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PASSING

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about a person classified as one race being accepted as another. For the deliberate misrepresentation of one’s own race, see Racial misrepresentation.

Globe icon.The examples and perspectives in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this article, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new article, as appropriate. (January 2026) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Black and white photo of Anita Florence Hemmings. She looks white in the photo so she must of had her makeup on
Anita Florence Hemmings, the first African-American woman of mixed ancestry to graduate from Vassar College, passed as white for socioeconomic reasons.

Passing, in the context of race, occurs when one conceals their socially applied racial identity or ethnicity in order to be perceived as another race for acceptance and other benefits.[1] Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a person of mixed race who has assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social consequences of racial segregation and discrimination. In the Antebellum South, passing as White was sometimes a temporary disguise used as a means of escaping slavery, which had become a racial caste.

United States

Passing for white

James Weldon Johnson, author of the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Although anti-miscegenation laws outlawing racial intermarriage existed in the North American Colonies as early as 1664,[2] there were no laws preventing or prosecuting the rape of enslaved girls and women. Rape of slaves was legal and encouraged during slavery to increase the slave population. As a result, for generations, enslaved women (who might also be mixed-race) bore mixed-race children who were deemed “mulattos“, “quadroons“, “octoroons”, or “hexadecaroons” based on their percentage of “black blood”.[3]

Although these mixed-race people were often half White or more, institutions of hypodescent and the 20th-century one-drop rule in some states – particularly in the South – classified them as black and therefore, inferior, particularly after slavery became a racial caste. But there were other mixed-race people who were born in colonial Virginia among the working class to unions or marriages between free white, almost exclusively Irish, women and African or African-American men, free, indentured, or slave, and became ancestors to many free families of color in the early decades of the United States, as documented by Paul Heinegg in his Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware.[4]

For some people, passing as White and using their whiteness to uplift other black people was the best way to undermine the system that relegated black people to a lower position in society.[5] These same people that were able to pass as white were sometimes known for leaving the African American community and getting an education, later to return and assist with racial uplifting. Although the reasons behind the decision to attempt to pass are deeply individual, the history of African Americans passing as white can be categorized by the following time periods: the antebellum era, post-emancipation, Reconstruction through Jim Crow, and present day.[6]: 4 

Antebellum United States

During the antebellum period, passing as white was a means of escaping slavery. Once they left the plantation, escaped slaves who could pass as white found safety in their perceived whiteness. To pass as white was to pass as free.[6]: 4  However, once they gained their freedom, most escaped slaves intended to return to blackness—passing as white was a temporary disguise used to gain freedom.[6]: 28  Once they had escaped, their racial ambiguity could be a safeguard to their freedom. If an escaped slave was able to pass as white, they were less likely to be caught and returned to their plantation. If they were caught, white-passing slaves such as Jane Morrison[7] could sue for their freedom, using their white appearance as justification for emancipation.[6]: 30 

Post-emancipation

Post-emancipation, passing as white was no longer a means to obtain freedom. As passing shifted from a necessity to an option, it fell out of favor in the black community. Author Charles W. Chestnutt, who was born free in Ohio as a mixed-race African American, explored circumstances for persons of color in the South after emancipation, for instance, for a formerly enslaved woman who marries a white-passing man shortly after the conclusion of Civil War. Some fictional exploration coalesced around the figure of the “tragic mulatta“, a woman whose future is compromised by her being mixed race and able to pass for white.[citation needed]

From Reconstruction through Jim Crow

During the Reconstruction era, black people slowly gained some of the constitutional rights of which they were deprived during slavery. Although they would not secure “full” constitutional equality for another century until after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, reconstruction promised African Americans legal equality for the first time. Abolishing slavery did not abolish racism. During Reconstruction whites tried to enforce white supremacy, in part through the rise of Ku Klux Klan chapters, rifle clubs and later paramilitary insurgent groups such as the Red Shirts.[8]

Passing was used by some African Americans to evade segregation. Those who were able to pass as white often engaged in tactical passing or passing as white in order to get a job, go to school, or to travel.[6]: 29  Outside these situations, “tactical passers” still lived as black people, and for this reason, tactical passing is also referred to as “9 to 5 passing.”[6]: 29  The writer and literary critic Anatole Broyard saw his father pass in order to get work after his Louisiana Creole family moved north to Brooklyn before World War II.

