{"id":57924,"date":"2019-04-18T00:32:36","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T00:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57924"},"modified":"2019-04-18T00:32:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T00:32:36","slug":"passing-identity-and-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=57924","title":{"rendered":"Passing, Identity and Race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/story\/ny-college-conference-examines-passing-and-identity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>Passing, Identity and Race<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WYNC<\/a><br \/>\nNew York, New York<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/people\/wnyc-newsroom\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">WNYC Newsroom<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/widgets\/ondemand_player\/wnyc\/#file=\/audio\/json\/927244\/&amp;share=1\" width=\"100%\" height=\"130\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/story\/ny-college-conference-examines-passing-and-identity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.wnyc.org\/i\/800\/0\/l\/85\/2019\/04\/3034458509_99b39b47e0_o.jpg\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anita_Florence_Hemmings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anita Florence Hemmings<\/a> applied to attend Vassar College in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Upstate_New_York\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">upstate New York<\/a> in 1893, she did not disclose her racial identity to the school. She passed as a white student for years before eventually being outed as a black woman shortly before graduation, after her white roommate&#8217;s family hired a private detective to investigate her background.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even though Vassar allows her to graduate after she&#8217;s been outed to the (college) president, she becomes the subject of a national scandal,&#8221; Vassar film professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vassar.edu\/faculty\/mimask\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mia Mask<\/a> told WNYC&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/people\/jami-floyd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jami Floyd<\/a>. &#8220;And she&#8217;s worried that she will be unemployable after her time at Vassar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, Hemmings&#8217;s story is helping to launch a deeper conversation at the college. The conference, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=57671\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Quiet As It&#8217;s Kept; Passing Subjects, Contested Identities<\/em><\/a>, runs from Friday Apr. 5 through Sunday Apr. 7.<\/p>\n<p>For the professors coordinating the event, the topic spins off related discussions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Part of what happens when we start talking about passing and how we perform our identities is that we also get into a conversation about authenticity,&#8221; said English professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vassar.edu\/faculty\/hiperez\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Hiram Perez<\/a>. &#8220;It also brings us into this complex conversation about the different ways that we police one another.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The conference is slated to include presentations about many forms of passing pertaining to race, sexuality, gender, ability, religion, and class.<\/p>\n<p>Listen to the story (00:07:56) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/story\/ny-college-conference-examines-passing-and-identity\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Anita Florence Hemmings applied to attend Vassar College in upstate New York in 1893, she did not disclose her racial identity to the school. She passed as a white student for years before eventually being outed as a black woman shortly before graduation, after her white roommate&#8217;s family hired a private detective to investigate her background.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2850,459,125,8,6462,20],"tags":[9894,2368,27069,29708,20641,7523],"class_list":["post-57924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-anita-florence-hemmings","tag-hiram-perez","tag-jami-floyd","tag-mia-l-mask","tag-mia-mask","tag-wnyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57924","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=57924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57925,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57924\/revisions\/57925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}