{"id":55637,"date":"2018-01-30T01:27:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T01:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55637"},"modified":"2018-01-30T01:27:17","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T01:27:17","slug":"passing-and-being-passed-over-in-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55637","title":{"rendered":"Passing and Being Passed Over in the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing and Being Passed Over in the United States<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a>
\n2017-12-15<\/p>\n

Kavita Das<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America<\/strong><\/em><\/a>
\nBy Brando Skyhorse<\/a>, Lisa Page<\/a>
\nPublished 10.10.2017
\nBeacon Press
\n216 Pages<\/p>\n

IN THE YEARS preceding the 2016 presidential election, the \u201cbirther\u201d movement<\/a> that had dogged Barack Obama<\/a> during his initial run for president raised its ugly head once again, revived by Donald Trump<\/a>, a bombastic businessman\/reality-show celebrity, and one of Obama\u2019s most outspoken critics. Using the platform afforded to him as a rich and powerful white man, Trump made claims that Obama was not an American citizen, calling for him to prove otherwise by producing his birth certificate. This claim was made \u2014 and repeated often \u2014 despite the abundance of unassailable proof to the contrary.<\/p>\n

Trump \u2014 and the rest of the \u201cbirther\u201d movement \u2014 essentially accused President Obama of passing as an American citizen. According to Brando Skyhorse<\/a>, co-editor of the new anthology We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America<\/em><\/a>, passing is the \u201cknowing decision about hiding or omitting one\u2019s background to obtain acceptance into a community.\u201d Skyhorse knows whereof he speaks since he acknowledges engaging in the practice himself. The phenomenon of passing is neither new nor unique to the United States<\/a>. Age-old fairy tales like \u201cCinderella<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Little Mermaid<\/a>\u201d depict young women who pass as something other than their true selves in order to meet their Prince Charmings<\/a>. Despite our country\u2019s founding documents declaring that \u201call men are created equal,\u201d endowed with rights to \u201clife, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,\u201d entrenched inequalities and stigmas associated with race, class, and sexuality have helped contribute to a long history of passing in the United States: African Americans and other people of color passing as white<\/a>, poor people passing as affluent, LGBTQ<\/a> individuals passing as straight…<\/p>\n

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

Passing and Being Passed Over in the United States Los Angeles Review of Books 2017-12-15 Kavita Das We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America By Brando Skyhorse, Lisa Page Published 10.10.2017 Beacon Press 216 Pages IN THE YEARS preceding the 2016 presidential election, the \u201cbirther\u201d movement that had dogged Barack Obama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[27050,27978,24672,4729,14582],"class_list":["post-55637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-brando-skyhorse","tag-kavita-das","tag-larb","tag-lisa-page","tag-los-angeles-review-of-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55637","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=55637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55638,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55637\/revisions\/55638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}