{"id":49795,"date":"2016-11-05T02:06:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T02:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49795"},"modified":"2016-11-06T19:18:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T19:18:57","slug":"in-my-family-%ef%bb%bfracial-passing-and-the-deception-it-involved-was-the-ultimate-taboo-and-betrayal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49795","title":{"rendered":"In my family, \ufeffracial passing and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In my family, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">racial passing<\/a> and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal. It was what the writer <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nella_Larsen\" target=\"_blank\">Nella Larsen <\/a>called a hazardous business, \u201cthis breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one\u2019s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.\u201d The first time someone perceived me as white, it made me wonder if they thought I was passing or trying to pass. But unlike the character Clare in Larsen\u2019s novel\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=2508\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Passing<\/em><\/a>, I did not become untethered or unhinged from my identity; I did not feel a desire to cross into whiteness. Instead I grabbed hold of my identity even tighter, as if somehow my blackness could slip away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>W. Ralph Eubanks, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49783\" target=\"_blank\">Passing Strange<\/a>,\u201d <em>The Common<\/em>, November 4, 2016. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecommononline.org\/features\/passing-strange\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.thecommononline.org\/features\/passing-strange<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my family, racial passing and the deception it involved was the ultimate taboo and betrayal. It was what the writer Nella Larsen called a hazardous business, \u201cthis breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one\u2019s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly.\u201d The first [&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":[25361,679],"class_list":["post-49795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-the-common","tag-w-ralph-eubanks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49795","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=49795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49796,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49795\/revisions\/49796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}