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>> -- work of literary merit lecture
on Nellie Larsen's Passing, entitled "More Than a Cat Fight:
Fear Lies in Social Class in the Lives
of Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry."
It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker.
Abby Bogomolny earned a degree in mass communications
at Brooklyn college of the City University of New York,
and an MA in English and a certificate
in teaching post-secondary reading
at San Francisco State University.
She's the editor of the anthology, New to North America,
Writings By US Immigrants, Their Children, and Grandchildren.
She's a native New Yorker, and her father was born in Harlem.
Please join me in welcoming Abby Bogomolny.
>> Thank you.
I'm glad to see all of you here today.
I played a little YouTube clip of Duke Ellington
and the cotton club orchestra.
That cut was called Arabian Lover, and it was written
and performed back in 1929, the Harlem renaissance.
So my talk together is entitled more than a cat fight,
fear lies in social class in the lives
of Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry.
They are two central characters in Nellie Larsen's passes.
If we think that passing by Nellie Larson is a quaint,
old-fashioned tale of race and class that no longer applies
to us today we would be very wrong.
Move the mic away.
Okay. There we go.
Thank you.
This is a photograph of Nellie Larsen that graces many books.
So if we think that this novel doesn't apply today,
we would be wrong.
Passing was published in 1929, and it's a brilliant drama.
I was struck by the biting thoughts and fears
that Irene Redfield projects on to Claire Kendry,
and the tense tightrope
that Claire skillfully walks upon daily.
I will make the argument that the dramatic tension
in this novel is none other than a struggle
between different ideologies, as represented by Irene and Claire.
They have different ways of seeing each other
and of wielding power.
Perhaps they are characters Larsen encounters,
or even parts of her own psyche.
Even the very titles of Larsen's two novels, major novels,
Quicksand and passing, give us hints about her reality
as a mixed-race woman born in 1891.
So let's start with a brief bio of Larsen's life.
Larsen's mother, Marie Hanson,
was a white immigrant woman from Denmark.
Her father, Peter Walker, a light-skinned man of white
and African descent, was also an immigrant but from Saint Croix.
Saint Croix today is part of the US *** islands,
but in the late 19th century,
it was part of the Danish West Indies.
Because the social construction of race was different
in Saint Croix than in the US, her father may not have thought
of himself as black until he came to Chicago.
By social construction we mean the culturally determined
practices that a particular society enshrines
into a belief system.
So social constructions are not fixed, they change as beliefs
and social practices change,
much as we have witnessed it race in the United States.
For example, in Saint Croix, the term black or *** applied only
to full-blooded people of African decent.
But in the U.S.A., the one drop rule
of African decent determined one's race.
Codified into law during slavery times,
the one drop rule defined being colored, ***,
or black in the US as having any known ancestry, black ancestry.
This definition is not found throughout the world.
For example, how would you describe the two little girls
in this slide, what do you think?
What do you think?
Your first impression.
Well, if you said one is black and one is white,
you would be mistaken.
The girl on the left has one black grand parent.
And she is -- her features and hair coloring is very similar
to Claire Kendry in our novel.
So in reality, both of these little girls are
of African decent.
It just depends where you put the line, where you put the bar,
what the social construction of race is.
So if we go back to Nellie Larsen's life for a moment
and we look at her childhood, both Peter Walker
and Marie Hanson, her parents, spoke Danish.
They spoke Danish, and their immigrant status proved a bond
that was much thicker than those social constructions of race.
Nellie was born in 1891, in Chicago.
Unfortunately, her father, Peter Walker,
passed away when she was a baby,
and her mother remarried a white immigrant man named Peter Larsen
at the first opportunity.
When Nellie Larsen was five years old in 1896,
the Supreme Court issued its Plessy versus Ferguson decision.
Homer Plessy, a man of white and black ancestry,
defined in the US as black, was arrested for sitting
in the whites-only is section of a Louisiana box car.
