Pass \pas\: to identify oneself or be identified as something one isn’t.
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
The practice of passing is not a new concept to me. As a child I heard stories and saw photos of relatives who were light enough to pass and later learned of some who actually crossed the color-line. In 2000, I learned that my great-great uncle’s secret was revealed in headlines across the country with his death in 1932. Though he never severed ties with his family, during his entire professional career as a military officer, he lived as a white man. Born in the late 1800s, he occasionally passed in his early years, but enlisted in the army as a white man during WWI in 1917. Without going into great detail, he divorced his first wife, a fair-skinned black woman who could also pass, and later married a white woman from a wealthy Southern family. In his death, his life became a scandal: a respected career military officer, a 1st Lieutenant who served in WWI, was actually a black man. But, while doing the research into his life, I have come to see that he was not a man trying to get away with something or make fools of others. He was a man who wanted to be just that. A man.
I am in the process of working on a project about his life and while I can go on and on about the complexities of this issue, for now I would prefer to share some of the books and films I have come across while researching my family history and the complex concept of passing.
The book One Drop by Bliss Broyard is one of the latest books exploring the idea. Her father, writer and New York Times Book Review critic Anatole Broyard, revealed the truth of his racial identity to his children right before before his death. This side of Broyard’s life is also explored in the essay, "The Passing of Anatole Broyard" by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his 1998 book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man.
The following is a list of other books and films that have dealt with this delicate subject matter and/or the complexities of racial identity:
- Passing by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larson was published in 1929
- An Auto-biography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson was published anonymously in 1912 and again under Johnson’s name in 1927.
- The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte (1997)
- Caucasia by Danzy Senna (1998)
- The Human Stain by Phillip Roth. The book, published in 2000, was later turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins in the lead role.
- When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race by Judith Stone (2007)
- Cane River by Lalita Tademy (2001)
- The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman (1929)
- Black, White and Jewish: An Autobriography of a Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker (2002)
- Other People’s Skin: Four Novellas Edited by Tracey Price-Thompson and TaRessa Stovall (2008)
- Pinky, directed by Elia Kazan (1949)
- Imitation of Life (Directed by John Stahl in 1934 and Douglas Sirk in 1959. The 1934 film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Both films were based on the novel by Fannie Hurst.)
- School Daze, directed by Spike Lee (1988)
