A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life 

Funny how folk so arrogantly state what they would and wouldn’t do but never lived under those times of LEGAL, immensely difficult and crudely blatant racial oppression. If we weren’t there, we cannot speak of what we would do based on today’s benefits we experience because they survived. Be humble and grateful🌸

This is absolutely fascinating. Becuase of the oppression and mistreatment of Blacks in that time, I personally cannot fault anyone for "Passing". Those were different times. That was a harsh and difficult time in society for people of color and I imagine those who were able to pass, saw opportunity. Which one of us wouldnt take the road paved with gold over the road paved with unfairness, discrimination and strife? While this practice would be (IMHO) deplorable and almost unforgivable today, I totally get why it would have been done back in the day. But it had to be a lonely life, leaving behind everything you knew and loved for a better life. How isolated it must have been for them.

As an adoptee who's identity was stolen from me for 37 years (and I am still filling in the pieces). I wonder why this can't be looked at more holistically. I had no idea what I was for 37 years in the south. I was adopted out of Texas and grew up in north florida. So in my mind there was very little chance I was just one thing. What I ended up finding out is that my history was from somewhere very unexpected to me. In my heart I understand but sometimes don't agree with the ways and customs of the south. In reality I come from people who have always been in the north. And there is alot of northern things in me but they all mean I am one thing. I know back when passing occured it was due to the need to escape slavery or to have a better financial chance at life. Why right now though do we ignore that these folks that passed were almost always a good deal european as well as African. In modern times why can't we embrace all aspects of who we are. It seems to me like those who have passed are both and have a right to both communities.

Many people who had passed ended up going insane. The trauma of leaving your family, the constant fear of being discovered, the guilt, all so you could have a better life. And they were likely treated differently by their black friends/family before they left, it's just got to be too much for the mind to handle for a lifetime.

I have several family members who have passed for white, including my grandfather. This has always been an interesting topic to me.

J. Edgar Hoover.

As a child, my mom made sure that I watched and understood both Immitation of Life and Pinkey. Every now and then, they still are shown on tv, but it’s always late at night. I’m sure they’ll show during “Afro History Month.” Ebony magazine had an article about “passing,” and another about a Caucasian man who chemically changed his skin color and lived as Black in the Deep South.

My great grandmother's brother passed for White. A guy that married into the Family passed as well in the 60's and 70's. He was a policeman

This has to be done every so often. The new generations tend to forget those things of the past. Because of recent conflicts like in Serbia's ethnic cleansing, people do not understand the racial tribalism that occurs in great society at a time of cultural shifting.

This video brings to mind the book " Ways of white folks " , written by Langston Hughes . One short story of the book is entitled Passing and tells the story of the mullato dilemma .

I don’t know what is worse: feeling like an outsider within you own race or passing for white.

I recently read “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett. Heartbreaking. I am Jewish, and have cousins whose surname was deliberately changed from Epstein to Eaton, so they could get into more prestigious colleges.

For some reason feeling sad for those soul that had to hide their identity.

No purity in this country. We are all human beings.

What happened to Blacks who "passed", who had Black babies? Where is coverage of this reality?

Very fascinating but all too real

Fascinating topic! I wish she would have talked, not read, her presentation. It would have made it more of a conversation than a presentation. The audience would have been more engaged than they were. These are critiques of presentation, however the substance of her presentation is just excellent.

Dear friend, the "Good News" is the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is, "Christ died for our sins; He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the scriptures." (1st Corinthians 15: 3-4) The "Good News" of Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life to salvation. Confess that you are a sinner in need of our Savior. Receive the truth of Jesus Christ and believe Him this very moment. Precious believer, may Father God our Creator, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you abundantly now and forever! Amen!! ♥️

A well-presented documentation.

9:00 not much has changed

My mom sister was from a slave master and she passed as white we have never seen her again

EXCELLENT! Thank You. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾🙏🏾

I never seen this before but I wish the ending could have been that he accepted her and they lived there life. Glad she was able to return home though.

Extremely eloquent!!!!!!

Add to the list: Silver screen legends Rudolph Valentino and Humphrey Bogart. And from what I was told by an elderly fair-skinned black woman that Baseball legend Babe Ruth passed.

Excellent

I recently just read a book called passin.

brilliant movie

What’s the name of the movie?

I almost look like my oppressor so I join it.

sad...hates hurts..... the white man.... the pain.....

What IF a person who has very dark skin , has African features and has what is sometimes called “ Kinky” hair finds out they are 8% white through either finding out a family secret or DNA testing , would they be considered “ passing for black”? A rhetorical question or equal to “ passing for white .

