White Passing: My Tragic Family History

It is not only tragic but it is more common than you think. I don't blame my grandma I know she used her lightskinned status to try to operate in this world. I DO however blame society. This is why I use the term "white presenting"- passing has a history and a much more bleak meaning. I won't tell you what terms to use for yourself, but this was a big conversation on Tiktok a few months ago and I felt it would be good to share my family's history.

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[supkirsten]

My heart goes out to great-grandma who wasn’t allowed to love her own family openly. Not even her grandchild 😢😢😢

[pvp]

Wow, thank you so much for sharing this. As a black woman in a large mixed family, when I hear people saying that to you, all I see is my 6 year old nephew with gold blond curly hair, blue eyes, and a visibly black mom and older sister. He doesn't understand why he looks different or why people treat his mom (my youngest sister) or his sister differently or why some people don't believe him when he says she's his mom.
And the rest of our family is just as bad, singling him out amongst all his cousins to talk about his skin and hair like some exotic creature. He's not the only white/light skinned person in our family and among full white kids he always looks a lil tan but he's "special" because he came out a dark mother, smh

Leave the poor boy alone and mind yalls business. Keep your ignorance about genetics, race, and basic human decency to yourselves

[serelaathulathmudali]

So I'm south Asian and my husband is a mixed race Brazilian. I had absolute meltdown when our (very light skinned) daughter was put down as 'white' on her birth certificate. People tell me I should be happy about it. That it's good she looks white. So I guess passing is still a thing and it makes me feel like people want to erase me from her blood.

[gingersnaps]

Your grandmother was SO BEAUTIFUL! As a black person who belongs to a "fair skinned" family, I can see how she passed back then. My father's family is extremely fair with straight to wavy hair. Many people think they are something other than black and my husband's family is the same way. A lot of people think my mother in-law is something other than black and my husband is either Dominican, Middle Eastern, Puerto Rican..etc....when he's just black. Many black people who were of a "fair" complexion in the 50s and 60s claimed to be Italian, which was acceptable and they avoided the sun at all costs. It's quite tragic.

[itsaliceinwonder]

As a mixed Indigenous woman with fair skin and light brown hair, I get mistaken for being white all the time. It actually upsets me because I feel like people are trying to erase my family's history. I may look white, but I am Choctaw. Proud of it too

[drekafine]

I don't give a damn what NOBODY says, when I see your family, I can CLEARLY see that you're mixed🤷🏽‍♀️. And I'm glad you recognize that & live in it. From the curly hair you get from your black side, to the fair skin & blue eyes you get from your white side, embrace it all! 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

Edit: I was reading over my comment and noticed something I said that to myself was ignorant. I stated that you got your blue eyes from your "white side" and that was inappropriate for me to say because although there are more caucasian people who have blue eyes than black people, there are plenty of black people who are born with and have blue eyes as well. Mabey my comment went over a lot of people's heads, I still wanted to rectify my statement because I realized what I said was pretty stereotypical 🤦🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♀️. Sorry bout that.

[TawandaVance]

Based on what I've learned over the years, white people had a certain view of what Black supposedly looked like. Most Black people are able to tell. As soon as I saw your grandmother's picture that's the conclusion I came to. There's 2 movies on Netflix that deal with passing. My sister and I both were talking about how it's interesting that people in the Black community would just view them as very lightskin but were able to appear white in white society.

[silkenaria]

It's interesting how even now those of us who are mixed are still expected to prove it. Like am I expected to carry around a folder on my grandfather's ancestry because my skin is "too light"? It's ridiculous.

