Previously:
Invisible Identities, Part 1: Invisible to Whom?
Invisible Identities, Part 2: The Default Human
Note:
I’m told that in the American context, when speaking about race, the term “passing” is most associated with black people due to a pretty loaded history. This is not the case where I live, simply because that’s not the history we have with the term. As such, when I speak of passing race-wise, I am not speaking only of light-skinned people of African descent who can do so. I realise that this post could therefore be a somewhat uncomfortable read for people in that context, and am putting up this note to therefore hopefully address some of that discomfort.
It’d probably be a good idea to read the previous posts in this series if you find anything else in my word use or context confusing, especially as many of the points in this post build on the previous posts.
Comments that say it’s wrong to try and pass, or conversely that someone ought to try and pass, will not be tolerated. Either way attempts to take away something of someone’s choice, experience, decision making. How one negotiates one’s own life, how one chooses to deal with all the oppressions on hir back, is hir business.
Being able to pass is a privilege. Passing privilege means that others don’t grab my body or assistive devices, people I’ve never met don’t look at me with pity or disgust and I am less likely to face intrusive and upsetting questions. Those are amazing privileges that many of my fellows in the disability community don’t share with me. Passing privilege means that I am not watched suspiciously in stores, negative comments are not made about my features, white people feel comfortable to interact with me and strangers do not expect me to act as an example of what all people of my background are like. Those are incredible privileges that many of my background do not share.
First up, we must address the nature of passing. Sometimes it is active (one chooses to pass) and sometimes passive (one is passed). Sometimes it’s an interaction of expectation and experience, habit and circumstance. One cannot untangle one’s own efforts to pass or to not from the point of the idea of passing. That is, whether one passes or not is dependant on the outside observer. The whole idea of passing hinges not on what the (non)passer does, but on the observer’s response to that person. There’s an extent to which one can control it – and people have developed quite some techniques – but it’s not always a matter of choice as to whether to pass or not.
There’s a friction between passing and solidarity with one’s group. Those who can pass as being a member of a dominant group may miss out on many experiences and forms of discrimination that are held to be facets of that group’s commonalities. One of the main problems with passing is that in doing so an inequitable system is being held up (by those who pass others, by those choosing to pass). This is to say that passing supports the idea that equality, better treatment, is gained by melting into the dominant group. This is of course true, as is evident in, for instance, shifting definitions of whiteness; but one shouldn’t have to lose their own identity to the “good,” dominant identity in order to be dealt with well. We should work not until identities disappear but until they’re all okay to have.
That burden should be placed on those making the assumptions of – enforcing – default identities, not on the passers. Passers frequently report hostility from within their own groups, and accusations of not really being a member of their community from all sides. No one is less a member of the group for other people’s perceptions and it’s incredibly offensive to suggest otherwise. Passing is not always a choice; when it is, it’s presumptuous to resent someone for that and just outright wrong where safety is involved. How one deals with one’s own experiences of oppression is one’s own concern.
Being able to pass really messes with my head. I’ve frequent bouts of intense guilt about it, and I feel sick when people in my communities admire me for the features that make me more likely to pass (‘look at her beautiful skin.’ Increasingly I need to get the nearest bathroom and scrub and scrub where they grab my arm). Sometimes I don’t feel quite real or as though I’m cheating, an intruder in someone else’s identity. With regard to being disabled, this has some nasty consequences: in the past I’ve not gotten needs met, either because I can’t bear to out myself or because someone doesn’t quite think I’m truthful. Passing doesn’t mean I’m not struggling to remain standing while we’re talking. I struggle with passing and being passed. Sometimes I try and do it to feel safer (never safe) and lose my integrity. Sometimes I am passed, and it’s a mix of delight and loss and damage. Whatever I do, it’s never enough, I’m never enough.
Now I just mostly let people think what they will. The glowing effects largely disappear once I give off too many cues. Because so much of my identity, experience and expression is tied up with those of my identities that are invisible, the effects are frequently fleeting.
Being invisible doesn’t mean I face no discrimination but that I face less individualised discrimination in many contexts. Looking like I do has not prevented, upon the acknowledgement of my identity, looks of disgust, offensive remarks about my family, having to listen to racial hatred. It has not prevented the fear in me, the way I have not felt safe since I was a little girl. It has not prevented that I modify my dress, my speech, my movements, my stories in order to appear as “normal” as possible, just like anyone else trying to not face the wrath of whiteness. Attempting to invisibilise difference is hardly restricted to those of us who can pass.
The thing is, I’ve done everything. I’ve been loud and proud about my invisible identities. I’ve done my best to make them disappear. I’ve allowed myself to be passed, I’ve actively worked to pass. I’ve just been myself, I’ve made my identities explicit. At the end of all this anxiety and modification and thought and care, one thing remains constant: it’s the perceptions and actions of people in dominant bodies that count. When I pass, there’s still the weight of many manifestations of oppression on my shoulders. And irrespective of whether I pass or not, people outside of my groups still get to determine how I am treated and how I am perceived. There is no way to win.