This idea of crossing the color line at different points in one’s life is explored in James Weldon Johnson‘s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.[9] But the narrator closes the novel by saying “I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage“,[10] meaning that he regrets trading his blackness for whiteness. The idea that passing as white was a rejection of blackness was common at the time and remains so to the present time.[6]: 30 

African-American people also chose to pass as whites during Jim Crow and beyond. For example, United States civil rights leader Walter Francis White conducted investigations in the South during which he passed as white to gather information on lynchings and hate crimes, and to protect himself in socially hostile environments. White, who had blond hair, blue eyes and a light complexion, was of mixed-race, mostly European ancestry. Twenty-seven of White’s 32 great-great-great-grandparents were white; the other five were classified as black and had been slaves. White grew up with his parents in Atlanta in the black community and identified with it. He served as the chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1929 until his death in 1955.

In the 20th century, Krazy Kat comics creator George Herriman, a Louisiana Creole cartoonist born to mulatto parents, passed as white throughout his adult life. Around this time, those who passed as white were referred to through French Creole slang as passant (passing) à blanc or pour blanc (as white).[11][12][13]

The aforementioned 20th-century writer and critic Anatole Broyard was a Louisiana Creole who chose to pass for white in his adult life in New York City and Connecticut. He wanted to create an independent writing life and rejected being classified as a black writer. In addition, he did not identify with northern urban black people, whose experiences had been much different from his as a child in New Orleans’ Creole community. He married an American woman of European descent. His wife and many of his friends knew he was partly black in ancestry. His daughter Bliss Broyard did not find out until after her father’s death. In 2007, she published a memoir that traced her exploration of her father’s life and family mysteries entitled One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life: A Story of Race and Family Secrets.

Australia

Edward Stirling

Edward Stirling, one of the early British settlers in South Australia, was the illegitimate child of a Scottish slaveholder in Jamaica and an unidentified woman of colour. Financed by his father’s slave compensation, he passed as Scottish after arriving in Australia and became one of the colony’s wealthiest individuals. He and his sons Lancelot and Edward Charles Stirling were all members of parliament.[14]

Leslie Joseph Hooker, the founder of one of Australia’s real estate firms LJ Hooker, concealed his Chinese ancestry during his lifetime, including changing his birth surname of Tingyou.[15][16]

Similarly to the African-American practice, many Aboriginal Australians have passed as white to avoid legal and social discriminations.[17] In the iconic autobiography My Place, a central theme is Sally Morgan, whose family passed as Indians, discovering her Aboriginal heritage.

Canada

Examples of racial passing have been used by people to assimilate into groups other than European. Marie Lee Bandura, who grew up as part of the New Westminster Indian Band in British Columbia, was orphaned and believed she was the last of her people. She moved to Vancouver’s Chinatown, married a Chinese man, and raised her four children believing they were Chinese and French. One day she told her daughter Rhonda Larrabee about her heritage: “I will tell you once, but you must never ask me again.” Marie Lee Bandura had chosen to hide her roots due to the prejudice she faced.[18][19]

Art and popular culture

See also: Works about racial passing

The 1929 novel Passing, by American author Nella Larsen, centers around the concept of racial passing. Set in Harlem, New York in the 1920s, it follows the reunion of two childhood friends, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, both of whom are light-skinned mixed race women. Irene has married a black man while Clare has married a white man, from whom she conceals her African heritage.[20] The novel was adapted into a film of the same name which feature in the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.[21]

