Yeah, once again, this is a question rather than some actual commentary or information. \u00a0But here\u2019s something I was thinking about that I\u2019d like your thoughts on. \u00a0(\u201cYou\u201d being defined, as usual, as anyone who happens to read this.)<\/p>\n
A generation \u2014 or, really, two generations ago, there would be instances of families of (to be precise about this) mixed European and Sub-Saharan African descent, with very light skin due to generations of intermarriage, who would \u201cpass as white\u201d \u2014 meaning \u00a0that their neighbors and community perceived of them as vaguely \u201cethnic\u201d (Southern European) white people and treated them accordingly, welcoming them into their White social circles, not applying Jim Crow laws to them, and so forth. \u00a0Sometimes you\u2019ll read about this, now, in articles (used to be the sort of \u201chuman interest\u201d article that would appear in the newspaper, in the old days when newspapers had such sections), with the ending to the story either being that the family was \u201cfound out\u201d and shamed, or that they severed relationships with darker-skinned relatives, and that a later generation found out the story when researching family history.<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, I haven\u2019t read a story like that in a while. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s just, indeed, the decline of newspapers that would have published this sort of story. \u00a0(I suppose it\u2019s also a Slate-ian type of story.) \u00a0But my question is, does the concept of \u201cpassing for white\u201d still exist?<\/p>\n
And what I mean by that is this:<\/p>\n
there are clearly families who fit into this category: \u00a0people of mixed ancestry with light skin and other physical characteristics such that, if you had to guess, and assign a single ethnic origin to them, you\u2019d think they were, in fact, more Italian, Spanish, or Greek. <\/p>\n
Back in the days of the One Drop Rule, such people would still be black, and expected to identify that way: \u00a0still, if it were known, marked that way on the birth certificate or other records, still be held to Jim Crow restrictions in the South, and still, in general, shamed as \u201ctrying to pass\u201d if they didn\u2019t accept the label \u201cblack.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m just curious: \u00a0open-endedly, in your experience, do you think things have changed?<\/p>\n
Are people of mixed racial\/ethnic origin \u201callowed\u201d (by society, by their communities, by their extended families) to identify with both ethnicities, or one, or the other, or neither, or is the demand still placed on them to \u201cbe\u201d black, or Hispanic, or Asian? <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yeah, once again, this is a question rather than some actual commentary or information. \u00a0But here\u2019s something I was thinking about that I\u2019d like your thoughts on. \u00a0(\u201cYou\u201d being defined, as usual, as anyone who happens to read this.) A generation \u2014 or, really, two generations ago, there would be instances of families of (to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-race"],"yoast_head":"\n