"Passing"
Life in Black and White
by Toi Derricotte
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I'm sure most people don't go around all the time thinking about what race they are. When you look like what you are, the external world mirrors back to you an identity consistent with your idea of yourself. However, for someone like me, who does not look like what I am, the mirrors are broken, and my consciousness, or lack of consciousness, takes on serious implications. Am I mentally "passing"?
All my life I have passed invisibly into the white world, and all my life I have experienced that sudden and alarming moment of consciousness when I remember I am black. It may feel like I'm emerging too quickly from deep in the ocean, or touching an electric fence; or like a deer stuck in the headlights of an oncoming car. Sometimes in conversation with a white person who doesn't know I'm black, suddenly a feeling comes over me, a precursor—though nothing at all has been said about race—and I either wait helplessly for the other shoe to drop, or try desperately to steer the conversation in another direction, or prepare myself for painful distinctions. My desire to escape is indistinguishable from my "blackness," my race, and I am filled with shame and fury.
People have asked why my parents, my grandmother and I never "passed" over into the white world. It was unthinkable. With my dark grandfather driving, my grandmother and I would ride in the backseat of my grandfather's Cadillac as if we were being chauffeured. We'd shop the aisles at Saks Fifth Avenue when there wasn't even a black elevator operator.
On the one hand, there was always a feeling of anxiety that something would betray what we really were; on the other, I think we were really quite self-possessed, almost arrogant. We saw ourselves, with all our struggles and complexities, as rich in culture and history, fierce, determined, strong, and even beautiful. While we wanted the privileges white people had, we had contempt for what we saw as their pale lives.
I truly cannot remember when I first learned I was black. It is as if every experience I have had of realizing I am black, all the way back to grade school and before, is tainted with that fear of discovery, of being recognized as black. Now I realize that the depression that made me begin the work of this book was really a first re-memory of "killing" voices from my childhood. It was like feeling returning in a limb that has been asleep....
If you want more reading excerpts from Ms. Toi......
http://books.google.com/books?id=sa-DnonTr... http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1998sum... and you can check out her books at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com
Posted By: Cynthia Merrill Artis
Sunday, November 21st 2010 at 4:12PM
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