I Passed For White<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm a big fan of John Williams' compositions. He is most famous for composing the music for Star Wars, E. T., Superman, Indiana Jones, and many other such\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/06\/i-passed-for-white.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Passed For White\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I'm a big fan of John Williams' compositions. He is most famous for composing the music for Star Wars, E. 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{"id":24623,"date":"2014-06-19T10:36:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T14:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=24623"},"modified":"2014-06-19T10:36:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-19T14:36:51","slug":"i-passed-for-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/06\/i-passed-for-white.html","title":{"rendered":"I Passed For White"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ I\u2019m a big fan of John Williams\u2019 compositions. He is most famous for composing the music for Star Wars, E. T., Superman, Indiana Jones, and many other such blockbusters. But, as \u201cJohnny Williams,\u201d he was already composing film scores in the 1950s. I learned recently that one of his earliest scores was for the movie \u201cI Passed for White\u201d which was released in 1960. An excerpt from his score can be found at the bottom of this post, courtesy of YouTube.<\/p>\n

The name of the movie, and its premise, are inherently racist. The notion that someone who \u201clooks white\u201d can nonetheless be \u201cblack\u201d because of the skin colors of their ancestors reflects dubious notions of race. But worse still, we see at work the notion that whiteness is the default and good, while blackness is like a blemish which may be there even if you cannot see it.<\/p>\n

I wish that I could say that we\u2019ve moved decisively away from this sort of racism over the past half a century \u2013 and we certainly have made some progress. But in looking for information about the movie in order to write this blog post, I found an article from just last year about \u201c10 Black Celebrities Who Successfully Pass For White.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

My question is how we get away from the racism that is inherent in the ways that people continue to speak about race and skin color. I\u2019ve blogged about this before<\/a>, including one post<\/a> that suggests that we need to use language that reflects the full range of human skin pigmentation, and to consider all of them to be worth mentioning if any are, just as we now may describe people\u2019s hair color. Perhaps using the von Luschan scale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What do readers of this blog think about this?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the excerpt from the score, as promised:<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"