Race and Politics

An extremely brief history of “white-passing” — an unrolled Twitter thread 🧵

I’m seeing a lot of posts by non-Black people qualifying white people of different ethnicities and nationalities (Arab, Italian, South American, etc.) as “white-passing”, but, historically, that’s just not what white-passing means. Let’s unpack that with a little 🧵

“White Passing” was a way for African Americans who had no visible African ancestry to gain access to societal privileges they wouldn’t have if they were perceived as Black. An example is Dr Albert Johnson, seen above, who had to cosplay as white to have access to education and become a doctor.

Going back, being “white-passing” was a way for Black people to escape slavery & a way for whites to identify them. One Alabama slave owner took out an ad for the return of a woman who freed herself in 1845. She was “as white as most white women, with blue eyes” the ad read.

Many people think about what a Black person gained while passing, but Stanford Prof Allyson Hobbs would rather ponder what those people lost by not living as Black, having to move away from their homes, abandon their family history and live within whiteness to advance in society.

To “pass” was to be able to claim any other-than-Black heritage, and this included Native, Mexican, or any nationality that wasn’t automatically associated with Blackness. This came with a huge emotional toll (isolation, paranoia, guilt, self-hate, fear of being outed, etc.)

When non-Black people claim “white-passing” in contemporary contexts, they do so without understanding any of the history. Passing was a tool for survival & gaining access. In today’s world, if you are perceived as white, you are treated as such. Doesn’t matter where you’re from.

Basically, if you, as a non-Black person, are perceived in the world as white, and are treated as such because of it, you are not “white-passing”, you’re simply a white person of such and such ethnicity or nationality.

The only POC you can claim being is a Person of Caucasity.

Anyways, there are experts on this who dive way deeper into this subject, like the aforementioned professor and historian @allysonvhobbs of Stanford who wrote on the history of racial passing in American Life.

Read her work!

Originally published on Twitter as thread on August 29, 2021