Different generations respond to the concept of “passing“. I talk about this in Living IncogNegro
Something that the older generations are likely to be aware of, there’s been a shame associated with “passing” that gets stuffed into the next generation and stuffed into the next generation.
So it’s something that hasn’t been able to evolve very much.
A way in which it has evolved over time has to do with leverage and power. So for example, there was something referred to as the “one drop rule”, where if it is surmised that anybody in your family tree could have been black, you were considered black.
There was the same segregation as everybody else during the Jim Crow era.
If you were living in a town where everybody knew who you were, which is why there were people who escaped North, recreated themselves. I’ve heard stories about people whose families said, look, forget us, leave us behind, do not write back and go live a more privileged life. There’s a wonderful book called The Secret Librarian.
It’s the personal librarian to J. P. Morgan, so J. P. Morgan library, J. P. Morgan art collections, things like that. The person who cultivated and curated that was passing and that was a situation where the family said, it’s, do separate yourselves.
And of course, there’s going to be a lot of resentment, right?
On the other hand, if you could pass, there are lots of reasons to argue for that. And as time has changed, you have a lot of people who are passing, who don’t want to pass, in one way or another. They want to be connected.
They’re like, I can’t help how I was born. But then there’s a lot of rejection from the black side. So there’s this middle area that gets really tricky. I’m not saying that everybody on all sides are hateful and full of rejection. Not at all. But those times when it does come up it’s pretty salient and weird.
Like even looking how I look, there have been a couple of times where the parents of somebody white I was dating, they looked at me in a very different way and treated me differently once they found out about the black side of my family.
I don’t have to be as vigilant, obviously, as a lot of my brown skinned brethren.
But there are things that pop up, or if I’m standing up for somebody where people are like, what gives you the right to tell me not to talk that way? It’s layers and layers and layers.
I’m Gin Hammond and I’m Living IncogNegro. I’m glad you’re here and we’re on this journey together. Find me on instagram here. Send me a note here.