Passing
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Have you watched any of those shows on PBS that trace the genealogies and DNA of famous people? They take whatever stories and records the person might have, get a DNA sample, and then do the research. At the end they sit down with the person and show them what they’ve found. The names, the ship manifests, the marriage certificates, the little bit of genetic code that points to a specific branch of human migration.
I love those shows. And I especially love the one with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., because he really addresses the complexities of families, secrets, and the history of race in this country.
A year or so back, my family got up our courage and money and started that line of investigation. We were hoping to sift out fact from fiction, because our family holds a lot of dubious tales from less than reliable narrators. We wanted to find out if a great-great aunt really came from Damascus, or if our great-grandfather came from India, or if our great-great grandmother was full-blooded Mayan. We were curious and hoped our DNA would fill in the incomplete stories. It might answer some questions. But in the end I knew what it would show: I’m a post-colonial mutt in 21st century America.
As a multi-racial person, I am supremely ill-suited to speak on the experience of white or black or brown. I am all and none of these. But I can speak from my own experience—and I’ve had some interesting experiences! And I can speak as a person whose family contains the whole palette of human coloring. Mine is a calico family with blonde and brown and black hair, hair that is smooth and curly and frizzy. Brown and green and blue eyes, freckles, dimples, and when we grin our cheeks rise high. We have broad shoulders and wide feet. Our complexions range from fair to deep and our babies are especially beautiful.
Some of us identify as white, and some of us identify as people of color. While you’d think that we would be completely comfortable talking about race and identity, we don’t do it. We can—we have—but in general, we don’t. Recently I tugged on one of those loose strings and realized that we don’t talk about race and identity because some of us are still struggling with passing. Passing as white. Passing as not colored. Passing as acceptable.
So, here’s where I can speak from—from the experience of passing, becoming acceptable, striving to be measured by my conduct and brilliance while wearing an indeterminate skin. I can speak from the weird place of holding white privilege and being seen as not-one-of-us. It is a strange place, indeed.
Here’s the awfulness of passing: knowing that your father, your grandmother, your ancestors, sacrificed some of their own identity to make it easier for you to go forward. Now, plenty of our ancestors sacrificed for us to be successful. But denying one’s own identity tends to leave odd scars on the family tree.
As a mutt I’m already used to complexity, and find the white/black racial labels to be both woefully limiting and dangerous. Because those labels allow for convenient boxes, and people don’t live in boxes. There will be many ways we will dismantle the systems of racial oppression, but we’re not going to do it all rationally, or all at once.
This is our work. To start this work I’ll invite you to journey with me a while. I can’t ask you to fully understand the weird place that is my identity, but if you would accept my invitation, as we journey together we might begin to see where you are weird too. I’m going to be bold and suggest that there are plenty of us who are quietly passing in different ways.
Perhaps there are parts of your family that were not acceptable, not spoken of, not included in the family’s history—oral or written. In the work of becoming acceptable, our families routinely edit these histories—sometimes consciously, sometimes out of fear.
Maybe the family name was changed to make it acceptable to English ears. Maybe alcohol or drug addiction twisted limbs of the family tree. Mental illness, violence, poverty, illegitimacy, abandonment or adoption can all get filtered out of the stories we tell.
For some immigrants to this country, the upheaval and culture shock left them weak and unstable. I know that my own immigrant grandmother never quite got used to being colored, and it warped her life in America. I know that my other grandmother was fiercely intelligent and had to slide sideways through a world where women’s lives were circumscribed by domesticity.
As part of this journey together, I would then invite you to go back into your own family and look closely at any gaps in the story—pull on those loose threads and see what knots tighten or come undone with gentle tugging. Was there a time when any part of your family was unacceptable? How did you manage to finally pass? And what was the cost to your grandfather, your mother, your aunts?
What stories did they finally tell you to show that they had succeeded? In those stories are also the quiet warnings not to go back, not to ask, not to undo their work and sacrifice. In those stories you are reminded that being unacceptable is dangerous. And they love you too much to see you go back there.
Now, take those stories, take those fears, and wear them. Breathe into the danger and tension and feel the complexity of benefiting from those sacrifices. Spend time getting used to the complexity.
Did your family benefit from oppressing other people? Go examine that possibility. It’s okay to be objective at first. Before we can learn to hold full empathy for another who seems different, we need to resolve the shame or discomfort that we might still be carrying from our own families. By looking at the compromises and sacrifices made in the past, we can better honor them and honor the struggles of others.
Then, once we’ve looked back at our heritage, the next step is to look at our own selves. There are other ways we might be silently passing, hoping we won’t be looked at too closely, or judged too harshly.
Too often I hear that UU congregations are too homogeneous—too white, too affluent, over-educated—and that’s an easy stereotype to bemoan. But it’s too easy, too simple. And it’s wrong. We’re more complicated than that.
Just like our families may have been shaped by adversity, all of us have struggled somehow. And some of us are still struggling to be acceptable. We’re still struggling to pass by not acknowledging our whole selves, our complicated identities or situations.
Some of us are grappling with economic insecurity—just getting by, and having to make tough choices between medicine and car payments. But we come to church and smile and don’t mention these hard choices. Some of us are grieving terrible losses. And the rest of the world seems to think that we should be upright and optimistic. So we come to church and look thoughtful and don’t mention that our hearts might not ever be done being undone. Maybe it’s hard staying sober or maybe the medication isn’t quite working well enough. Maybe it’s hard not crying when you see a mother and baby even though the miscarriage was a long time ago. But we come to church and hope that no one asks us anything too personal.
Someone might have said, “I can’t be in community like this; people will see me and think I don’t belong there.” And so they aren’t here with us because they weren’t up to the effort it takes to pass, to meet our standards of acceptability, whatever they imagine those are.
And this is why passing for normal, successful or affluent is problematic. It denies the full range of our experiences and prompts us to edit out the problematic parts of ourselves and our identities. It denies us the chance for wholeness and connection.
I often tell people that Unitarian Universalism is a place where we come together to learn new ways of being in the world. One of the things we will learn is how to dismantle racism and other forms of oppression. We won’t get it right the first time, or the second. But we have to keep trying. It is the work that will heal our world. And as always, we have to start with ourselves.
When Rabbi Jesus asks us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, the hardest part of that is the second part—loving ourselves fully. But it gets easier if you think about the people who have loved you forward—your family, your friends, your partners, your teachers. Consider their love for you. It might not have been perfect, but it was love. Look at the love that pushed you forward, and see if its momentum can push you a little further to greater love and empathy for others who are working to be accepted, not just acceptable.
This is our work.
- Living As If - November 1, 2020
- Passing - June 1, 2019
- A Bright Golden Thread - July 1, 2016
As someone who grew up near Amarillo, and who didn’t have a UU church available at the time, I am so pleased that you are there and hope that you love it. Thank you so much for your message! I really enjoyed hearing it as well as the heart leap when you said “Amarillo”!
I love this, Rev. Nell. Thank you for sharing this. We are all passing!