{"id":55323,"date":"2017-12-03T02:50:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-03T02:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55323"},"modified":"2017-12-04T04:10:36","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T04:10:36","slug":"do-not-pass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55323","title":{"rendered":"Do Not Pass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do Not Pass<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Sunday Book Review<\/a>
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2010-02-16<\/p>\n

Tour\u00e9<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This may come as a shock to you, especially if you look at whiteness as a boon and blackness as a burden, but I have never once wished to be white. If a fairy godfather came to me and said I could switch races, I\u2019d open the window and make him use it. I think 99 percent of black people would do the same. That\u2019s not a knock on whiteness \u2014 it seems to be working out well for many people \u2014 it\u2019s that I love blackness, even if passing<\/a> would allow me to unhook myself from the heavy anchor called racism. It\u2019s cool: I\u2019ve learned how to be as quick as a Br\u2019er Rabbit<\/a>, even with the anchor attached. Still, you might argue, wouldn\u2019t switching from a disadvantaged race to the dominant one be as liberating as a winning lottery ticket? Well, for those who\u2019ve been able to complete the sociopolitical fantasy trip and become racial transvestites, it usually ends badly.<\/p>\n

The character who jumps the color line is a fascinating American rogue, a self-\u00adconstructed person, a trickster who\u2019s discovered that race is not an unscalable wall but a chain-link fence with holes big enough for some people to slip through. But once they cross the line, they\u2019re fugitives hiding in plain sight, on the lam from themselves and their histories, cut off from their families, unchained from racism but chained to a secret whose revelation would bring an end to a life built on lies and a stolen place in the dominant culture. All that makes racial shape-shifters a fantastic opportunity for a writer: they\u2019ve got Huck Finn\u2019s<\/a> independence, an identity in turmoil, a secret that could destroy their world, a refusal to be defined by others and a vantage on race that very few ever get to have. And in the story of a racial fugitive, there\u2019s always a ticking bomb. It\u2019s a corollary of the literary law that if you put a loaded rifle onstage, it has to go off: if a character shifts races, eventually he\u2019ll be unmasked, and usually it\u2019s painful physically or psychically or both…<\/p>\n

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

Do Not Pass Sunday Book Review The New York Times 2010-02-16 Tour\u00e9 This may come as a shock to you, especially if you look at whiteness as a boon and blackness as a burden, but I have never once wished to be white. If a fairy godfather came to me and said I could switch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[2640,2336,18723,2327,18909,27732],"class_list":["post-55323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-new-york-times","tag-ralph-ellison","tag-sunday-book-review","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-toure","tag-toure-neblett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55323","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=55323"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55347,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55323\/revisions\/55347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}