This decision validated segregation
as a lawful institution throughout the US,
coining the phrase separate but equal, a legal concept
that would not be challenged or changed
until the 1954 Supreme Court decision,
Brown versus Board of Education.
That was the Court case that struck
down segregation in public education.
My point is that Nellie Larsen's stepfather, Peter Larsen,
supported by the prevailing ideas about race
at the time was embarrassed by Nellie's appearance.
Her darkness insinuated unwanted information about his family.
George Hutchinson, author of one of the best biographies
about Larsen, in search of Nellie Larsen,
a biography of the line writes Nellie Walker was a burden
to her mother, a blot on her existence,
and a cause of social tension at home.
Tangled feelings of love, abandonment, anger,
self-loathing, empathy, shame,
and powerlessness stamped Larsen's emotional development
in childhood and shaped the attachment problems
that would effect her.
The family situation worsened
after her white half-sister was born.
Larsen's mother needed her marriage
to survive economically,
but with so much tension she knew she must prepare Nellie
to leave the family at an early age.
Her strategy was to be sure
that Nellie received a good education,
and the best education, so that she could live on her own.
Hutchinson writes that Nellie Larsen's education would exceed
that of her mother's, and that of her white half-sister,
who was only one year her junior.
When Nellie was 16, Marie and Peter Larsen sent her
to Fisk University, a historically black college
in Nashville, Tennessee.
Larsen loved the learning environment there,
but socially she had very little in common
with black southern culture, so she did not fit in.
She eventually left Fisk and lived in Denmark
for three years, 1909-1912, and audited courses
at the University of Copenhagen.
Afterwards, she went back to the states,
travelled to New York City, and studied nursing
in Lincoln hospital training school.
For a brief time she practiced nursing
at the Tuskegee Institute,
and then with the New York City Department of Health
and married a black physician, Dr. Elmer Samuel Imes.
Next, from 1922 to 1926, she worked as a librarian
for the New York City public library
and threw herself into writing.
Larsen's first novel, Quicksand, was published in 1928,
and it won her a Harmon Foundation award.
Her success established her as a literary figure at the height
of the Harlem renaissance.
Passing closely followed in 1929,
and also earned her praise.
After Passing was published,
he won the first Guggenheim Fellowship of the arts awarded
to an African American woman.
While these were all positive events, Larsen's sense
of security was to be shaken.
It was difficult to be a public literary figure for her,
and her private life suffered.
After she was accused of stealing someone's work
for a short story published, Sanctuary,
for which she was exonerated, her marriage fell apart.
These events caused her to stop writing her third novel.
Then she retreated from the literary world,
and after her ex-husband's death went back to nursing.
She spent the rest of her life living quietly and working
at Bethle Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.
Or east New York, as we like to say.
Nellie lessen lived until 1964.
Well, at the beginning of this talk I promised you
that I would examine the strikingly different identities
that Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry hold
that create dramatic tension in the novel.
Many of you are writing essays,
and I hope this talk will help you prepare
by a focus on characterization.
We analyze character in a novel
through examining what a character says,
what a character thinks, and what a character does.
We may look at the character's physical description, name,
and what other people say about him or her.
Passing opens with Irene Redfield fuming and fretting
about a letter she has received from Claire Kendry.
In no uncertain terms, Larsen's third person omniscient view
sets up Irene Redfield's perspective
as the principle teller of our tale.
We learn everything from Irene Redfield's thoughts,
briefs, and judgments.
At the beginning of the novel, Irene thinks that Claire is,
quote, selfish, cold, and hard.
She believes Claire is also cat-like,
sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive.
And then there was an amazing soft malice,
hidden well-away until provoked.
Then she was capable of scratching
and very effectively too.
That's right on Page Six.
Since these words occur early in the book most of us are likely
to believe what our narrator tells us.
But we should keep our eyes open
to notice what type of person Irene is.
Who is Irene Redfield?
She's the type of person
who in the Chicago heat keeps walking away when, quote,
a man toppled over and became an inert crumpled heap
on the scorching is he meant.
