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I can’t get past the term “white passing”. I totally get it that people are profiled, targeted, and victimized for having a darker skin color alone. It’s horrible and is a major way that racism manifests in society. Full stop.
However, I think the use of this term in some ways dismisses and disregards other forms of racism that people experience; especially those who are mixed. Like myself.
My whiteness didn’t pass enough for my great grandmother who disowned me and siblings for being half Black (and my mother for marrying a Black man.)
My whiteness didn’t pass enough for some people who stopped communicating with me after they learned that I was half Black.
These are just two examples and I can guarantee that most mixed people have experienced something similar.
“white passing” is built on a notion that you can or almost “should” hide it. But that in and of itself is horrible because it forces one to deny their existence to be accepted in society. To deny half of what makes them human or views this choice as something categorically good.
I fully understand that there can be ways that this can be an advantage but I can say from personal experience that’s it’s pretty horrible. It’s an existential threat that you deal with from the day you’re born.
Imagine being a mixed kid and almost being afraid to mention it to people because of how they might view it and you. It makes you almost feel ashamed of your existence or to have pride of who you are and what’s makes you YOU.
That’s a horrible thing for a person to deal with; especially a child.
That’s assuming people even accept it. Because there are plenty of ignorant people that will flippantly deny the existence of your own ethnicity and ancestry when you tell them it. I’ve had that happen too. That also sucks.
There are different forms of racism and ways it manifests in society. They are all horrible and should be detested.
I will never experience the forms of anti-Black racism that darker skinned people experience living in this society and would never pretend or claim that I even could. But they will never experience the anti-Black racism that I experience in this society.
But it’s not a competition. It’s a war we’re both fighting. Maybe it’s different forms. But either way let’s fight it together.