[carols-corner]

This is such an important video. As a clueless white woman who grew up in a mostly-white area, I readily admit that I have a really hard time identifying light-skinned Black people as Black or mixed. I was clueless that Meghan Markle was half Black when I first heard about her. I can see how people who didn’t know your grandmother’s background thought she was white. We see the world through the lens of our own lives, and it’s crazy how that influences our interpretation of reality.
What a heartbreaking story. Thank you for sharing. We need voices like yours so we can learn and grow and see more clearly the humanity in each other. ❤

[rhov-anion]

Thank you so much for sharing all this. People also think I'm boasting (like, how???) when I explain that I'm mixed. I'm the palest kid in my family, I got my dad's blue eyes, I absolutely look White... until I went to a town near an Oklahoma Cherokee reservation, and much to my surprise literally everyone was like "Oh, you're Cherokee." I kinda freaked out the first time. do you even know that???" White people were saying this to me! They said they can tell by the shape of my face. When you grow up around a race, you know what to look for.

So my guess is, your grandmother lived in an area where people didn't really know what "Black" could look like. They saw very little representation in the movies (most likely didn't have TV at that time) and what they saw there was very dark. So since she didn't look like THAT, she could say she's Italian, or Spaniard, or other "White" categories... I laughed at "Hawaiian" because my brother got profiled as Arab for YEARS (and death threats after 9/11) so when he moved to Hawaii, he had hoped to pass as and all the locals were like "You are definitely NOT Hawaiian, stop it." Luckily, they were cool with him being part Cherokee.

[rkbfhji]

Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing this glimpse into your family. I actually used to nanny for a lady that was "passing" this was in 2016. She was from a small town, grew up watching her blk father be mistreated & picked on. Her mom's family disowned them since her father was blk. So she started a new life as a ww when she moved away. She was shocked when I told her she was black

[rebeccamd]

My dad’s family have been playing the white passing game since the 1600’s. Your grandmother looks a lot like a mix between me and my great grandma Lena. We are European, African, & Native American with a rich hidden history in the mid south. We’re called everything from Metis, Melungeon, Redbones, Mulatto. It’s a huge hidden part of American history. Just today I was thinking about how hard it was to be too light for some people and too dark for others as a kid. It wasn’t till I met a Shawnee girl that I felt like I found someone I could relate to, then I met my best friend who’s 100% Scottish. She didn’t see with her eyes and it really took away my loneliness…made me more bold. Some people are just precious gifts!! 🥰

[mslpfanatik]

My son is biracial. When he was in preschool a teenager told him that I that couldn't be his mom because I'm white. Poor kid was absolutely besides himself. I had to go over and have a discussion with said teenager. My son knows he goes into society being viewed one way but he, like you, lives very much as a biracial person. He's not one or the other but both. And people will fight against that time and tell me "he's Black". Well no, he is mixed. That is who he is and how he lives and I thank you for making that space and bringing attention to those that are of mixed descent and choose to live with that truth. People need to accept that with more and more ethnically mixed children being born that we need to not force them into existing groups. If they choose to identify as such so be it. But it would be nice if more would accept these children and individuals for who they are as people.

[beverlywebster]

Your hair is definitely giving mixed vibes!! I love your hair btw!! You should be proud of your lineage this part of your history is sad but it's the reality

[zard]

Your poor father. He is not at fault, but emotions do not work that way

Thank you for sharing your families story since it gives so much insight to how things worked back then in (I assume) America.

[intodaysepisode...]

I'm so sorry for your Dad not having the Grandma experience. I'm so GLAD that you are facing things head on! Your Grandma was a dooooll 🥰

[stephaniejordan]

Love your story. This should be a movie.

[theorderofthebees]

Thank you for sharing your family story / there is a huge cost in passing - one is severing their roots and connections - I hope your dad finds peace, because he lived out that cost of passing that wasn’t his fault at all . 🙏🙏🙏

[donatonamusic]

Have you ever seen The Imitation of Life? Your grandmother’s story reminds me of that movie

[nucleusthreads]

I am mixed from three races as a Puerto Rican—Caucasian, Indigenous Carribean, and Indigenous African. I am white passing. My entire life I have been told "you look white for a Latina", "you speak English so well for a Latina", etc, and those, to me, are such ignorant statements, because so many of us are fair skinned—but that doesn't make us any less Latin, or Asian, or Black, or Indigenous, or anything else. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Edit: typo.