Racial Passing

Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black or brown person or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination.

In the United States

Passing for white

Although anti-miscegenation laws outlawing racial intermarriage existed in America as early as 1664, 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 slave population. For generations, enslaved black mothers bore mixed-race children who were deemed " mulattos", "quadroons", "octoroons", or "hexadecaroons" based on their percentage of "black blood".

Although these mixed-race people were often half white or more, institutions of hypodescent and the 20th-century one drop rule in some—particularly Southern⁠—states classified them as black and therefore, inferior, particularly after slavery became a racial caste. But there were other mixed-race people who were born to unions or marriages in colonial Virginia between free white 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 US, as documented by Paul Heinegg in his ''Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware''.

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. 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 reasons behind passing 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.

Antebellum America

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. 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. 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 could sue for their freedom, using their white appearance as justification for emancipation.

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.

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 he 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.

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. 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." 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.'' But the narrator closes the novel by saying "I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage", meaning that he regrets trading in 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.

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 was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and had 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.

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''.

2000 to present

Passing as white in the 21st-century is more controversial as it is often seen as a rejection of blackness, family and culture. In August 2021, Black writer for '' Steven Universe Future'' and ''Craig of the Creek'', Taneka Stotts, told ''Insider'' that often Black and brown characters in animation exist ambiguously, calling this a "White passing narrative...where the narrative is written in a way that it's white-passing enough to get past your executives and the powers that be." Mae Catt, a queer Asian-American writer for ''Young Justice'', added that when shows aren't run or written by people of color, Black characters are "surface decoration" with racial representation going "very similarly to queer representation" as the cultural identity of characters is not shown, with an "unspoken implicit destructive bias" that their behavior is "correct," behavior that is "inevitably white."

Passing as Indigenous Americans

Other persons have passed as Native American or First Nations people. These people are sometimes called Pretendians, a portmanteau and Hippie movements, non-Native people sometimes have attempted to pass as Native American or other Indigenous medicine people. The pejorative term for such people is " plastic shaman".Aldred, Lisa, "Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality" in: ''The American Indian Quarterly'' issn.24.3 (2000) pp.329-352. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

The author and environmentalist Grey Owl was born in United Kingdom as a white man named Archibald Belaney; he made a life in Canada and claimed to be a First Nations person. When asked to explain his White appearance, he lied and claimed he was half Scottish and half Apache. Belaney performed what he said were Ojibwe cultural practices and wilderness skills, and adopted an anachronistic and stereotypical lifestyle, as part of a persona which he was successful in marketing to non-Native audiences.Donald B. Smith, ''From the Land of Shadows: the Making of Grey Owl'', (Saskatoon: Western Prairie Books, 1990)

The United States actor Iron Eyes Cody, who was of Sicilian descent, developed a niche in Hollywood by playing roles of Native Americans. Initially playing Indians only in movies and television, eventually he wore his film costumes full-time and insisted he was of Cherokee and Cree descent.

In the visual arts and literature, other White-Americans have also attempted to pass as being indigenous. Ku Klux Klan leader and segregationist speech writer, Asa Earl Carter, attempted to reinvent himself as Cherokee author Forrest Carter, author of the novel '' The Education of Little Tree''.Nolan, Maggie and Carrie Dawson, ed
''Who's Who? Hoaxes, Imposture and Identity Crises in Australian Literature''.
St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2004: 16–17. (retrieved through Google Books, July 26, 2009) .

Jay Marks, a man of Eastern-European Jewish ancestry, adopted the pen name of Jamake Highwater about 1969, claiming to be Cherokee-Blackfeet, and published numerous books under that name. He won awards and NEA grants.

Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West was an African American from Rhode Island. The grandson of prominent attorney and community leader, William Ashbie Hawkins, West reinvented himself as Red Thunder Cloud and, despite only knowing "a few words of Catawba" that he had learned from books, he convinced anthropologists that he was the last fluent speaker of the Catawba language. Over objections from the Native Americans he studied, who told the academics he was not Native, West continued to work with anthropologists to publish language and cultural materials about a number of different tribes with whom he had never had contact.

American-born sculptor Jimmie Durham was exposed as a non-Native man posing as a Cherokee. Artist Yeffe Kimball claimed to be Osage.

To try to protect Native American artists from the claims of non-Native impersonators, the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 was passed in the United States. It requires any visual artist claiming to be a Native American artist to be either an enrolled member of a state or federally recognized tribe, or for a recognized tribe to designate the artist as a tribal artisan.

In academia, due to non-tribal colleges' and universities' reliance on self-identification of tribal identity, non-Native people have sometimes passed as Native Americans. Elizabeth Warren, Harvard professor and U.S. Senator, claimed Cherokee and Delaware ancestry. Her claims were rejected by the Cherokee Nation.

Professor and activist Ward Churchill, who advocated for American Indian rights, claimed to be alternately Cherokee, Muscogee Creek

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