I watched John Cassavetes first film Shadows the other day on Criterion. Kind of about this, pretty passing girl whose white boyfriend is shocked upon meeting her brother. Good footage of Times Square in the late 50’s. And all the blacks are super dignified and smart.
Note also that nearly all Latinos, Arabs, North Africans, etc. are multiracial but there is a gentleman’s agreement that their African ancestry is not to be mentioned because it is considered embarrassing and directly contradicts the “one drop†myth. Demands for forced identification (such as reciting one’s genealogy to everyone) are symbols of social inferiority (like the yellow stars the Third Reich forced on Jews).
It was almost as if her black ancestry made all else invisible. True. Blacks stick out among major races as something radically alien.
In other mainstream news, “‘America’†has a gun violence problem.†Huh, is that like when the gun magically shoots itself, or is it like when a live round somehow gets into a prop gun on a movie set? Somehow, guns sure do seem to be loading and shooting themselves a lot lately.
I remember my parents earnestly debating getting me braces after my mouth responded to a retainer by simply slowly pulling the wires out of the retainer.
I think Rebecca Hall is extremely attractive but going by Papa’s standards, I don’t think she is is physically beautiful. Except for her gorgeous eyes, her features are pleasant but not much above average. Her figure is willowy but not voluptuous. She has pretty hair.
When you look at Latinos and Arabs, the USA never really had a “one drop rule.†It was more of a “Don’t ask, don’t tell†rule. Even in the South, it was not unusual for a white family to be known to have some “black blood†but they were treated like other whites as long as they behaved as whites were expected to behave.
In my first stage role I played this article the part of a man called Joseph who lived 2000 years ago and was a Jew, but I think I pulled it off rather well.
… Raised in England within the elite circles of classical theater, Hall, who is 39, had her first introduction to the concept of racial “passing†in the pages of Larsen’s novel. “I was spending time in America, and I knew that there had been vague, but I mean really vague, talk about my mother’s ethnicity,†Hall explained over the phone this spring.
I would add that all pure race people, when they embrace their Genuine Selves, are psychologically healthy. Lupita Nyongo strikes me as being very happy being herself. Why wouldn’t she be happy, she’s the definition of perfection.
Karen’s ethnicity is deliberately made ambiguous and turned into a sort of running joke. The Italian ancestry implied by her last name is confirmed in “The Merger.
My roots come from back in Nottingham – – yes, as in Robin Hood. So maybe every day when I wake up I should get ready to spend the day trying to pass as not being a highwayman.
In theory at least, a half black half white person who mates with a full white person could create a full white baby.
I’ve encountered people in the South who pretty definitely had a dollop of the old tar barrel, but thought of themselves as white — and therefore were white.