{"id":62779,"date":"2022-01-12T15:59:33","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T15:59:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=62779"},"modified":"2022-01-12T15:59:34","modified_gmt":"2022-01-12T15:59:34","slug":"can-you-be-white-passing-even-if-you-arent-trying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=62779","title":{"rendered":"Can You Be \u201cWhite Passing\u201d Even if You Aren\u2019t Trying?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can You Be \u201cWhite Passing\u201d Even if You Aren\u2019t Trying?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Mother Jones<\/a>
\nJanuary-February 2022 Issue<\/p>\n

Andrea Guzm\u00e1n<\/strong><\/a>, Ben Bagdikian Editorial Fellow<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nLisa Taniguchi<\/small><\/a><\/p>\n

The phrase has become popular on social media. But there\u2019s a lot left out of the conversation.<\/em><\/p>\n

When pop star Olivia Rodrigo<\/a> released her album Sour<\/em><\/a> in May 2021, listeners took to TikTok<\/a> to debate whether she was \u201cwhite passing<\/a>.\u201d The question was not really about how Rodrigo perceives or publicly identifies herself. She is of both Filipino and white ancestry<\/a>. Rather, it was about whether others see her as white. The Rodrigo discourse soon enflamed more general discussion about who deems one \u201cwhite passing.\u201d As one Iranian-born TikToker explained<\/a>, she \u201cdid not grow up being white\u201d when she came of age in post-9\/11<\/a> America<\/a>, but after others began to associate her appearance with whiteness\u2014partially because of the rise of the Kardashians<\/a>\u2014she now recognizes the privilege of being \u201cwhite passing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The conversation differed from how \u201cpassing\u201d has traditionally been used in the United States<\/a>. In the Jim Crow era<\/a>\u2014when \u201cone drop<\/a>\u201d of Black ancestry subjected a person to segregation\u2014\u201cpassing\u201d was a deception to assume the privileges of whiteness. From 1880 to 1940, experts suspect about 20 percent<\/a> of Black men passed for white at some point. It was commonly an attempt to \u201caccess things that wouldn\u2019t have been available to them otherwise,\u201d says Nikki Khanna<\/a>, a sociology professor at the University of Vermont. But it was also a certain betrayal<\/a>\u2014leaving behind collective uplift for personal gain…<\/p>\n

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

The phrase has become popular on social media. But there\u2019s a lot left out of the conversation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,33,8413,459,14646,8,6462,394,20],"tags":[21720,32773,30881,7558,87,352,32774],"class_list":["post-62779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-census","category-communications","category-history","category-latino","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-alyson-hobbs","tag-andrea-guzman","tag-brit-bennett","tag-mother-jones","tag-nella-larsen","tag-nikki-khanna","tag-olivia-rodrigo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62779","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=62779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62781,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62779\/revisions\/62781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}