She cannot get away from the crowd fast enough, feeling,
quote, soiled by contact with so many sweating bodies.
Once safely on the roof top restaurant
of the Drayton Hotel having tea, she sees, quote,
the specks of cars and people creeping about in the streets,
and thinks how silly they looked.
If you're beginning to get the sense
that Irene is the judgmental
and insensitive one you would be right.
She is keenly protective of her social status.
Light-skinned enough to engage in selective passing
when she wants to, she does not at first recognize Claire
when she sees her staring.
Instead, she thinks Claire is a white woman who has detected
that she, a ***, doesn't belong there.
Irene reveals she is not ashamed of being black, rather, quote,
it was the idea of being ejected from any place,
even in the polite and tactful way
that the Drayton would do it that disturbed her.
Being ejected from the hotel or being put back
in her place drastically conflicts with herself image
as a member of the rising black upper middle harass.
Irene is married to a successful black Dr. Brian,
and lives comfortably in Harlem, way up town, New York City.
A place that is all the rage in the 1920's.
The cutting-edge, musical, dance, and literary arts
of the Harlem renaissance.
Well, how does Irene view Claire Kendry?
Irene is deeply torn between her highly negative thoughts
about Claire and a strong personal attraction
in her presence.
Nellie Larsen was very aware that Irene's personal attraction
to Claire dare not speak its name.
And indeed, Larsen has other fish to fry involving class
and the duplicitous nature of many members
of the rising black middle class.
So we're going to spend our energy evaluating that.
On page 44, Irene sees Claire as, quote,
strangers in their ways and means of living.
Strangers in their desires and ambitions.
Strangers even in their racial consciousness.
Irene's first image of Claire is one of a girl sitting
on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright cloth together,
while her drunken father raged threateningly up
and down the shabby room.
The child had edged herself and her poor sewing
over to the farther-most corner of the sofa.
Irene's thinking continues, it was unsafe for Claire
to take a portion of the dollar that was her weekly wage
for the doing of many errands for the dress maker who lived
on the top floor of the building
of which Bob Kendry was a janitor.
But that knowledge had not deterred her.
She wanted to go to her Sunday school picnic, and she had made
up her mind to wear a new dress.
So in spite of a certain unpleasantness
and possible danger, she had taken the money to buy material
for that pathetic little frock.
I read that long quote so we could pull out the words,
the value words, the judgmental words, poor and pathetic.
Instead of having compassion, Irene blames Claire
for unwisely risking her father's wrath by saving part
of her wages to buy cloth for a new dress.
Not only does Irene look down on Claire's poor, unstable origins,
but she has contempt for what otherwise would be respect
able qualities.
Ambitious, a desire to better herself, despite the risks.
Since Irene values the safety and security
of a protected middle class cocoon,
Irene despises Claire's way of operating.
Always on the edge of danger.
In another scene, Irene's unforgiving nature is also
evident, Irene, and Claire, and Brian, Irene's husband,
operate in a society in which racism is a given.
Claire's husband John represents this voice.
In Part 1, Chapter 3, Irene asks him,
so you dislike Negroes, Mr. Bellew?
He answers her with you got me wrong there, Mrs. Redfield,
nothing like that at all.
I don't dislike them, I hate them.
They give me the creeps.
It's on Page 29 and 30.
Little does he know that his audience at tea
that day consists of three black women, Claire, Irene,
and Gertrude, who sit closed-mouthed
and stunned through his rant.
Irene is later troubled by the silence necessary in this scene
to protect Claire's secret of passing.
But once again, she blames Claire for exposing her
to a humiliating experience, not John, the purveyor of the hate.
Note that Irene believes she can do nothing about white racism,
so it's okay for her to blame Claire.
Irene and Claire both navigate around John's racism,
and white racism in general,
but they have very different strategies.
So how does Irene see herself?
Irene grew up in Chicago and she has always had
financial security.
Now married to Brian, a doctor,
she's been able to keep the status.
