With an African American man running for president, the United States has been more focused on race in the last year than any time in the last several decades, but much of the focus has been on the concept that race doesn’t matter. For the characters in Nella Larsen’s “Passing”, race was everything and although race relations have improve since 1929 when the book was published, it is impossible to believe that race is not still a major factor in the development of personal identity and in social interactions.
In the novel, Clare and Irene choose different paths because of their race and in spite of it. Clare hides her past, and her heritage, “passing for white” while Irene remains a part of the black community of Harlem. Perhaps because of her own mixed ethnicity, Larsen is able to tell the story from the viewpoint of both women, both ashamed and confused by the impact that their race has on their lives. Clare spends much of the book trying to hide her heritage and Irene revels in hers.
Had Larsen written at a different time, she might have had Clare suffer some grand cosmic punishment for her deception, but in “Passing’ it is more Irene who suffers for her choice. Because she remains a part of the black community, she suffers discrimination and humiliation that would have been spared a white woman. The most interesting facet of this novel is that it still enlightens us today about the impact of race on personal identity. Michael Jackson has long been the brunt of many jokes with tabloid speculation that he was lightening his skin, trying to become more white.
The Essay on Race and Ethnicity: Introduction to Sociology
The terms stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, and racism are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation. But when discussing these terms from a sociological perspective, it is important to define them: stereotypes are oversimplified ideas about groups of people, prejudice refers to thoughts and feelings about those groups, while discrimination refers to actions toward them. Racism is a ...
On the other side of the argument, many African Americans, especially in the rap recording industry, try to make themselves more racially separated than they truly are. This is even true in the race for the White House as every time Barack Obama’s race is mentioned, someone takes great care to point out that his father was an African, not a black American. The underlying tone of the racism in American society today is well-reflect in Larson’s novel. Much like Clare and Irene, America today is not acknowledging its racial history and how that impacts the way people think and act.
The hardest part for Clare and Irene comes in the discovery that Clare has been “passing” as white. Once she is discovered, she is brutalized by fellow African Americans who think they are giving her what she deserves because she has tried to put on airs and act white. She is assumed guilty of any number of other crimes because she lied about her ethnicity and Irene, who often was jealous of the decision that Clare made, feels that she should do nothing to stop the prejudice on both sides because Clare made the decision to try passing.
Historically speaking, the idea of “passing” is made much more poignant when we recall Plessey v. Ferguson in which a quadroon man, one quarter black but capable of passing for white, challenged the laws about a white only railroad car. He was convicted and the court went all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled, at that time (1896) , that any African blood made you black, whether you could pass for Caucasian or not. Obviously, Larsen understood this ruling and its impact on her own life and the life of her fellow citizens of Harlem.
