Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are

It may surprise readers to learn that many Americans today still 'pass: black for white, and in new ways. Passing is viewed as negative, but Brooke Kroeger's Passing reveals the underlying reasons why people pass for other than what they are, using the lives of six present-day 'passers' to reveal these motives and experiences.

I gave Passing four stars, because of the high quality of the author's writing -- no surprise, she's a journalist -- and because the topic has rarely been explored.Passing recounts stories of individuals who chose to present themselves to others in a way that can best be described as "problematic." David, for instance, has an African-American father and a white, Jewish mother. Until his mid-twenties, David presented himself to others as a white Jew.A gay woman presented herself as straight while serving in the Navy, and a gay man presented himself as straight while studying to be a Conservative rabbi. A Hispanic woman converted to Orthodox Judaism but had trouble getting accepted by the Jewish community. A white woman unexpectedly was mistaken for African-American and she wasn't sure how to clarify the confusion. A young male poet wrote under a female pseudonym.Kroeger focuses on philosophical and ethical aspects of passing, rather than the psychological. She accepts the right of others to judge and at times she seems to be judging her own subjects. On page 32, for instance, Kroeger states directly that identity is "not a matter of choice." On page 33, the author suggests, "We migh see" David's actions as those a "young black man willfully engaged in an insult to his black heritage." Or, says the author, we might be "amused" by his "tenuous Jewish connection." First, if David feels closer to his Jewish friends than his "black heritage," who are we to judge? Was he insulting his heritage or just being a friend-seeking adolescent?And David's Jewish connection is hardly tenuous. When Madeline Albright's Jewish parentage was made known, media and religious leaders urged her to embrace her roots, although her cultural connection to Judaism was even weaker than David's. As Kroeger notes, David's mother was Jewish -- a fact that should establishes his identity strongly, not tenuously.Passing suffers from the author's decision to focus on philosophical and ethical issues rather than psychological and sociological perspectives. Psychologically, Hazel Markus writes of possible selves -- a perfect framework to study these cases. Other psychologists have studied betrayal. What identity constructions lead to one's friends and family experiencing betrayal? Are some identity constructions more difficult to accept, e.g., pseudonym as compared to sexual or religious identity? And are all these stories really about one phenomenon? A gay woman who denies her sexuality (under duress) to keep a job she loves, seems to differ in important ways from someone who has to deal with inaccurate perceptions of her race or someone who feels like a swan who was dropped into a duck's nest by mistake. The "Jane" case, a woman using a male pseudonym, doesn't seem to belong at all: the practice isn't that infrequent, and "Jane's" editor rightly wasn't at all concerned. The "Virginia" teacher who was mistaken for black seems to have identity management rather tha

Kroeger has written a piece that allows us to witness deception as a virtue in certain circumstances. When the zeitgeist tyrannizes isn't the most virtuous path subversion? In many of these cases, that is the conclusion to which the "passer" comes.It is a book where "sophisticated" and "page turner" belong in the same sentence. Read it!