Racial Ambiguity Then and Now -John'Nise Peoples

 Racial Ambiguity Then and Now

    Racial ambiguity, what is it? Racial ambiguity is defined as “not being easy to classify based on [your] physical appearance” (Grier 2014). In the text Passing, we see this affects our main characters in a positive way. Because of the period the novel is set in, it was beneficial to be racially ambiguous due to the racial tensions and laws at the time. We see our main characters, Irene and Clare, benefit from their racial ambiguity in separate ways. Clare allows herself to fully integrate into the white community as if she is one of their own whereas Irene chooses to live a black life at home but passes when it conveniences her. In this novel we see racial ambiguity being a savior for the women by allowing them to lead lives that were either fully or partially unaffected by their race.

    In the novel Black No More, we see a theme similar to this although in the beginning of this novel whiteness is the goal. The main character Max Disher even goes through a procedure to become a white man instead of a black one. This is because he views his race as the problem and thinks that becoming white will fix it. However, as society changed its viewpoints on which race or skin tone was superior, the white family he married into as well as himself changed their appearance. By the end of the novel, everyone in the family looks racially ambiguous and it is solely due to the pressures from the way society would view and treat them if they were seen as the inferior race (whatever that looked like at the time).

    Similar in both novels is the notion of racial essentialism “...which is the belief that racial categories have discrete essential bases” (Levy 2022). The notion that individuals cannot sit between racial categories (which would blur a line between them) reflects this. The characters in both novels use their racial ambiguity to avoid persecution in public and private affairs due to the society they live in.

    Because these novels are based in historical time periods in this country, it is easy to compare society then to society now. Not long ago it would have been easy to claim that as a country a lot of progress towards equality and fairness had been made. However, in recent years it has been more widely revealed that that is simply not the case. Now we know that “racial labels have been shown to significantly alter people’s social judgments, change the characteristics applied to a given target, and shift views about race and racial categories” (Gaither 2018). Currently, as a society, we see racial ambiguity all the time on the many different social media platforms available, but the representation of this ambiguity is sometimes false. This creates a newfound problem because those who do represent the racially ambiguous are not able to put it on and take it off as they please and it regularly causes them to be subject to unfair treatment, stereotypes, and an array of different negative encounters and consequences. This behavior allows certain people the ability to partake in the joys of a certain culture but not the misery.

    There have been arguments over these scenarios and though both sides may have some compelling points the fact remains that those who are actually racially ambiguous are not able to stop being so when it is convenient, they must deal with the good and the bad and someone being able to only take the good parts but leave the bad for those who have no choice is harmful and disrespectful no matter which side of the spectrum one is on.

References

Gaither, Sarah E., et al. “Resolving Racial Ambiguity in Social Interactions.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 76, May 2018, pp. 259–69. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.003.

Grier, Tiffanie, et al. “‘What Are You?’: Racial Ambiguity, Stigma, and the Racial Formation Project.” Deviant Behavior, vol. 35, no. 12, Dec. 2014, pp. 1006–22. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2014.901081.

Larsen, Nella. Passing. Dover Publications, 2004.

Levy, Aharon, et al. “Categorizing a Face and Facing a Category: The Constructive Impacts of Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Racial Categorization.” Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, Apr. 2022, p. 1461672221084537. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221084537.

Schuyler, George S. Black No More. New York: Modern Library, 1999. Print.