Passing and culpability

I’d like to bring up the question of under what conditions passing is morally blameworthy. To me, passing is when one deliberately performs an identity that is not “one’s own” (whatever that means) in order to escape that identity which is “one’s own.” Of course, passing isn’t just about race and gender. Birdie’s “passing” mostly involves fitting in at school: wearing certain types of clothing, exhibiting a certain type of sexual behavior, and doing certain types of activities.

To me, the reason we tend to find passing distasteful is political (for lack of a better word): by abandoning our identity, by selling out, we insult and weaken the identity that we leave behind—and it is this abandonment that is what makes passing “wrong.” Just in case anyone objects to this view, here are a few things that, I think, make sense in light of it:

· Why passing from a group of high social status to a group of low social status is intuitively different from passing from the opposite. If a high-status person passes as a low-status person, he gains absolutely nothing. And the high-status class is secure enough that it need not fear the repercussions of one of its members passing. By, contrast, if a low-status person were to pass as a high-status person, he would gain privileges that other members of “his race” are unable to obtain—it’s unfair.

· (A related point) Why, as Ahmed points out, there is a difference between a white person passing for white and a black person passing for white.

· How we can blame people for “abandoning” their race without essentializing race or becoming racist.

Of course, this explanation says nothing about moral culpability. When is it appropriate to blame someone for passing? I think the question is difficult to answer, since it boils down to the question of group vs. individuals rights. Even supposing that a particular group will suffer if one of its members passes, it could be that the passer would benefit so much from passing that it would outweigh whatever harm to the group that passing that represent. However, we could imagine that, as Ahmed alludes to, getting caught passing could cause the “rules” governing racial identity, rules which passing attempts to cross, to become even more rigid.

To try to make some progress in this topic, I’ll write about how these ideas can be applied to Birdie in Caucasia. Though Birdie does consciously and deliberately pass, I don’t think I’d hold her morally blameworthy. In the beginning, Birdie describes race and color as entirely plastic, especially when she and Cole imagine the world of Elemenos. Combined with her view that she is invisible (transparent, colorless), we see that Birdie’s “true identity,” if it is appropriate to use that term, is as a hybrid, as someone able to shift between identities as she pleases.

Nkumrah is the first place where Birdie finds herself in a place where she must pass. She is known as “Le Chic” and at one point uses a kohl liner pencil to make a “beauty mark over [her] lip” (64-65). It seems to me that she is blameworthy in the same sense that anyone is who, seeking to be liked in school, performs the role of the “popular kid.” (Which person or group of people is the victim? Anyone who does not conform to the rather rigid standards of that school culture.) But most of us would say that such an individual should not be blamed too much—there are few enough non-conformists or eccentrics that their well-being in relation to society is fairly unimportant to most of us.

What about New Hampshire? Naturally, to what extent one’s passing is forced is an important consideration—and Birdie had little choice but to pass, or her mother will be exposed and possibly jailed. There is a strong sense that Birdie has left behind her identity, if one regards blackness as her “adopted” identity, which can be supported by the fact that she identifies herself with blacks, such as when she punches Mona for calling the blacks who are about to beat Jim “niggers.” Though she remembers Nkumrah and her life in Boston, she gradually loses her memories of that place. However, the very real risk that Sandy may be in makes it extremely difficult for me to blame either her or Birdie for their actions. Even if they are selling out, their passing is, to a great extent at least, due to safety. Insofar as they pass to save themselves, their passing can be criticized only to the extent that their flight from Boston can be criticized. (Of course, if it turns out that the main reason they fled Boston was not related to fear of capture, it’s a different story….)

Sorry this post has been a bit disjointed. I’d just like to get these ideas through before the end of the semester!

