{"id":48803,"date":"2016-08-23T21:41:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T21:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48803"},"modified":"2016-08-23T21:41:39","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T21:41:39","slug":"on-passing-wishing-for-darker-skin-and-finding-your-people-a-conversation-between-two-mulattos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48803","title":{"rendered":"On passing, wishing for darker skin, and finding your people: A conversation between two mulattos"},"content":{"rendered":"

On passing, wishing for darker skin, and finding your people: A conversation between two mulattos<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Fusion<\/a>
\n2015-06-15<\/p>\n

Collier Meyerson<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In 10th grade, I auditioned for the role of Julie in the musical Show Boat<\/em><\/a>, one of the most famous portrayals of the tragic mulatto<\/a> trope. I was cast, instead, as Queenie, the mammy. I deserved the part of Julie. I had a good singing voice. But there were no black people in my school to play the part of Queenie.<\/p>\n

My first personal tragic mulatto moment.<\/p>\n

Playing the mammy in Show Boat<\/em> made me realize something my black mother had always told me and I never believed: the world did not see me as Julie, trying to manage two different backgrounds. It saw me as black. Specifically, white people saw me as black.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, I spoke with Mat Johnson<\/a>, the author of Loving Day<\/em><\/a>, a new novel that explores the mulatto experience\u2014one that Johnson sees as a subset of the black experience. And one that the United States didn\u2019t recognize until 2000, the first year<\/a> the Census collected data on people of more than one race…<\/p>\n

…CM: I don\u2019t personally pass as white<\/a>. And I\u2019ve always wondered about others who can. Do you ever choose to intentionally pass as white?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MJ<\/strong>: Every single time I get pulled over by a cop. And I feel guilty as I\u2019m doing it, but you have never met a whiter man than me pulled over by a police officer. I mean, I sound like Gomer Pyle<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I moved to New York I wondered what would happen if I stopped playing up my black identity. And I basically just let that go. I didn\u2019t cut my hair in a way to look blacker. Didn\u2019t have facial hair in a way that made me look blacker. I wore clothes that were more ethnically generic, just generally bland preppy. And I went through this whole period. It was maybe like a month where I just let that disappear…<\/p>\n

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

On passing, wishing for darker skin, and finding your people: A conversation between two mulattos Fusion 2015-06-15 Collier Meyerson In 10th grade, I auditioned for the role of Julie in the musical Show Boat, one of the most famous portrayals of the tragic mulatto trope. I was cast, instead, as Queenie, the mammy. I deserved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,13743,8,6462,20],"tags":[20251,19052,2355],"class_list":["post-48803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-collier-meyerson","tag-fusion","tag-mat-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48803","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=48803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48804,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48803\/revisions\/48804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}