To the Editor:
In their article on Jean Toomer, the authors Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates Jr. claim that Toomer suffered from a case of "conflicted racial identity" ("Jean Toomer's Conflicted Racial Identity," The Chronicle Review, February 11). Toomer, one of the first proponents of thinking about race in multiracial "American" terms, is now said to have been passing as white. The authors justify this assertion by presenting new evidence that Toomer identified himself differently based on location and situation.
It is true that Toomer most likely self-identified as "Negro" when he registered for the draft. It is also true that in Toomer's era, and the eras in which his ancestors were identified, census takers were allowed to list racial designation as they perceived it. So, whether Toomer is listed as white or black on the census may say little about his own thoughts on racial identity. It may, however, say much about how he was perceived by the person taking the census and/or responding on his behalf. A similar case can be made for the marriage licenses. In the absence of a handwriting expert, eyewitness, or recorded conversation, it is not verifiable that Toomer self-identified as white or whether he was designated as white by the licensor.
Nevertheless, Byrd and Gates maintain that Toomer had to be passing—and therefore engaging in racial deception—because it is not documented that any of his "direct ancestors chose to live or self-identify as white."
Flying in the face of decades' worth of scholarship that builds on Toomer's work, Byrd and Gates ignore Maria Root's "Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage." In it, Root states that multiracial people may identify differently over time, may identify differently than their parents or siblings, and that doing so is totally acceptable. As my colleague Ulli K. Ryder of Brown University put it, "It feels like Byrd and Gates have made a conflict where, in fact, there isn't one."
What's more, Byrd and Gates foreclose Toomer's attempts to enlarge the social imaginary and think differently about identity. Surely being black was one way to be multiracial in Toomer's time, but the mores of that time also said that he could not be multiracial and white. The authors also challenge the authenticity of Toomer's situational take on identity. I want to challenge their implication that an unchanging identity is somehow more stable or true than one that changes and questions itself. Don't we all somehow alter our identities over time? We identify in particular ways with parents, in other ways with friends, and still in other ways with co-workers and romantic partners.
We must also remember that before Jean Toomer, there was no way to publicly declare oneself and be accepted as both white and black. I propose that we stop thinking of passing as a form of denial or deception. Instead, as I write in my forthcoming book, Things Said in Passing, let us consider passing as a dynamic process of expression in which passers self-identify as monoracial, and not as multiracial for the sake of others (whether it's for clarity, comfort, or acceptance). That definition allows us to understand multiracial identities in Toomer's time in the absence of legal, social, and civil recognition, and to see race today less in terms of blood quantum, skin color, or family background, and more in terms of self-identification.
We also need to question whether passing as white is the only or most meaningful type of racial passing. If Toomer sometimes passed as white, then logic dictates that he also sometimes passed as black. But that is not what Byrd and Gates propose when they acknowledge his multiracial perspective. They maintain that Toomer "fled his identity" simply to further his career. Ironically, Byrd and Gates do not entertain the possibility that Toomer presents so eloquently in his writing and his life: a way of identifying as not-only-black and not-passing.
Sadly, the teachable moment that Byrd and Gates are seeking about the nature of race cannot be achieved by rehashing boxes checked on government forms. A truer teachable moment occurs when we treasure Toomer's life and writing as opportunities to question the very categories that tell us who we have been, who we are now, and who we might become for the purpose of positive change. I suspect that Toomer still has much to teach. And, if we are up to the task, we still have much to learn.
Marcia Alesan Dawkins
Visiting Scholar
Brown University
Providence, R.I.
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To the Editor
Despite the interesting investigative work of its authors, the recent Chronicle article on Jean Toomer was troubling to me because it served as another apparent grain of truth that sustains two deeply entrenched stereotypes. One of these is the myth of the confused mulatto who is disabled by incessant struggles with his or her racial identity. The other is the "one-drop rule"—the idea that anyone with an identifiable black person in his or her lineage is assumed black. I think it's time we acknowledge the reality of the existence of the well-adjusted multiethnic/biracial white person. As the self-identifying African-American mother of a young man who fit that description while growing up, I'd like to share part of our story in the spirit of balance.
"Your mom is black?" was a frequent refrain and innocent nod to the notion of the one-drop rule when my son's acquaintances met me for the first time. I must admit that I, too, did not escape the influence of this perennial rule. On those dreamy weekend mornings when my husband and I lay awake pondering who our child would look like, I smugly argued that of course our child would be black because one parent was black. My husband, on the other hand, who is white (of Irish and Danish descent) and a card-carrying member of a Native American tribe, asked with dismay, "Where am I in this equation?"
You can imagine my surprise when the doctor pulled out a baby boy who was the spitting image of my husband's Danish mother. He was pale pink, with poker-straight reddish-brown hair that later grew into platinum-blonde curls. Thus began my cultural odyssey of being someone who identified as black raising a child who identifies and is identified as white.
Although the experience has been mostly positive, we did endure a few minor annoyances, such as older white women in the small town where my son was born asking if I was babysitting when they saw me with him in tow; or one elementary-school teacher changing his racial designation on a form from white to black. Although I was furious at the audacity of someone taking it upon himself to determine my son's race as something other than what he designated it to be, my son shrugged it off.
Life with my son has provided very personal examples of how we create race on a daily basis through meaningless labels and stereotypical expectations. The bottom line is that race is, to a great extent, an arbitrary designation created to maintain a certain social and economic order, an order whose time has passed. So the question of "What is he?" is irrelevant.
In fact, my son is all of his heritage. He participates in black-student-union activities at college not because he sees himself as black but because he is an ally, just as he is a straight ally to the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community. For most of his life, like his father, he has been a multiethnic white male. Today he looks at his racial identity in a way that Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma refer to as transcendent. He simply sees himself as human.
Until the social construct of race is completely dismantled, we should simply let people be who they decide they are. Because race is a myth, there can be no fundamental objective truth ascertained through systematic investigation regarding the race of an individual, as the authors of the Toomer article attempt to do. From this perspective, Toomer was not a Negro passing for white. He was both Negro and white at different times during his life, ultimately transcending both and seeing himself as simply American.
Kimberly A. Barrett
Vice President for Student Affairs
University of Montevallo
Montevallo, Ala.
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To the Editor:
Congratulations to Rudolph P. Byrd and Henry Louis Gates Jr. for concluding that Jean Toomer was a Negro who decided to pass for white—the same conclusion I made in my biography of Toomer, Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen, published in 1993. Nothing like reinventing the wheel.
Charles R. Larson
Professor of Literature
American University
Washington
