Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity

285 Pages·2012·5.895 MB·English

by  Marcia Alesan Dawkins

Clearly Invisible
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Clearly Invisible
Racial Passing and the Color
of Cultural Identity
Marcia Alesan Dawkins
BAYLOR UNIVERSITY PRESS
© 2012 by Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission in writing of Baylor University Press.
Cover Design by theBookDesigners
Ellen Craft image courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library.
Frances E. W. Harper image courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Human Stain images courtesy of Photofest.
Leo Felton image courtesy of the Associated Press.
eISBN: 978-1-4813-0043-8 (e-PDF)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dawkins, Marcia Alesan.
Clearly invisible : racial passing and the color of cultural identity / Mar-
cia Alesan Dawkins.
285 p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60258-312-2 (hbk. : acid-free paper)
1. Passing (Identity)--United States. 2. Passing (Identity)--United States--
Case studies. 3. Racially mixed people--Race identity
--United States. 4. United States--Race relations. 5. Rhetoric--
Social aspects--United States. 6. Rhetoric--Political aspects--
United States. I. Title.
E184.A1D2844 2012
305.800973--dc23
2011051774

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper with a
minimum of 30% recycled content.
For all who dare to be themselves . . .
. . . and for the daring ones I’ve known best,
Rafael, Olga, and José Matos.
American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts,
is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the
hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise,
incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antag-
onisms, and obvious differences, the so-called black and the so-
called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in
the world so much as they resemble each other.
—Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Passing as Passé? 1
1 Passing as Persuasion 7
2 Passing as Power 31
3 Passing as Property 55
4 Passing as Principle 79
5 Passing as Pastime 105
6 Passing as Paradox 129
Conclusion: Passing as Progress? 153
Appendix 159
Notes 161

Bibliography 225
Index 253
vii
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List of Illustrations
1.1 Robinson’s Triangulated Dramatic Theatrical
Model of Passing 17
2.1 Ellen Craft, depicted in the clothes she wore
for her escape disguised as a man 35
2.2 Irony and the Triangulated Dramatic Theater
of Passing 46
4.1 Frances E. W. Harper, author of Iola Leroy, or,
Shadows Uplifted 80
5.1 Welshman Sir Anthony Hopkins as the elder
Coleman Silk in The Human Stain 119
5.2 Multiracial Wentworth Miller III as the younger
Coleman Silk in The Human Stain 121
6.1 Leo Felton’s mug shot 131

ix
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