{"id":55022,"date":"2017-10-07T22:32:55","date_gmt":"2017-10-07T22:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55022"},"modified":"2017-10-08T03:46:59","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T03:46:59","slug":"my-mother-passed-for-white-for-most-of-her-life-heres-what-that-taught-me-about-racial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55022","title":{"rendered":"My mother passed for white for most of her life. Here\u2019s what that taught me about racial identity."},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother passed for white for most of her life. Here\u2019s what that taught me about racial identity.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Mic<\/a>
\n2017-09-12<\/p>\n

Gail Lukasik<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nGail\u2019s grandfather\u2019s family that she never knew
\nSource: Gail Lukasik<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Gail Lukasik, Ph.D.<\/a> is a professional speaker, mystery novelist, and the author of the upcoming memoir, <\/em>White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing<\/a> (Skyhorse; Oct. 17).<\/em><\/p>\n

For the majority of my life, I believed I was a white woman. I had no reason to question my race or my racial heritage. Why would I? I had only to look in the mirror to know the veracity of my whiteness \u2014 or so I thought.<\/p>\n

In 1995, while scrolling through the 1900 Louisiana<\/a> census records looking for my mother\u2019s father, Azemar Frederic of New Orleans<\/a>, I made a startling discovery. Azemar Frederic and his entire family were classified as black. In that split second, everything I knew about myself changed. When I walked into the Illinois<\/a> family history center, I was a white woman. When I left I didn\u2019t know who I was. My sense of identity was shattered…<\/p>\n

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

For the majority of my life, I believed I was a white woman. I had no reason to question my race or my racial heritage. Why would I? I had only to look in the mirror to know the veracity of my whiteness \u2014 or so I thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,369,8,6462,20,693],"tags":[25614,26140,1438],"class_list":["post-55022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-virginia","tag-gail-lukasik","tag-mic","tag-new-orleans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55022","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=55022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55024,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55022\/revisions\/55024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}