Advice to multiple generations of people about “passing” and how these people should be feeling?
There’s a lot of strong emotion behind passing and that can change on different days, depending on your environment.
So for people who are passing, I would like to say, “Allow yourself to feel different things on different days. Especially because your environment does change and influence how you feel.”
If you want to be in rapport with a group of people who are not feeling like they’re in rapport with you, yeah, that hurts.
Allow yourself to feel that feeling. If you are thinking, “Whoo, good thing I’m passing right now,” there can be a lot of guilt associated with that, but also that can be the reality that is happening in that moment.
So for an extreme example, Walter White was one of the founding members of the NAACP.
There was a lynch mob that came to his town. He was passing. One of the only reasons he survived and didn’t get strung up as a child was because he was passing. Then he went on to use those incognito superpowers to become an investigative journalist and help the shift of civil rights and go toe to toe with Roosevelt.
That’s a perfectly good example of when you’re thinking, “Oh, good thing I was passing. I didn’t die”.
So allow yourself to feel different things, but also know that your environment influences how you feel very much.
Get a sense of how much your messaging is coming from you, whatever your regular internal monologue is, and how much you are taking in from other people. Maybe because you want the love to be there, but it’s not there, and you’re thinking, “Oh, I have to mold myself to fit this environment”, like Cinderella’s sister chopping off her foot to fit in the slipper, not a good idea.
I’m Gin Hammond and I’m Living IncogNegro.
I’m glad you’re here and we’re on this journey together.
Learn more at LivingIncogNegro.com
