# Unconscious Passing

Read the following case study and then carry out the activity that follows.

> In the previous case, Naomi was aware of her Black ancestry. Consider now a person who thinks his ancestry is white, but in fact has Black ancestry. One real-life example of this is Gregory Williams, who wrote about his experience in the 1995 book Life on the Colour Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black. His physical appearance was that of a white person and he was raised to believe he was white. Suppose that Gregory never finds out about his Black ancestry and he lives his life believing he has white ancestry (and this is what others believe of him too).

> (In real life, Gregory Williams later found out that his father had Black ancestry and had been himself passing as white. Gregory grew up in 1950s segregated Virginia, where what race someone was affected their entire lives. When his Black ancestry was revealed and he was reclassified as Black, this upended his life.)

(adapted from Mills, 1998, pp. 57–8)

## Activity 4

Spend about twenty minutes on this activity

1. After reading the case above, fill out the options below for the four criteria. For ‘Physical Appearance’ and ‘Ancestry’ decide whether according to these criteria the individual is classified as white or Black. For ‘Self Awareness of Ancestry’ and ‘Public Awareness of Ancestry’ decide whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – whether the individual is aware of their own ancestry, and whether the public is aware of the individual’s ancestry. Then, put down what your intuition is about what race Gregory is. If you don’t have an intuition, you can put down ‘not sure’.

Physical Appearance: White or Black?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

Ancestry: White or Black?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

Self Awareness of Ancestry: Yes or No?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

Public Awareness of Ancestry: Yes or No?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

Your intuition on what race Gregory is:

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

2. Reflect on why you have the intuition that you do. How strong is your intuition? Does Gregory’s lack of awareness of his ancestry affect your intuition about his race?

(A text entry box would appear here, but your browser does not support it.)

### Discussion

1. Mills’ response:

##

Physical Appearance | White
Ancestry | Black
Self Awareness of Ancestry | No
Public Awareness of Ancestry | No
Gregory is | White

According to physical appearance Gregory is white, and according to ancestry he is Black. Neither Gregory himself nor the public are aware of his Black ancestry.

2. Mills thinks that one reason why someone might hesitate to think that Naomi (from the previous case) is Black is that she is aware of her ancestry and therefore can’t avoid thinking of herself as Black, or as a Black person pretending to be white. This might be affecting our intuitions about their race – Naomi might always be watchful and anticipating being exposed as Black, even if it never happens. And so, someone might think that the difference between the consciousness of the ‘real’ white person and the ‘apparent’ white person is enough to show that Naomi cannot really be white but is still Black. In Gregory’s case, he is not aware of his Black ancestry. If your intuition is still that Gregory is Black, this indicates that you think that ancestry is what determines race. Mills’ intuition is that Gregory is white, and he thinks that this shows the ancestry does not determine someone’s race – you might disagree.

After thinking through these cases, you may (or may not) have changed your mind about the importance of these criteria. Perhaps you are convinced that Mills’ cases show that ancestry does not determine race. You might have been pulled in different directions and ended up thinking that there is no right answer to the question ‘what race is this person?’ in these cases. If you think that public awareness of ancestry is what determines someone’s race in the cases you’ve read, this indicates that race is, in some way, social – what someone’s race is depends on what others in society believe.

OpenLearn - What can philosophy tell us about race?
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.