M

Funny voice.

Murphysboro is close to where my family is from..

disliked for portraying being white as bad

X

That accent lol

Sell out's

This promoting racist ideas please take this down

I can't help but feel some sadness for your Aunt who couldn't return to Chicago's Southside and her family. I'm sure it saddened her more than she could express. I remember riding in the car on Chicago's highway through the city as a child and making eye contact with a child in another car. I waved at him and he waved back. He is Black and I am white. It's such a simple memory but I was so happy he waved back. I don't know why it sticks out in my memories, but I cherish it.

I have a great-aunt who did just this when she remarried a white man. She also made her children from a previous marriage with a black men visit her at night and they entered through the backdoor. At the time she lived in the city of Pittsburgh. Its funny because my grandfather her brother who could have done the same never tried to pass. He was adamant that he was a black man.

I enjoyed this a lot. I kept thinking of Walter F. White, then you mentioned him. Also, Sally Hemmings in Paris, I know there must be thousands in american history.... We had a VERY light skinned maternal ancestor on my dad's side, who was descended from slaves. I have seen pciture of her and she looks white, but she was descended from Maryland slaves. She married into a German family in Indiana (Norricks). Also my direct ancestors. Her name was Mary Ann Freeman.

I just watched a 1960 movie called I Passed For White. Another High Yellow 1965. Everyone keeps mentioning Pinky and Imitation of Life. The movies I found today are on RU-vid as well.

As being a young black woman that has lost both parents, and how they nurtured me and raise me, I cannot imagine denying they were ever mine. 😥😫 Passing sounds depressing..

Wow. I grew up with the Bud Billikin Parade through my grandparents. My grandfather owned property in the Hyde Park/Woodlawn area. We moved to Windsor Hills 8n Los Angeles while my Mom went through her residency at LA County hospital. We were NOT light. My grandfather was a follower of Marcus Garvey and a friend of Ida b Wells he also graduated from Tuskegee institute in 1920. He kept us normal. But we had a lot of light skin people in our family who could pass for white some past four Ashkenazi and some pants for Italians but they always came to visit us in Los Angeles. I miss that era in Chicago before 1965.

My Aunt and my Uncle, her husband both passed when I was a little girl. From what I remember, they owned a very prosperous club, beautiful jewelry, furs. Something happened and they lost everything. They moved here, Ohio and he ended up dying. She was heartbroken and died also. I have truly miss my Aunt. She always doted on us as she could not have children.

It is amazing but not surprising the lengths persons went through to get the goods, services, and social status opportunities allowed from societies that used biological anomalies and a concept called "race" as a way to deny qualified persons their right to a better life.

With ancestry in Louisiana, many of my family members have passed out of a desperate necessity. I am ashamed and probably unfairly critical of them. However, I went to a primarily non-black schools living in a white Jewish/Asian neighborhood in liberal/progressive San Francisco. I sometimes resent being mistaken for non-black. Still, I am guilty of using tokenism where it serves me.

Never deny your truth. When you do you end up robbing your soul.

Loss that outweighed it's rewards. Easy to intellectualize but impossible to know unless you lived it. When Mamie shows up at the work place in Imitation of Life, she could have impacted more than a job, she might have risked her daughter's or her grandchildren's very lives, something most mother's outside Hollywood, would not have been naive or selfish enough to chance. I lived the hatred and fear for one's life that existed in the South. The daily degredation, insults and the poverty that accompanied them, was the true measure of loss. It was a no brainer that if you could have a better life by not being your less dominant race you would grab the chance. The only downside was living the lie that you could never share because it was a line you crossed and those you lied to would hate you if they knew and this was the true punishment, not the folks you loved and left behind but the hatred you know is present in those you come to love.These are the true dynamics often missed in the rhetoric of racial pride or the loss of it; that particular idiom of the line forged in America and absent in Europe; that a single drop of blood should define your life, your destiny as it framed your identity, that you must be hated no matter on what side of the line you chose to live.

Poor J. Edgar Hoover. The worse consequence of passing.

My Great Grandmothers brother passed. She said he left one day and never came back. She watched him walk away while she stood on the porch. She never saw him again.

Excellent work here I have a white friend who found out that one of her grandmothers was black. My friend and her mom did not know until grandma explained this when she was terminally ill. She did it because she wanted a better life.

I grew up in a family that, unbeknownst to me until I was much older, was “passing”. What is sad, is because of this... I am unable to really trace my background back very far. There was so much information that was just swept under the rug and buried forever.