Irene also has her own housekeeper, Zulinna,
who frees her to be a socialite and engage in all kinds
of do-good work for the *** Welfare League,
activities that never require her to dirty her hands.
So in Irene's view, America has worked for her.
Irene selectively passes when it's advantageous to do so,
such as having tea at the Drayton in Part One,
but she's comfortably situated in a stable black community,
insulated from poverty and the condition
of many of her brethren.
Most telling is Larsen's explanation
of Irene's identity on Page 76.
She belonged in this land of rising towers.
She was an American, she grew from the soil
and she would not be uprooted,
not even because of Claire Kendry or 100 Claire Kendry's.
Irene identifies with the system that allows her
to be comfortable, but views race as, quote,
the thing that bound and suffocated her,
because the manner in which society treats black people is
at odds with her view of herself
as a rising comfortable American.
In contrast, Claire who loses her alcoholic father
as a teen would not have had a home were it not
for her two white great aunts, they opened their home to her,
but their views of Claire's mixed ancestry made it hard
for her, and it relegated her to be a virtual servant.
Claire tells Irene in Part One, it was hard --
it was a hard life for a girl of 16.
Still, I had a roof over my head.
They made me what I am today.
For of course I was determined to get away, to be a person,
and not a charity or a problem.
Then, too, I wanted things.
I knew that I wasn't bad-looking,
and that I could pass.
Thus, Claire takes a more radical and risky avenue
when she elopes with John, a successful white businessman
who has no reason to believe she's black.
As a result, her life becomes even more materially comfortable
than Irene's.
Although Claire looks white and is married to someone white,
she possesses a stronger sense
of double consciousness than Irene.
This double consciousness W.E.B. Du Bois first made clear
in The Souls of Black Folks in 1903.
It's a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness,
this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes
of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world
that looks on in amused contempt and pity.
One ever feels his twoness, an American, a ***, two souls,
two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals
in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it
from being torn asunder.
Du Bois. This describes Claire Kendry very well.
In order to pull off her act of passing she always has
to be aware of walking that tight rope.
And frankly, she -- she succeeds, she does it very well.
Although there is of course a hidden cost.
Now Irene manufactures a fantasy world throughout the novel.
Once she sacrifices and manufactures the fantasy
that Claire and Brian are flirting, she --
Claire becomes a threat to her marriage.
And that's when Claire becomes her arch enemy.
Irene projects her dissatisfaction
with her husband's restlessness, his desire to leave New York,
his old desire to relocate
to a racially more tolerant Brazil, all on to Claire.
It's an act of projection.
Irene projects every nuance of her hoe-hum marriage,
perhaps as a result of her own emotional hardness,
on to Claire.
It is all her fault.
Brian invites later to a gathering, which is a party
for Hugh Wentworth, that Irene had purposely not invited
Claire to.
But Irene sees conspiracy.
Surely Irene will scratch and claw at anything
that threatens her firm place in her conservative,
bourgeois, middle class life.
So who is cat-like now?
I know, I know you'd like that one.
I want to say more about Irene's fantasy life, off the record.
Irene is consistently late in the novel
for getting ready to go places.
And the principle reason she takes so long getting dressed
to go some place is she's processing, she's thinking.
Juxtaposing what if.
It happens many times in the novel,
and it's during these portions that we see that her grip
of reality, her grip on logic, is not particularly sound.
So once critical of Claire and her passing, Irene is going
to fight to prevent Claire's husband from finding
out that Claire is black.
She must stop him from knowing
that Claire has been socializing in Harlem.
Why? If he discovers Claire's secret, John will divorce her.
Meaning Claire will be free to ensnare Irene's husband Brian.
It's fear that motivates her, the fear of losing everything,
her marriage, her home, and her comfortable, social position.
The funny thing is that Irene doesn't have any real evidence
that Brian and Claire are interested in each other.
She lives in her head and then believes the fantasy she
has spun.
And we are invited into this fantasy world,
which is a constant processing
of did you see how Brian moved his shoulders, that means this,
you know, versus I don't have anything to worry about,
then again she'll swing back the other way.
