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In 1948, journalist Ray Sprigle traded his whiteness to live as a
black man for four weeks. A little over a decade later, John Howard
Griffin famously ""became"" black as well, traveling the American
South in search of a certain kind of racial understanding.
Contemporary history is littered with the surprisingly complex
stories of white people passing as black, and here Alisha Gaines
constructs a unique genealogy of ""empathetic racial
impersonation--white liberals walking in the fantasy of black skin
under the alibi of cross-racial empathy. At the end of their
experiments in ""blackness,"" Gaines argues, these debatably
well-meaning white impersonators arrived at little more than false
consciousness. Complicating the histories of black-to-white passing
and blackface minstrelsy, Gaines uses an interdisciplinary approach
rooted in literary studies, race theory, and cultural studies to
reveal these sometimes maddening, and often absurd, experiments of
racial impersonation. By examining this history of modern racial
impersonation, Gaines shows that there was, and still is, a faulty
cultural logic that places enormous faith in the idea that empathy
is all that white Americans need to make a significant difference
in how to racially navigate our society.
In 1948, journalist Ray Sprigle traded his whiteness to live as a
black man for four weeks. A little over a decade later, John Howard
Griffin famously ""became"" black as well, traveling the American
South in search of a certain kind of racial understanding.
Contemporary history is littered with the surprisingly complex
stories of white people passing as black, and here Alisha Gaines
constructs a unique genealogy of ""empathetic racial
impersonation--white liberals walking in the fantasy of black skin
under the alibi of cross-racial empathy. At the end of their
experiments in ""blackness,"" Gaines argues, these debatably
well-meaning white impersonators arrived at little more than false
consciousness. Complicating the histories of black-to-white passing
and blackface minstrelsy, Gaines uses an interdisciplinary approach
rooted in literary studies, race theory, and cultural studies to
reveal these sometimes maddening, and often absurd, experiments of
racial impersonation. By examining this history of modern racial
impersonation, Gaines shows that there was, and still is, a faulty
cultural logic that places enormous faith in the idea that empathy
is all that white Americans need to make a significant difference
in how to racially navigate our society.
African Americans once passed as whites to escape the pains of
racism. Today's neo-passing has pushed the old idea of passing in
extraordinary new directions. A white author uses an Asian pen
name; heterosexuals live "out" as gay; and, irony of ironies,
whites try to pass as black. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti
Young present essays that explore practices, performances, and
texts of neo-passing in our supposedly postracial moment. The
authors move from the postracial imagery of Angry Black White Boy
and the issues of sexual orientation and race in ZZ Packer's short
fiction to the politics of Dave Chappelle's skits as a black
President George W. Bush. Together, the works reveal that the
questions raised by neo-passing-questions about performing and
contesting identity in relation to social norms-remain as relevant
today as in the past. Contributors: Derek Adams, Christopher M.
Brown, Martha J. Cutter, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Michele Elam,
Alisha Gaines, Jennifer Glaser, Allyson Hobbs, Brandon J. Manning,
Loran Marsan, Lara Narcisi, Eden Osucha, Gayle Wald, and Deborah
Elizabeth Whaley
African Americans once passed as whites to escape the pains of
racism. Today's neo-passing has pushed the old idea of passing in
extraordinary new directions. A white author uses an Asian pen
name; heterosexuals live "out" as gay; and, irony of ironies,
whites try to pass as black. Mollie Godfrey and Vershawn Ashanti
Young present essays that explore practices, performances, and
texts of neo-passing in our supposedly postracial moment. The
authors move from the postracial imagery of Angry Black White Boy
and the issues of sexual orientation and race in ZZ Packer's short
fiction to the politics of Dave Chappelle's skits as a black
President George W. Bush. Together, the works reveal that the
questions raised by neo-passing-questions about performing and
contesting identity in relation to social norms-remain as relevant
today as in the past. Contributors: Derek Adams, Christopher M.
Brown, Martha J. Cutter, Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Michele Elam,
Alisha Gaines, Jennifer Glaser, Allyson Hobbs, Brandon J. Manning,
Loran Marsan, Lara Narcisi, Eden Osucha, Gayle Wald, and Deborah
Elizabeth Whaley
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