{"id":60174,"date":"2020-09-13T01:25:20","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T01:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=60174"},"modified":"2020-09-14T15:28:08","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T15:28:08","slug":"because-she-can-the-unbearable-whiteness-of-jessie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=60174","title":{"rendered":"Because She Can: The Unbearable Whiteness of Jessie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrisismagazine.com\/single-post\/2020\/09\/09\/Because-She-Can-The-Unbearable-Whiteness-of-Jessie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em><strong>Because She Can: The Unbearable Whiteness of Jessie<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrisismagazine.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Crisis<\/a><br \/>\n2020-09-09<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taressastovall.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>TaRessa Stovall<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrisismagazine.com\/single-post\/2020\/09\/09\/Because-She-Can-The-Unbearable-Whiteness-of-Jessie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.wixstatic.com\/media\/f254bb_becd26ee01ef4ca0be94da486d4e6f9c~mv2.jpg\/v1\/fill\/w_857,h_571,al_c,lg_1,q_85\/f254bb_becd26ee01ef4ca0be94da486d4e6f9c~mv2.webp\" width=\"550\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a mixed (Black, Jewish, Native American) boomer, very light-skinned and so racially ambiguous looking that most people question, assume and try to challenge my racial identity.<\/p>\n<p>My copper-toned Black father hated that I wouldn\u2019t exploit my appearance to \u201cbe anything.\u201d My Russian Jewish mother wondered about my lifelong allegiance to Blackness and my stubborn insistence on conveying the messy totality of my DNA even when it wasn\u2019t comfortable, advantageous or convenient.<\/p>\n<p>Still, I never lied about my identity. Even when doing so might have made my life easier.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We\u2019re familiar with the reasons that many Black people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">passed for white<\/a>, especially in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction_era\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Reconstruction<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=4781\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jim Crow<\/a> eras \u2014 as a way to lessen oppression and \u201clevel up\u201d to better opportunities. But why would a white person discard their privilege to pretend to be Black?<\/strong>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecrisismagazine.com\/single-post\/2020\/09\/09\/Because-She-Can-The-Unbearable-Whiteness-of-Jessie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because She Can: The Unbearable Whiteness of Jessie The Crisis 2020-09-09 TaRessa Stovall I&#8217;m a mixed (Black, Jewish, Native American) boomer, very light-skinned and so racially ambiguous looking that most people question, assume and try to challenge my racial identity. My copper-toned Black father hated that I wouldn\u2019t exploit my appearance to \u201cbe anything.\u201d My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,6462,20,25],"tags":[240,31106,31107,20241,23102,24709,31156],"class_list":["post-60174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","category-women","tag-colorism","tag-jessica-a-krug","tag-jessica-krug","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-taressa-stovall","tag-the-crisis","tag-the-crisis-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60174","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=60174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60185,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60174\/revisions\/60185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}