And we go back and forth.
I joked with my class that, you know, she needs meditation
or maybe she needs a ***, but we don't know what Irene needs.
We know that she is not at peace and her life is driven by fear.
Now this effects her -- I'd say political position
or her identity as well.
Larsen tells us on Page 69 that Irene -- Irene thinks this,
she was caught between two allegiances,
different yet the same.
Herself, her race, race,
the thing that bound and suffocated her.
Whatever step she took or if she took none at all,
something would be crushed.
A person or the race.
Claire, herself or the race.
Irene views her problem an either/or situation.
Being loyal to her race versus saving herself.
Being loyal to her race means she would want the truth
of Claire's passing to be known.
However, now that she imagines her marriage to Brian is at risk
because of Irene flirting with him, Irene is more than happy
to be sure that Claire stays with her husband John Bellew.
If John finds out he's passing he will divorce her
and she will be a free agent to steal her husband.
So who is cold and hard now in this, you know, novel?
In case you haven't already guessed, Irene's perspective
in the novel is not to be trusted.
She's a classic unreliable narrator.
There we go.
Okay. A classic unreliable narrator.
She's one who displays a lack of credibility,
providing the reader with either incomplete
or inaccurate information, as a result of a lack of good taste
or judgment or moral sense.
We get her lack of moral sense right in the beginning.
She's not a compassionate person she walks by --
when the man collapses in the heat
in Chicago, she walks right by.
We didn't expect her to stop and give him first aid, but we,
you know, a regular person would at least wonder is he okay.
Stop for a minute, her thoughts are entirely
for herself in this.
So Irene is a wolf in sheep's clothing, basically.
Even her maiden name -- and this is another element
of characterization -- sometimes a name will be symbolic.
So even her maiden name, Westover, Irene Westover,
is a clue to her nature, of trusting the values
of the west over other systems.
Deeply conflicted, deeply secure, she demonizes
and destroys whatever threatens her.
In her confusion, she condemns the actions that people
who are economically below her have to take
to gain stability, like Claire.
Motivated by fear,
she manufactures threats to her social status.
She believes her lies and then strikes
out against those who are different.
Nellie Larsen's Passing presents us with this stunning portrait
of hypocrisy, denial, and then projection.
Larsen captured more than a cat fight.
Irene's acidic jealousy and fear of Claire is the red spark
of a burning cigarette that in her mind must be stamped out.
Irene's claim that Claire is cold, hard,
and selfish instead fits her own personality pretty well.
Claire may be passing for white,
but Irene is passing as a caring person.
She wants others to believe
that she's a care-free socialize with a happy family.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Moreover, Larsen warns us that white racism is real,
but she dramatically conveys that even members
of the black community are capable
of enabling the status quo
if they believe their own security is in jeopardy.
The Irenes among us will be pleased to down play the need
to remember and understand history, as Irene demonstrates
on Page 74 when she asks Brian
to stop teaching their son Brian Junior about recent Lynchings
and white racism, which was affectionately called, quote,
the race problem, back in the '20's.
Purposely ambiguous, Larsen ends the novel having us guess
who indeed is responsible for Claire's fall from the window.
I will not examine the competing theories that others have found
to explain her death in the last few pages, but I will mention
that the strongest one indicts Irene for this deed,
and her motives are plentiful.
Foreshadowed in several places in the novel,
Irene vows herself to destroy Claire.
For example, Page 40, was she ever --
was she never to be free of it, that which crouched always deep
down within her, stealing away the sense of security,
the feeling of permanence from the life which she had
so admirably arranged.
Irene is all about security and -- and regularity and appearing
that everything is -- is good.
And then on Page 69, it would be enough
to rid her forever of Claire Kendry.
And finally, on Page 72 which is pretty evident,
then came a thought which she tried to drive away.
If Claire should die, then oh, it was vial --
to think, yes, to wish that.
She felt faint and sick.
But the thought stayed with her, she could not get rid of it.
