Introduction: The Politics of Passing
By Elaine K. Ginsberg
[Excerpted from intro. of anthology entitled Passing and the Fictions of Identity edited by Ginsberg. Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1996.]
100 DOLLARS REWARD.
Will be given for the apprehension of my negro Edmund Kenney. He has straight hair, and complexion so nearly white that it is believed a stranger would suppose there was no African blood in him. He was with my boy Dick a short time since in Norfolk, and offered for sale…, but escaped under the pretence of being a white man.
— Richmond Whig, 6 January1836
Love Hurts:
Brandon Teena was a woman who lived and loved as a man. She was
killed for carrying it off.
— Village Voice, 19 April 1994
The slave owner placing the above ad, typical of many seen in antebellum newspapers, announces two aspects of Edmund Kenney’s identity in the phrase “my negro”: Kenney’s legal status as property and his legal race as Negro. That Kenney’s legal status was an imposed, socially constructed identity is self-evident; that his race was also imposed and socially constructed is not. To his owner, and under Virginia law, Kenney’s race was Negro. No matter that Kenney’s physical appearance made it obvious that his legally invisible white ancestors likely outnumbered the African and that “a stranger” would see a white, and presumably free, man. The law and the social custom that defined Kenney
as a Negro and a slave privileged that “African blood” — invisible on the surface of the body — over the obviously dominant and visible heritage that would cause a “stranger” to assume Kenney is both white and free. Thus Kenney’s creation of a new “white” identity — that is, his “passing” — was a transgression not only of legal boundaries (that is, from slave to freeman) but of cultural boundaries as well. Kenney and the unknown thousands of others who passed out of slavery moved from a category of subordination and oppression to one of freedom and privilege, a movement that interrogated and thus threatened the system of
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racial categories and hierarchies established by social custom and legitimated by the law.
Teena Brandon, biologically and legally female, wanted to live as a man. As
Brandon Teena, he moved in early fall 1993 to Falls City, Nebraska, where,
with no knowledge of Brandon’s origins, the young people saw a slightly
built but interesting young man who was attractive to women. Ironically,
Brandon’s passing was definitively revealed upon his arrest for forgery. The
arresting sheriff remarked that Brandon’s gender was ambiguous: “When
you looked at her you couldn’t really tell. She was a good looking person
either way.” Yet Brandon’s passing was convincing enough that, even after
the local law enforcement officers and some angry men exposed him, both
legally and literally, women still insisted that he was “one of the nicest men”
they had ever met and the “best boyfriend” they had ever dated. Gender
identity in this instance, like racial identity in the case of Edmund Kenney,
has a dual aspect. It is from one perspective performative, neither constituted by nor indicating the existence of a “true self” or core identity. But, like racial identity, gender identity is bound by social and legal constraints related to the physical body. Brandon was able for a time to pass successfully; and the young women who dated Brandon remember “him” (they continue to use the male pronoun) as an attentive and loving young man. But the law and social custom insist on the relationship between an individual’s gender identity and his or her physical being, and when that relationship is subverted, the cultural logic of gender categories — and privileges – is threatened. The two young men who, at a party on Christmas Eve, angrily exposed Brandon’s female body allegedly shot and killed Brandon on New Year’s Day. Thus it seems that Brandon’s murder was a tragic consequence of a female’s transgression and usurpation of male gender and sexual roles.
As the stories of Edmund Kenney and Brandon Teena illustrate, passing is about identities: their creation or imposition, their adoption or rejection, their accompanying rewards or penalties. Passing is also about the boundaries established between identity categories and about the individual and cultural anxieties induced by boundary crossing. Finally, passing is about specularity: the visible and the invisible, the seen and the unseen.
The genealogy of the term passing in American history associates it with
the discourse of racial difference and especially with the assumption of a
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fraudulent “white” identity by an individual culturally and legally defined as “Negro” or black by virtue of a percentage of African ancestry. As the term metaphorically implies, such an individual crossed or passed through a racial line or boundary — indeed trespassed — to assume a new identity, escaping the subordination and oppression accompanying one identity and accessing the privileges and status of the other. Enabled by a physical appearance emphasizing “white” features, this metaphysical
passing necessarily involved geographical movement as well; the individual had to leave an environment where his or her “true identity” — that is, parentage, legal status, and the like — was known to find a place where it was unknown. By extension, “passing” has been applied discursively to disguises of other elements of an individual’s presumed “natural” or “essential” identity, including class, ethnicity, and sexuality, as well as
gender, the latter usually effected by deliberate alterations of physical
appearance and behavior, including cross-dressing. Not always associated
with a simple binary, some instances of passing, as illustrated by the
“Spanish masquerade” of George Harris in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, demonstrate the multiplicity of racial or related identity categories into which
one might pass. Nor is the pass always permanent; it may be brief,
situational, or intermittent, as in the case of Nella Larsen’s protagonists,
James Weldon Johnson’s “ex-coloured man,” or women, such as Loreta
Velazquez, the “Woman in Battle,” who cross-dressed temporarily to
enter professions or occupations or to seek experiences barred to them as
females. And although the cultural logic of passing suggests that passing
is usually motivated by a desire to shed the identity of an oppressed group
to gain access to social and economic opportunities, the rationale for
passing may be more or less complex or ambiguous and motivated by
other kinds of perceived rewards. Both history and literature present
numerous examples….Whatever the rationale, both the process and the discourse of passing interrogate the ontology of identity categories and their construction.