50 shades of pale?

A negative review of A D Powell´s book on race. Powell criticized the review rather heavily, and I´m not entirely sure where I stand on these issues today (the review was posted in 2015). I repost it here for archival reasosn. 

A D Powell's “`Passing' For Who You Really Are” is a controversial book about American race relations. Most of the material has previously been published in the webzine Interracial Voice (which is apparently defunct). While Powell is anti-racist, she directs most of her attacks at Black-identified elites and their White liberal allies, claiming that they artificially perpetuate the racist “one drop rule” and thereby give back-handed support to notions of Black inferiority. Powell strongly opposes the practice of “outing” Blacks who try to “pass for White”, arguing that most such “Blacks” really are White and that “passing” has nothing to do with it. Her examples include the prominent Irish-American Healy family, whose members have been posthumously claimed by Blacks, since they had a mulatto mother. Yet, the Healys looked White, were raised as Catholics and identified as Irish-Americans. In Powell's opinion, they were Whites who happened to have some Black ancestry, not “Blacks”. Judging by photos of A D Powell, she is a “multiracial White” herself.

I admit that I found this book difficult relating to. On the one hand, Powell is (of course) right that “race” is an artificial concept, and that the very definitions of “White” and “Black” have changed over time in the United States. The “one drop rule” didn't become law in the South until the early 20th century. This explains seeming anomalies, such as the existence of “Black” slave-owners in the antebellum South (they were Mulattoes, and at the time Mulattoes were not considered Black) or the existence of “White” slaves (since slavery was inherited on the maternal side, and many slaves had White fathers, even very light-skinned Mulattoes could be slaves). It also explains the curious fact that many European, Hispanic or Asian groups managed to pass from “Black” status to “White” ditto, sometimes very quickly. Powell is also right that everyone should be able to freely choose his or her “racial” identity. Personally, I'm “Swedish by choice” but non-Swedish European plus “Hispanic” by ancestry. I suppose that makes me a fellow “multiracial White” by the author's standards. (A curious fact not mentioned by Powell is that *Swedes* were considered “Black” in the early United States, due to their “musky” features and supposed inability for republican self-government!)

That being said, there is nevertheless something slightly disturbing about “`Passing' For Who You Really Are”. Is the main danger in the United States really reverse Black racism? Why does the author attack those who claim war hero Calvin Clark Davis as “Black” with the words “don't piss on his grave by calling him `Black'”? Why does she compare anti-racist liberals who criticize or bemoan “passing” with Nazis who labeled Jews “non-Aryan”? And who is the mysterious anonymous girl mentioned in the essay “White Folks: A True Story”? Is it the author herself? Perhaps not, but I can understand “Black-identified” critics who see A D Powell as some kind of race traitor. It *does* sound as if she denigrates her Black ancestry, and since most Whites apparently accept her as White, she sees the skeptical Blacks (and their White liberal hangers-on) as the main enemy… She seems jealous of other minority groups who managed “big time passing”, such as Hispanics (many of whom would be considered “Black” if English was their native language), Jews (with their “Semitic” features) or even the Chinese in Jim Crow Mississippi (accepted as “White” after repudiating their mixed-race children with Black wives). And, I suppose, Swedes (although we're still technically a monarchy). But why would A D Powell be jealous of the rest of us, if she has no problem with her African blood?

I don't mind multiracial Whites (Europeans even have Neanderthal genes!), but I don't mind multiracial or uniracial Blacks either. While “`Passing' For Who You Really Are” does contain some interesting material, including an extended summary of Lawrence Tenzer's “The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War” (available from this site for the bizarre price of $1000), I somehow feel that it contains too much inflammatory material to be really useful…