Race passing and American individualism

the long version

"In the literature of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, black characters who pass for white embody a paradox. By virtue of the "one drop" rule that long governed the nation's race relations, they are legally black. Yet the color of their skin makes them visibly - and therefore socially - white.". "In this book, Kathleen Pfeiffer explores the implications of this dilemma by analyzing its treatment in the fiction of six writers: William Dean Howells, Frances E. Harper, Jean Toomer, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, and Nella Larsen. Although passing for white has sometimes been viewed as an expression of racial self-hatred or disloyalty, Pfeiffer argues that the literary evidence is much more ambiguous than that. Rather than indicating a denial of "blackness" or co-optation by the dominant white culture, passing can be viewed as a form of self-determination consistent with American individualism. In their desire to manipulate personal identity in order to achieve social acceptance and upward mobility, light-skilled blacks who pass for white are no different from those Americans who reinvent themselves in terms of class, religion, or family history."--BOOK JACKET.