Amazing Race/Passing As Black!

What a profound sense of wonderment in the realization that we may soon have our first mixed-race president in America. Of course, we know that Obama is mixed-race because we know his history. But how many ex-presidents were actually mixed-blood, and didn't proclaim it? Rumors have abound for decades about Warren Harding having Negro blood. Ditto, folks like Jimmy Carter (just look at them lips!) and even Bill, the Ill, Clinton (dope-smoking, sax-playing, womanizer--puhleeze, as if those traits are attributable only to blacks).

It wasn't so long ago when folks would whisper about those who "passed". Passing, the act of denying your birth race and pretending you're of another ethnicity--especially when it means being black but living as white--gained in popularity, ironically, with the progression of freed blacks. As opportunities opened up for regular black folks released from the bondage of slavery, some of those with mixed-blood who could, indeed, would pass for white. Why not? Life was easier for them living as a white person in a white world. And, they could appreciate the advantage of being treated as an equal; that is, if no one ever discovered their dark (ha-ha) secret.

Most black people seemed to be of two minds about the passing phenomena. For one, the black community felt that if one of their own could make it out of the oppressiveness that automatically came with having darker skin, perhaps it was a good thing that one less of their people was suffering.

On the other hand, some blacks saw the rejection of their race as a traitorous act. How could someone choose to be white and leave all their sisters and brothers behind to suffer?

It's an interesting concept, passing, and I've even written a feature film script about such a character in modern times. Email me at hiphapa@comcast.net if you'd like to know more.

One true life story that comes to mind is the tale of Johnny Spain, a follower of the George Jackson Brigade and one of the San Quentin Six who was convicted of murder. A friend once gave me a copy of Spain's bio, Black Power, White Blood, and I was absolutely riveted. Incredibly, Spain was born in 1949 to a white woman in Mississippi who was married to a white man. For some unfathomable reason, she kept her baby following an affair with a black man. In her defense, she may have thought the child was her husband's, but as the baby got older it became clear to everyone that he had darker skin and tighter hair than anyone in their Anglo family. By the time he was six and ready for school, his parents couldn't take it anymore. His mother feared that her husband would harm him, and Spain's white "father" refused to be further humiliated. So, Spain was put up for adoption and sent to live with a black family in Los Angeles. In Mississippi, he'd been too black; in L.A., he was too white. Because he never felt as if he belonged, he acted out by getting into trouble. When he killed a man in a botched robbery, Spain was sent to prison. There, he found George Jackson and, in many ways, himself. Today, Spain is a community worker in the Bay Area.

Of course, it's just speculation, but had Spain been born a little later, he might have been an Obama (the murder rap and bad behavior aside). Certainly his political activism shows he has concern for the community. In some ways, his white mother was as progressive as Obama's. She didn't see color, she said in the book. To her, the black man she had a relationship with was just another man. The Loving v. Virginia case that went to the Supreme Court challenging anti-miscegenation laws didn't occur until 1967. That means, Spain's mother could've been arrested for her act of rebellion. Talk about idealism. Perhaps, that's where Spain inherited his sense of resistance.

In any case, Spain only passed as white because he was a child who had no control over his environment. If anything, Obama is passing as black. Although he's never denied his white mother, Obama refers to himself as a black man. Nothing wrong with that. Passing has now come full circle!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Here's the link to a really great article on Johnny Spain. http://www.chipbrown.net/articles/spain.htm

One Drop Rule

What is the "One Drop Rule"?, you ask. Well, it's the premise that most of the world's population holds that defines racial identities like Barack Obama's as being 100% black. If I remember correctly, the presidential hopeful had a white mother. So, why is he called only black if he's half Caucasian? Why deny him his own parent and birthright?

It all harkens back to the "One Drop Rule" of slavery and, obviously, post-slavery. If a white slave master raped a black female slave and she ended up giving birth to his baby, the way that slave master protected his assets (including his slaves who were considered property) was to categorize the bastard child as black based on the "One Drop" of Negro blood flowing in his veins. That's all it took--just "One Drop", and the child was regulated to the lowest end of the American caste system. For one, how would it look to the other slaves if someone nearer their own skin tone had the possibility of inheriting the plantation? Further, how would it look to other white slave owners if a "darky" was elevated to the same social stratum as them?

The "One Drop Rule" ensured that the half-white child would never be considered anything but black and would, therefore, remain untitled to a white man's treasures. Being denied his white heritage meant that the child would have no right to be free ever and (probably the most frightening to the slave master) no possibility of freeing his black relatives if he ever became in charge of the plantation.

So, the "One Drop Rule" was a useful tool for white slave masters and others to keep blacks in their places. But didn't the U.S. abolish slavery a long time ago? So, why are biracial black/white people referred to as being only black when they are so clearly half white? Why is Halle Berry called the "first African American woman to win the Best Actress Oscar"? Quite frankly, if I was her, I'd have made an impassioned Oscar speech about the Academy forcing me to deny my own mother.

Enough of my jaw-jacking. Or, typing. Here are some comments from my lovely friend Daphne Delores:

"Yayoi, thank you for defining 'hapa'. My multi-racial identity goes back at least a few generations, where there was race mixing on at least three branches of the family tree. One great-grandmother, for instance, was the child of a former slave as a result of rape by her former master. Another great-grandmother (Welsh woman) married a black man in New England at the turn of the last century, and our family name is still enshrined on a former plantation in Virginia.

My generation's hapa sisters and brothers, and those of our children, have in many cases been able to explore and accept both aspects of their racial identity in ways that were surely not always possible in such situations in my great-grandparents' time. They were, in most cases, manipulated by the "One Drop Rule" into knowing and keeping "their place". A few may have "passed" for the status and opportunities this afforded them, but they were also looked down upon by family members, friends and others who, even to this day, considered this to be a betrayal of their race. This was my understanding of bi- or multi-racial identity until very recently.

Certainly, most "black" people in this country were/are at least bi-racial if not multi-racial, but in the past to focus on the "Indian" or "Caucasian" aspects of our ancestry was considered borderline delusional as we were, and in many cases still are, perceived as simply "black" (or "African American", if you prefer) no matter how pale our complexions.

Yayoi, you brought to my attention the complexities of loving, respecting and honoring parents who happen to come from different races and/or perhaps religious backgrounds as well, as initiated by other's opinions. Perhaps some of these same kinds of issues could affect the offspring of socio-economically diverse parentage, parents with politically divergent views, etc. In any case, other people's opinions of one's identity, or how you choose to express it, should be just that--not fodder for ongoing frustration with the public's general lack of understanding.

There is a pervasive force in this world that manipulates markets, governments, currencies, etc., and the motto of this diabolic cabal is, as it was a hundred years and more ago, "divide and conquer".

We must be in touch with that which connects us all in a spiritual sense to find the inner strength, the flexibility and understanding to confront this pervasive "evil" if we are to even maintain a trace of our "inalienable rights" and to enjoy any possibility of peace or freedom whatsoever. Dr. Wayne Dyer among others uses the phrase, "What other people think of me is none of my concern." Let not the ignorance (lack of knowledge) on the part of other people become burdens in our lives; there is too much important work to be done.

Peace and many blessings, always.

Bodhi Daphne"

That's Daphne, above, sitting in front of the ArcLight at dusk during my coverage of LAFF.

Peace out, ya'll!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi