Passing In The 21st Century

The film Passing (2021) is an adaptation of the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen and unpacks the delicate themes of race, class, and belonging through a tense, psychological examination of 20th century social politics. We follow two childhood friends: Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry who’ve fallen out of touch. After a chance encounter as adults, Irene discovers that Clare has been purposefully living under the guise of a white woman in order to cross the color-line into the upper class.

During a dance scene in a jazz club in Harlem, Hugh Wentworth (a white man) observes the primarily Black dancers, passively relaying his thoughts to Irene. When she purposely tips him off that Clare too is Black, he’s initially surprised but accepts the fact easily enough… After all, “lots of people pass all the time.” Irene rebuffs him saying, “It’s easy for a Negro to pass for white but I don’t think it would be so simple for a white person to pass for colored.”

Is this still true?

Certainly in the 1920’s it was nearly unheard of for a white person to purposefully pose as Black for any reason. Other than a history of blackface in minstrel shows (which were staged specifically to belittle African-ancestry and relied on an understanding that the performers were not necessarily Black themselves), why would someone in a higher position of privilege choose to give up that power in daily life? They’d be subject to segregation, threats of violence, and legal discrimination—among a laundry-list of other burdens. Regardless of the difficulty, why would a white person even want to pass for Black? 

During this era of American history, someone was considered legally Black if any of their ancestry was of African descent—regardless of how distant that relation is. This was referred to as the “one drop rule.” So pretending to be Black would not have been logistically difficult; if there was ambiguity in your ethnic background, the law would’ve happily supported your unorthodox request for subjugation. Rather, Irene’s comment more likely points to the fact that white individuals lacked the perspective to fully immerse themselves into another culture’s life experience.    

But, one hundred years later, we live today in an era where the term “Black-fishing” refers to public figures who appropriate Black culture and aesthetics for their public personas in an attempt to appear racially ambiguous.  White rappers who wear dreadlocks. Instagram influencers who spend exorbitant amounts of wealth on spray tans and dark wigs. Athletes who use slang with origins in African-American Vernacular English. In a more blatant example you have the case of Rachel Dolezal who chemically darkened her skin, permed her hair, and publicly claimed to be a Black woman. She even taught African-American Studies at Eastern Washington University and became the chapter president of the NAACP in Spokane. To be blunt, the practice of pretending to be a person of color is a way to capitalize on America’s fascination with the “exotic.” These celebrities can gain “cool” points without sacrificing their legal privilege in any consequential way. Black-fishing has become a tool for white individuals to co-opt the authority of Black leaders or the popularity of Black trendsetters in order to enter exclusive social spaces. The irony of course being that the existence of these pockets of community is a response to the segregation that kept BIPOC from positions of power to begin with.  

That’s not to say that white people don’t ever have a justifiable reason to “pass” with another aspect of their identity. Closeted gay individuals might pretend to be straight for their own safety in bigoted communities. White Jews and Muslims might conceal their religion in spaces that threaten abject violence against them. Like other forms of cultural appropriation, passing really only becomes problematic when an individual of higher social or political power borrows traits from a subjugated community. Halloween costumes that use blackface inherently draw on the history of an entertainment industry built on the mockery of the Black experience. But a teenage girl who pretends to have a crush on a boy in her class to avoid violence from her peers is a justifiable safety measure. The stakes are not equal.  

Though only in subtext, Hugh Wentworth is often read as a closeted gay man. When Irene ends their conversation by saying, “I just mean we’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” she implies that she knows his secret too. And that he has no room to throw stones at Clare from his own delicate house of glass. 

While the context of Passing has changed significantly in the last hundred years, the themes of this film adaptation are still deeply relevant to the 21st century—especially in terms of moral complexity. It is not a “black and white” issue at all. While legal color-lines (theoretically) no longer exist, the social implications of appropriating aesthetics from another culture still run rampant in our tabloids, social media threads, and newspapers alike. And the nuance that Larsen’s original text brings to the conversation is an invaluable perspective today.

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For more resources about this film, check out the links below:

• A review of the film: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/passing-movie-review-2021

• An interview with the filmmakers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm0rCMpWfgY

• A PDF copy of the 1927 book: https://scalar.lehigh.edu/african-american-poetry-a-digital-anthology/nella-larsen-passing-1929-full-text-of-novel