See also

Concepts

Individuals

References

Notes

  1.  “Passing (race relations) | EBSCO Research Starters”. www.ebsco.com. Retrieved July 19, 2025.
  2.  Viñas-Nelson, Jessica (July 14, 2017). “Interracial Marriage in “Post-Racial” America”. Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. The history departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University. Archived from the original on December 6, 2018. Retrieved November 12, 2018.
  3.  Peerey, Destiny; Bodenhausen, Galen, V. (2008). “Black + White = Black Hypodescent in Reflexive Categorization of Racially Ambiguous Faces”. Psychological Science. 19 (10): 973–977. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02185.x. PMID 19000204. S2CID 12042421.
  4.  Heinegg, Paul (1995–2000). Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware. Baltimore: Geneaological Publishing Co. Archived from the original on August 7, 2010. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
  5.  Piper, Adrian (1992). “Passing for White, Passing for Black”. Transition (58): 4–32. doi:10.2307/2934966. JSTOR 2934966. S2CID 153989912.
  6.  Hobbs, Allyson (2014). A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-36810-1.
  7.  Johnson, Walter. “The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s”. University of Vermont. University of Vermont Journal of American History. Archived from the original on September 16, 2018. Retrieved November 7, 2018.
  8.  Campbell, James, M.; Fraser, Rebecca, J. (2008). Reconstruction: People and Perspectives. Santa Barbara, CA; Denver, CO; Oxford, England: ACB-CLIO, Inc. p. xii. ISBN 9781598840216. Archived from the original on January 28, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2018.
  9.  Bornstein, George (2011). The Colors of Zion. USA: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-674-05701-2.
  10.  Weldon-Johnson, James (1912). The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Boston: Sherman, French, & Company. p. 207. ISBN 9781774414736. Archived from the original on November 28, 2021. Retrieved November 19, 2018.
  11.  “Growing up in Davant, Louisiana: The Creoles of the East Bank of Plaquemines Parish”. www.louisianafolklife.org. Archived from the original on March 13, 2024. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
  12.  Williams, Scotty (April 18, 2023). “The Creole Collection: Odes to Ancestral Childhood”. Scotty Williams. Retrieved March 13, 2024.
  13.  Martin, Gilbert E. (1993). Passé Pour Blanc (passed for White): Creole Secrets. Mandingo Press. Archived from the original on August 4, 2024. Retrieved April 27, 2024.
  14.  Robertson, Beth M. (2022). “Edward Stirling: Embodiment and beneficiary of slave-ownership” (PDF). Australian Journal of Biography and History. 6 (6): 103–124. doi:10.22459/AJBH.06.2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 24, 2022. Retrieved May 24, 2022.
  15.  Spearritt, Peter (1996). “Sir Leslie Joseph Hooker (1903–1976)”. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 14. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943.
  16.  “LJ Hooker’s Chinese roots”. ChineseAustralia.org. Retrieved July 10, 2022.
  17.  Barlow, Karen (October 28, 2005). “Justice Spigelman calls for pride on Indigenous ancestry”. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on January 27, 2023. Retrieved January 28, 2023.
  18.  “A Tribe of One”. Government of Canada. National Film Board of Canada. 2009. Archived from the original on July 6, 2011. Retrieved July 26, 2009.
  19.  Hui, Stephen (May 26, 2003). “Film: The story of the smallest tribe”. Vol. 114, no. 4. Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser University. p. 10. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 25, 2012. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  20.  “African American Poetry: Nella Larsen, “Passing” (1929) (full text)”. African American Poetry: A Digital Anthology. Retrieved June 8, 2026.
  21.  Ward, Ben (December 15, 2020). “2021 Sundance Film Festival: Full Program Announced – sundance.org”. Retrieved June 8, 2026.
  22.  “White Like Me”. The New Yorker. June 10, 1996. Archived from the original on September 24, 2021. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
  23.  “My mother spent her life passing as white. Discovering her secret changed my view of race – and myself”. The Independent. November 21, 2017. Archived from the original on May 25, 2022.
  24.  “Passing as White – Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly”. www.vassar.edu.
  25.  Mason, Christopher (December 2, 2023). “The Queen of New York Realtors and a Lifelong Secret”. airmail.news. Archived from the original on June 19, 2024. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  26.  Green, Penelope (January 11, 2024). “Alice Mason, Real Estate Fixer and Hostess to the Elite, Dies at 100”. New York Times. Archived from the original on October 8, 2024. Retrieved November 10, 2024.
  27.  “The Fascinating Old Hollywood Story That Inspired The Last Tycoon’s Best Plotline”. Vanity Fair. July 28, 2017. Archived from the original on July 31, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2021.
  28.  Hauke, Kathleen A. (Spring 1984). “The “Passing” of Elsie Roxborough”. Michigan Quarterly Review. 23 (2). Archived from the original on December 22, 2021. Retrieved December 22, 2021.

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