Okay, this is -- this is during a section in the book
where she could have benefitted from medication or ***,
where she's swinging back and forth,
what is she going to do, you know?
What is she going to do?
Is -- is Claire really having a dalliance
with her husband or not.
And we have symbolism.
We have some symbolism on Page 66,
and I'll get my book for that.
There's a little party,
that party that Brian invited Claire to,
that Irene did not want Claire to come.
An Irene is worked up because of this,
she feels extremely insecure.
I have to go to Page 66.
This -- I call this the symbolism of the cup.
Hugh Wentworth apologizes -- the party is for him --
and he apologizes for perhaps pushing Irene.
But he really doesn't mean it.
He's noticed that she has dropped a cup
and it's broken on the floor.
Okay, so he asks her, you know, he says I'm so sorry
if I pushed you, and she turned to Hugh, shook her head,
raised her innocent dark eyes to his concerned pale ones.
Oh no, she protested, you didn't push me.
Cross your heart, hope to die,
and I'll tell you how it happened.
Done. Did you notice that cup?
Well, you're lucky.
It was the ugliest thing that your ancestors,
the charming confederates, ever owned.
I forgotten how many thousands of years ago it was
that Brian's great, great grand uncle owned it.
But it had or has a good old whorey history.
It was brought north by way of the subway.
Oh all right, be English if you want
and call it the underground.
What I'm coming to is the fact that I never figured out a way
of getting rid of it until about five minutes ago.
I had an inspiration, I only had to break it
and I was rid of it forever.
So simple.
And I never thought of it before.
So what else does she want to get rid of?
Who else does she want to get rid of?
Who's her problem?
Claire. She's going -- what is she going to do,
what is she going to do.
She just dropped the cup and -- oh.
Maybe this is subconscious, okay.
But for the reader this is symbolism.
Here she is, wanted to get rid of something,
all she had to do was drop it and it's broken.
Okay, problem solved, right?
Okay, so the movement to the end
of the book marches forward with steps.
She actually convicts in her mind, she convicts Claire
when she warns Claire and says you really need to be careful.
Your husband is going to find
out that you're socializing in Harlem.
And later is very cavalier, and Claire says, I'm paraphrasing,
of course, she says well, so what could he do?
Just divorce me, then I'd be free.
Free, that's the last thing Irene wants.
And the line in the book was interesting, on 75,
it mentions the word conviction.
And it's kind of a double meaning,
but one of those meanings is Irene is putting Claire
on trial.
Is she really guilty?
Well, now she's convicted.
So Irene has now vowed to do something.
But Irene is in complete denial.
So I'm going to move this talk forward to a comparison
with something that we thought
about in the late 1970's, early '80's.
In 1979, feminist professor
and Scholar Audrey Lord delivered a speech entitled The
Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House.
And in it she argued that the white '70's feminist movement
rarely incorporated the experiences
of marginalized women in their analysis.
She argues for inclusion in words
that relate strongly to Irene and Claire.
Lord writes, those of us who stand outside the circle
of this society's definition of acceptable women know
that survival is not an academic skill.
It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular,
and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause
with those others identified as outside the structures in order
to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.
It is learning how to take our differences
and make them strengths, for the master's tools will never
dismantle the master's house.
They may temporarily allow us to beat him at his own game,
but they can never enable us to bring about genuine change.
And this fact is only threatening to other women
who still define the master's house
as their only source of support.
I submit to you that Claire stands far outside Irene's
acceptable class origins due to her poverty
and tenuous early home life.
However, Claire takes the far riskier route to gain social
and economic advantage bypassing for white.
As much as some may be troubled by this disloyalty,
Claire is the more honest character
because she is aware of what she's doing.
She's appropriating white power for her benefit but she's always
in control, she has that double consciousness.
Irene, on the other hand, is thoroughly duplicitous.
She is concerned with social appearance and driven by fear.
She's unconscious of the fantasy land she manufacturers
about others.
