Race in "Passing"

Our first insight into Irene's personal struggle with race occurs when she notices that woman is staring at her.  She begins to panic, "Did that woman, could that woman, somehow know that here before her very eyes on the roof of the Drayton sat a Negro?"  Her fear and panic is an example of how aware she is of her race and how she struggles with it through everyday life situations.  Irene claims, "It wasn't that she was ashamed of being a Negro, or even having it declared.  It was the idea of being ejected from any place, even in the polite, and tactful way in which the Drayton would probably do it, that disturbed her" (Larsen 16).  Her battle with choosing to pass is consistent throughout the novel and her fear of being thrown out, as well as her idolization and jealousy of Clare Kendry, shows us her desire to do so.

 

Clare Kendry is Irene's friend from childhood.  She hasn't seen her in years and describes her as "an attractive looking woman ... with those dark, almost black, eyes and that wide mouth like a scarlet flower against the ivory of her skin" (Larsen 14).  Clare is passing as a white woman in society, and is nearly the opposite of Irene in her values and life choices.  When Irene and Clare begin catching up, Clare mentions that Irene should consider passing.  She tells Irene how easy it is to pass and tries to influence her to do so.  We also learn that Clare was raised by white women and practically forced to pass, which could explain why Clare is so proud of passing, even though she is betraying her race.  Later in the book we find that the choices Clare has made through her life because of her choice to pass lead her to be unhappily married to a man who hates black people.

 

When Clare invites Irene and another friend over to chat, we meet Clare's husband.  Unaware that he is in a room of black women, he talks about his hatred for blacks.  When he ironically address his wife as "nig," Clare laughs and asks him to tell the girls why he calls her that.  He claims that Clare is becoming darker and if she doesn't "look out, she'll wake up one of these days and find she's turned into a nigger."  He continues to say that "it's all right.  you can get as black as you please as far as I'm concerned, since I know you're no nigger ... No niggers in my family; never have been and never will be."  Irene and the other black women find it partly hysterical and ironic, but are also insulted as he later goes on to say that he hates black people and his only reason seems to be that they are "always robbing and killing people" (Larsen 39-41).  This shows the battle these women, or anyone that passes, has to face as others talk about their race (which they have abandoned) in such awful and discriminating ways.  Since they are not identifying publicly with their black roots, they must accept the racial slurring, instead of fighting it for the pride of their black culture.

 

During this section of the book, we also learn of the fears these women have of giving birth to a black child.  This is one of the many instances in the book that Irene stands up proud of her race and her life choices as she tells Clare and the other black women that she has a black son and a black husband.  Her acceptance of her family and black heritage shows that she is proud of her roots, but we still get a hint that she wishes she was white or passing.

Irene's struggle with her race is apparent when she begins to think about telling Clare's husband that Clare is white.  Because she suspects that Clare and her (Irene's) husband are having an affair, Irene tries to think of ways to get rid of clare.  This is where we really get to see the inner battle within Irene:

She was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same.  Herself.  Her race.  Race!  The thing that bound and suffocated her.  Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed.  A person or the race.  Clare, herself, or the race.  Or, it might be, all three ... Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life, that she had not been born a Negro.  For the first time she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race.  It was, she cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one's own account, without having to suffer for the race as well (Larsen 98).

Through this passage, we can better understand what it feels like to struggle as a triple minority in American society during the 1920s.  Not only does Irene have to make decisions based on her black ethnicity, but also as a woman and a black American.  She wishes she could have control of the situation, but by telling Clare's husband the truth, Irene risks the safety of Clare, as well as herself and her family.  If she does not tell Clare's husband, she should be denying her race and in turn, would be denying herself and allowing the charades between her own husband and Clare to continue.  She ultimately decides not to tell Clare's husband, showing that Irene's race is not always the most important priority, and in some ways by doing so, she is passing.

Another instance where Irene shows she is passing is in the upbringing of her children.  During the discussion at the dinner table, Irene's son begins to question his father about black people and why they are the only ones who seem to be punished in society.  When his father begins to explain why black people are lynched, Irene becomes angry and demands he stop talking about it in front of their sons.  She tells Brian that she wants "their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things (lynching) as it possibly can be ... you're not to talk to them about the race problem.  I won't have it," she says (Larsen 103).  This example shows Irene denying her race.  Instead of talking to her children about their heritage and why black people are treated badly, she doesn't want her children to even think about the fact that they are black.  Instead of preparing them to stand up for their race, she is preparing them to shy away from any details of their race.

 

To conclude this post, were want to end with an example of passing through a contemporary medium.  The Spike Lee film, Bamboozled, deals directly with passing its effects on white people attempting to pass as black and even black people passing to be white, or even blacker.  The clip from the film (included below), is a montage of blackface performers (some white, some black) portraying African Americans.  Although Nella Larsen's Passing is not directly correlated with the idea of blackface, it is a representation of how American society used to (and still sometimes does) portray the passing of black Americans in our history.