My 5th great-grandmother passed as White. Her mother was German/Dutch. Her paternal grandfather was a first-generation Dutchman, and paternal grandmother was half Black, half Mohican Indian. And a sixth great-grandmother was a full-blooded Monacan Indian (showed up in Aunt's DNA test on Ancestry).

Thank you for the outstanding and truly educational presentation.Very informative and some parts are jaw dropping.I particularly had my socks nocked off about the black woman who passed as a white man traveling with her husband portrayed as her slave.wow

Kind of like immigrants. Moving to America isn't the golden apple it's presented as.

People living 500 years from today will say how stupid of this.

Passing is still happening and in different ways. I think about a guy I knew who snapped at me that he *”WASN’T JUST BLACK!”* during a discussion about black men. I guess I outed him 🤷🏾‍♂️ But those who get *OFFENDED and UPSET* when they’re thought of as *”JUST BLACK”* (Taye Diggs feelings about his son comes to mind) I’ve often wondered how upset they are when people think that they’re *”JUST WHITE”!*

Great presentation...if the USA wasn’t so hell bent on racial and class distinctions, ppl would not have been subjected to “passing.” It’s an atrocity that many ppl have to do that to survive and be treated respectfully, Really, due to what has been going on for ages, there is no “pure” race! Not in America, I wish the country comes to grips with that fact.

Fascinating. Thank you for researching this topic, and for allowing this talk to be posted.

interesting this lecture was meant for me to find it. I've always wondered about this situation. Reminds me of the Millie L. McGhee story of J. E. Hoover passing for white. Thank you for sharing.

Update: 10/02/21 According to article in ‘PARADE’ in 2012, a psychologist study showed that children need to know (1) that things don’t always work out (2) and you need to know about your ‘Family History’. My comments: Find out how your parents and others were treated by who they thought were their parents, grandparents, uncles/aunts, cousins, great uncles/aunts? Who were their enemies and what happened: who got after them, tried to harm them or who tried to kill them or who killed them? Their dates, places of birth, death, marriages? Their children 👶? Did they go to school: where, when and how? Why didn’t they go to school or further their education? When did they leave home and why? Workplaces? A group member’s comments below: A foundation (family history) is so important ... even if just stories about a parent’s life experiences. Agreed, we need to raise children to be resilient. The other part psychologists are saying, it is important that parents allow children to solve their own problems. Too often parents step in to fix, but we will not be here forever to solve their problems.

It taught me that everything is not what it seems. I’ve always lived and circulated around all types of people and I find that people are people, no matter what race.

Thank you for this reminder. Passing came in different situations to fit a more popular narrative for a betterment of life and privileges.

Those persons at that time in history did what they personally wanted and somtimes needed to do. I can't shame them because I was not in their shoes nor the circumstances.

A.D. Powell has an awesome common sense book you can buy on Amazon called Passing for what you are" ! Highly recommend it for the intellectual curious!! If u are predominantly White you are White, one doesn't have to be 100% White to be White just as one doesn't have to be 100% Black to be Black or Chinese or Japanese or Native American!!

It explains the madness in Amerikkka, understanding this is the job.

Remember Pinky was that along the same lines

This is one of my favorite topics that I have discussed in my music appreciation eLearning courses. "Racial ambiguity in American songwriting" as well as "Ethnomusicology and The Great Migration". You are very inspiring...keep up the great work...and see you at the top!!!

I'm confused as to how Nella and Elsie passed. To me you can clearly see that they are not white.

The "trope" of the tragic mulatto has been around in literature for quite some time, but what people fail to realize is that these types of stories are based in reality. My great-grandma passed and her husband left her after finding out (this happened in the Deep South in the 1960s and the divorce record literally lists the reason for the divorce as "indignities"...which is basically its own separate category for publicly humiliating a spouse somehow and from state law at the time, as there were classifications for adultery, etc.). Her only daughter (my maternal grandmother) passed, but ended up marrying my grandfather, who was also passing at the time. Crazy! But again, these are/were peoples' REAL LIVES. I can't imagine everything my grandma (and others) gave up, especially knowing the breakdown of the family that happened after she spent all that time living as a white woman to have it all fall apart...my heart breaks for her, and I admire her strength, resilience, and endurance; the difficulty of the choices she had to make is unfathomable and seems so, so lonely.

This is just wonderful. Great job.