She simultaneously subverts her husband's happiness,
her loyalty, and the life of her friend Claire to be up held --
to up hold her image of herself
as a successful American in her rising tower.
Again, the master's tools will never dismantle the
master's house.
Irene uses the master's tools
when she shoves Claire out the window.
And she's in denial about it.
In terms of literature of this period we see a number
of novels coming not just from African American places,
but from other ethnic groups in the United States that are
in the business of assimilation to American culture.
One is the Great Gatsby.
In a way, Claire is very much of a Gatsby,
a Jay Gatsby character, where she rises but she has a secret
of lowly origins and the book as in Gatsby, Gatsby is taken down,
here Claire is taken down.
And what these authors are getting at, and we have others
like Philip Roth and Henry Roth that deal
with the immigrant Jewish community,
where characters are selling out the values
of their particular ethnic identity for participation
in the mainstream capitalist, commercial, American culture.
And there's a -- a questioning of that morality of doing so.
And so I see Passing as not essentially -- it is --
it uses race as one man said as a calling card or a lost leader
to get us interested, oh, Passing, what's that?
Let's find out.
You know, gets us interested.
But once we're in the book it's not just about that.
It is -- it has this item in common with many novels
of the period, of the '20's through the '30's,
of questioning assimilation.
What are we losing to become part of the main stream.
And clearly, Irene is lost, Irene has no morality,
and she's thoroughly in denial.
Okay, so in closing, Passing is not just a quaint,
old-fashioned tale about race and class.
Just last year the US census bureau announced that over 50.4
of all babies living today under 1 year old
in the whole United States belong to,
and these are the census bureau's official categories,
Hispanic, black, Asian American, and other minority groups.
A similar Washington Post article
from the same month wrote although minorities make up 37%
of the US population, the district, D.C.,
and four states are majority minority.
California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas.
Note the article's language, majority minority.
And [Inaudible] yes, right?
Or oxymoron, whoever you pronounce it.
But more importantly, the phrase is a naked reestablishment
of a color line.
And just in case we forget, you know, where the line is,
you know, we need -- if we need this term majority minority
to refer to an implied exclusion from power we're now back
to the same social construction of race
that we were in the beginning.
The one drop rule.
Right? If we can see it in you,
you're over here, excluded from power.
In other words, even when people
of color become the majority they still remain a minority.
Now this, you know, rather --
so the language carries perspective.
So with this perspective, rather than a relic of the past,
I mean, could it be that our post civil rights,
post Obama election, representations
of race are still the same.
I don't know.
These demographics tell us something else.
Decisions about identity for young people
with mixed ancestry will be more common
and a more crucial part to work out.
If we become conscious of our origins
of the social constructions
of race we can give turning our differences into strengths.
Besides self definition, we must resist falling into,
as Audrey Lord says, using the master's tools on each other.
We must respect our origins, respect our different ways
of moving in the world.
Only then can we chart different paths to inclusion.
Irene Redfield and Claire Kendry
in Passing represent very different ideologies.
If we're ever to bring in more people
from the margins we must educate the Irenes of the world
that love is greater than fear.
Thanks. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> I guess -- we're almost out of time.
But any questions and comments?
Yeah?
[ Inaudible audience comment ]
>> So the question is using Audrey Lord's analogy
of the master's tools and the master's house,
what is Claire doing.
What is Claire doing.
And Claire is gaming the system.
Claire is passing for white not because she wants to be white,
deep down in her heart.
She wants inclusion into the economic advantages
that the society will grant her.
She's gaming the system.
She's a trixter, she's a trixter and she's doing it well.
If she would have hated herself for being black and passed,
then there would be a problem.
Then she would have had a negative identity.
But Claire loves herself.
Claire is proud of herself.
She's gaming the system,
she retains a double consciousness,
and she's good at it.
So I see that her trixter self is able
to handle the tight rope walk.
Yeah. But Irene is the one who's definitely keeping the
boundaries of no, you know, you're not part
of our crowd, you know?
And you'll never be part of our crowd.
So anyway, thank you.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
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