[Cross-posted at Zero at the Bone and FWD/Forward]
I’m fascinated by the notion that situations that share similar social structures also tend to share similar social dynamics. Put another way, analogous social conditions tend to produce similar behavior patterns in people.
Just as you can say similar things about passing under the contexts of being a person of color and being disabled, I can see myself saying similar things about passing in the context of being a trans woman. My jaw dropped as I read your essay because so many of the things you have voiced, I have also experienced in regard to passing as cissexual. It was kind of eerie—but in a good way.
This is a really wonderful post. Thank you.
Thanks for this.
A friend of mine keep engaging the image of layers. You have outer layers and inner layers… you get the idea.
I have this outer layer that often passes for white but is soemetimes categorized as Asian, and it’s a constant source of discomfort to me.
The thing is, I didn’t ask to be white. I don’t particularly like being German, either. But at the bottom line, my Japanese father didn’t play much of a role in my life (and even if he did – that makes fascists on both sides of the family. Awesome.)
I don’t think of myself as Asian. I don’t speak Japanese. I have nothing in common with first or even second generation immigrants who have to learn the language from scratch etc.
I keep finding things about myself that are just *so German*, and those definitely make a much larger part of my identity than the fact that I happen to have black hair and almond eyes.
Also, there’s not exactly a large Asian community here, and what community there is is largely Vietnamese.
So there’s not even a community for me to “betray”.
What I’d really like, then, is to just be part of this society, for better or worse, and to shape and criticize it just like all my liberal/left wing friends get to do. To not be the token anything. In many ways, I have to negotiate the privileges and the cultural baggage of whiteness and a European citizenship much more than any kind of blatant racism directed at me.
I think if I just changed my name, all that might even work. A lot of people don’t realize I’m not “one of them” until I have to spell out my name and explain how I got it.
But yea. It’s not about making identities disappear, it’s about making them all okay to have.
And about everyone getting to actually choose theirs.
I absolutely relate with this post. I am Mexican, I have an MBA, I live in an old money Georgia suburb with a large population of blue collar immigrant workers (largely Mexican) that work in chicken plants. I feel I don’t fit into either group. I am not white but I am not like them either. My parents came to the states when I was a baby and I learned to speak English without an accent. When I was in the military, other Mexican women from the L.A. barrios would make fun of me for trying to or speaking like a white girl. I never considered trying to speak like anyone else or that I was trying to fit in with one group or another. I never knew how to be an authentic Mexican and have never known how to be white. Even now, people expect things of me that seem foreign but should somehow be 2nd nature to me because I am Mexican. Here I pass for something other than what I am because I am tall and my skin is not quite that shade that would make me a typical Mexican, whatever that means right? But ultimately, I feel like the lines that divide us, well divide us and leave those of that don’t fit into any category or subcategory quite lonely and dejected.
Excellent discussion.
The first time I became aware of my own passing was in fourth grade when I asked my teacher what would have happen to me, to my family as she told us about the Japanese Internment camps. “Oh you’d be fine. No one can tell you’re Asian.” I was utterly panicked. What about my dad?!? My sisters?!? The entire rest of my family?!?
My college senior thesis explored these issues further. Here’s my photo gallery of biracial Americans that accompanied the project: http://www.flickr.com/photos/44671842@N04/sets/72157622812515228/
Thanks for the topic. So needed.
eightarms.weebly.com
UnFit: I’ve passed as a local just about everywhere in Central Europe I’ve visited (including Bavaria, where I live) – until I open my mouth to respond that, no, I do not understand what they are asking me or that I do not know how to get to X, as I live elsewhere. I speak a conversational amount of German, but with such a strong accent that I out myself as a native English speaker immediately. However, the subset of German I know was primarily gotten in a college classroom, so older Bavarians have complimented me on what lovely, proper German I speak…
I took my (German) husband’s last name to avoid fun and games at the airport once we have kids, and my first name, while more common in the Anglosphere than in German-speaking countries, is not completely unusual here. I fought to keep my (very English) maiden name as my middle name, and use it on just about any official document. It’s odd; I feel more strongly American after living here for five years than I think I ever felt before I left the US. It might be part of why I’m having trouble concentrating on my German pronunciation – I *want* people to know I am who I am!
When I see what foreigners who are not from majority-white, first world countries have to put up with (language testing requirements, prejudice due to non-European appearance), I feel a bit guilty that I not only have more discretion in how foreign I appear, but that even that my foreign identity is a privileged one – Germany does not receive very many poor immigrants from the US.
Excellent post. Excellent series. My son is biracial but looks primarily Filipino so people are shocked when I show up (definitely the human normative you spoke about). He will be able to “pass” as a Filipino if he chooses.
Quick side note: I do like you do, I try to just talk to people without fitting them into any labels. I think that has more to do with the social work training and the non-judgmental attitude I’ve acquired over the years, with a little of my own self-awareness thrown in. It makes for much better happier relationships, too!
A friend of my brother’s once ran ito a lamp post because he was busy staring, because he couldn’t believe the blond, blue-eyed woman he was with was his mom.