The Blacknote Books and Caucasia

I finished reading Caucasia last night and I feel a littel ambivalent about it. Because the story is told from the perspective of a child/teenager, its impossible to talk about this book in the same way that we’ve talked about other passing narratives. For instance, Birdie’s passing was not something she chose to do. Rather, she was forced into it by her mother. So, in the beginning, she thought of it as a type of game; make believe. It is only later, when she realizes that this game may infact become her reality, that she begins to feel as though she’s being held captive in a state of whiteness. Because we feel that Birdie is an unwilling particpant, its hard to impute agency and responsiblity on her actions. Instead of judging Birdie, i felt myself sympathizing with her. I realize that the point of this class is not to form emotional attachments to the characters in the books that we read and the movies that we watch, but i do think that a large part of our satisfaction/disatisfaction with these characters and their stories lies in our feelings about their motives to pass or the way that they interpret their experience as passers. With that said, I felt that Birdie’s story can be read as an example of the ways in which those who are able to pass are forced to pass, whether they are the primary agents of their passing or not. I think that inmost of the narratives we’ve studied, the individual who is passing is seen as having made a concious decision. But i think that by focusing on the element of choice involved in passing,we have to examine other factors that make this choice seem pre-determined or unavoidable.
One part of the book that really resonated with me was Deck’s ( Birdie and Cole’s father) metaphor of mulattoes being the “Canaries in a coal mine” for US race relations. I thought that this metaphor went hand in hand with our understanding of the tragic mulatto in Western Literature. He says, “muattoes had historically been the gauge of how poisonous American race relations were.”(393) **Shaking Head** Tragic Mulattoes.

I don’t have much to say about Blacknote Books because we covered everything in class but I personally felt that this was the best book we’ve read this semester. I think that the rawness of the content was really provocative and it forced me to think about things that I normally don’t think about.

Sandy

In response to the discussion we had in class yesterday (Tue, 5/1/07), I’d like to suggest that it’s ambiguous to what extent Sandy’s flight from Boston was due to justified fear of capture and to what extent it was due to her own dissatisfaction. That is, is Sandy’s passing intended to act or to become? The topic is central to the novel—and to the question of what passing in general is—and I won’t be able to discuss it very satisfactorily or come to a conclusion either way, but I’ll try to start.

We have conflicting reports about whether Sandy was truly in danger. According to Dot, there was never any danger, and Sandy was imagining it all along. According to Deck, there was no danger but the danger has passed. According to Ronnie and Cole, there was and still is danger. However, it seems (to me) that the more credible ones state that there was and is a real danger. Birdie dismisses Dot as “more spiritual than political” (p. 353), which is probably justified given that she went to India because she believed “America was poisonous” and because she sought to go “deeper than skin color” (p. 313). They could, perhaps, be seen as political statements, but there is a sense that they should not be taken as such. And Deck was involved in the black power movement, but he was not nearly as involved in militancy as Sandy. Indeed, from the very start he attacked her involvement and called her crazy; and he was an intellectual throughout the novel, never really an activist. As Professor Parham said in class, the FBI targeted everyone involved in black militancy, not just those involved in large movements, and they would have known about Sandy’s involvement, if for no other reason than that they once arrested a militant from Sandy’s house. Thus, it would have been justified for Sandy to flee Boston out of fear of retribution.

Still, there is reason to believe that there were other motives involved in the flight. Sandy loses 70 pounds between the time that she leaves Boston and the time she arrives in New Hampshire; it is rather unlikely that one would do so simply to avoid capture. (Birdie says somewhere, though I can’t find the quote, that the weight loss might be due to grief at losing Cole. But regardless, it is not simply “passing.”) Birdie points out that Sandy flirts frequently, perhaps as an act, but, as Birdie suggests, perhaps “becoming the other woman” (p. 144). Also, Sandy, when younger, probably suffered from low self-esteem due to her weight and her unattractiveness in the eyes of men. Is it not at least possible that she might have tried lost weight to become more attractive? Finally, Sandy’s relationship with Jim is, by all accounts, purely a result of Sandy’s loneliness. Cole repeatedly criticizes her mother for her attraction to Jim, saying that it made them likely to be discovered, and surely Sandy, had she been solely or even primarily concerned with secrecy, would have known this. Yet she continues—for herself.