has been disclosed about the Patterson family. It is our guess that there were too many blood mixtures of which the immediate family is not any too proud to relate. … That this family has many skeletons is without a doubt true.\u201d Merthilda C. Duhe wrote that her father used passing as a strategy to create a new life for himself; she knew little about him or his family because he left New Orleans<\/a> and \u201cdeserted the family while they were very young and went over to the white side in Chicago<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others expressed uncertainty about the racial backgrounds of their ancestors. One man questioned his grandfather\u2019s race and explained, \u201cFather was always sensitive about that side of his family.\u201d When asked whether her relatives in Detroit<\/a> \u201cgo for colored or do they go for white,\u201d Mrs. Clemens responded, \u201cI don\u2019t know, and I don\u2019t know what I am. We are 100 per cent American and that is all we can say.\u201d Raymond Brownbow did not know much about his maternal grandmother, a mixed- race house servant who was \u201cdescribed as being very nearly white.\u201d As he explained, \u201cI know very little about her, because it seems that my mother was and is a bit reluctant to discuss her. I remember my mother once telling me that she couldn\u2019t stand the remarks that people would make upon learning of her mother\u2019s mixed blood, and for that reason she refrained from talking much about her.\u201d…<\/p>\n