If they could pass for white they must have had a lot of european ancestry

I have read every comment posted here. As an Octroon who has chosen not to pass from the time I was a small child who was proud to be “colored “, “Negro”, and Black long before James Brown made it popular to be Black and proud I can tell all o’ y’all that unless you have lived it you will never understand it. When I was a teenager my younger brothers and sisters and I were taken from my mother and stepfather and placed into foster care. I had only known poverty and the ghetto until then but from that point I got to see how educated working Black folks who were raised on farms lived, I got to see how educated Black folks who were raised in the city lived, and I got to see how educated working white folks lived. And you know what I found out? It doesn’t matter how light you are or how dark you are there are white folks who just ain’t gonna like you just coz you Black and there are white folks who truly don’t judge ppl by the color of their skin! They wait until they get to know you for the person you are. You know what else I found out? The are Hispanic folks and Black folks like that too! Those are the people that I befriend and associate with. Life is much too short and this world is way too small to live it any other way. Now don’t get me wrong in the privacy of my home and among my intimate family members I sometimes join in the “bashing” conversation if I have had a bad time of it that day or met a particularly ignorant person but I do try to live a peaceful accepting life. Nobody ever said it would be easy but we should all at least try. I’m done and out. To all of you reading this I pray that you will be Blessed as you continue on your life’s path.

Imitation of Life is deep. My mother forced me to watch it at 13 years old.

We always have a choice. It's whether you are guided by what you know to be right or by what the consequences are you may suffer.

GOD must be shaking his head at us ,my children,my children how ignorant of you I forgive you🙄😥

Great! Now I have to watch Imatation of Life.😐

My mother who's give or take 3/4 black and 1/4 white but you would never know she had a single drop of black in her. I'm proud to say she acknowledged the fact that she was mixed but always referred to herself as a black woman. The fact that we live in Massachusetts which is about a liberal a state as you can find prob didn't deter her from hiding the fact she was mixed. My pops is 100% African American but is naturally light skinned even though my paternal grandparents are dark skin. I inherited the light skin gene but u can clearly tell I'm not white or have very little. I can understand the reason why people would pass themselves off as white but I dont think I could ever do that. I have to much pride and love for myself and the fact that I'm majority African American which is easy to say now I suppose but the fact that people hid their truth and or hated themselves to the point or having the need to pass themselves is just heartbreaking. The psychological aspects of slavery and discrimination along with fact that we've been taught to believe that whiteness and light skin is the model has had such a negative effect on African Americans psychologically, emotionally, etc is something that will be with us for generations.

I am here bawling for Miss Bea 😭😭

Omgosh my heart broke when mama hung her head😒

It would've been great if the "passers" could've brought the rest along. Instead of becoming elites. Two sides.

I am 60 plus years .My Grandmother told me all about this. A President from Marion Ohio Passed for Caucasian.

That was CRAZY.what if she needed a blood transfusion and the one to save her was her mother.

I think that people need to stop bullying her. She is a person with feelings and not every feeling has to be expressed. She is just helping to educate people. I bet the ones with the rude comments have kids as bullys.

Excellent! You might have to remind this generation about their heritage and ethnicity while dating or marrying people in other cultures and the how race impact their children later in life.

Skin, the largest organ of the human body.

Many Hispanic women that have indigenous American ancestry and African come to the states as whites on their ID and application and they Love it...

I had family members who did this in the early 1940

At the insistence of her mother she left one community which accepted her to join another community which accepted her (as white) & ultimately viewed these entities as mutually exclusive as a black person really would not be permitted to live as white, legally. Once she became white she ultimately decided to remain that way to protect her new identity. Also 16:22 I never knew the Ellen Kraft story

Unless you have walked a mile in a mixed person's shoes, you cannot judge them for their choices. Mixing is done by two individuals of different races. That was THEIR choice! Mixed people are caught in the middle.

I can understand completely why they lived a " PASSING WHITE LIFESTYLE " ...it was extremely difficult for BLACK people so they felt that was the only way to have an easier life ...my great aunts all passed

Naturally, what i will say doesn't change the racial attitudes of Americans and the already-massive mindset of passing in the United States, a person of color has greater fluidity of race in Latin America than is true in the United States. No matter what the indigenous, Asian, or Sub-Saharan African descent a person might have, that person's mixed race offspring or descendants can be considered officially and socially white.

I'm reading the comments and I think it is understandable that if you could pass YOU WOULD. Being black meet hurt and pain even death just for being.

Great topic but would have been nice to see what was shown on the screen.

Mixed raced people passing as White, is no different than them passing as Black. They are both and not one race. If they look more like one ethnicity more, then that's basically how people identify them...

I never saw the 1934 version... Ms Freddie Washington is the reason I must see it

The made for tv movie Queen, starring Halle Berry has a retching scene where the protagonist's daughter denies her mother in front of a white suitor