Talk:Passing (racial identity)

This article reads like a college paper. The literary section is far too long for one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.42.22 (talk) 06:27, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Just giving a cursory look over the article, I can say without question that it's too long. Brevity is the soul of wit, people. -- Chris 22:26, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

This article was recently split from Passing (sociology), in part because the combined article was 51k. Previous discussion can be found at Talk:Passing (sociology).

I agree that this article needs work, but having done the hard work of separating them, I'm planning on concentrating on Passing (gender) and will leave this article to others. --AliceJMarkham 06:32, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

This article says right up front that it's about a term used in North America, so I don't see why there needs to be a tag pointing out that it doesn't represent a worldwide view. Remove?--Kenji Yamada 04:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The article needs condensing, but also been presented according to Wiki standards. See WP:LEAD. The "reference" with a list of thirty anthropologists is not necessary. Better a few, good selected works than a huge bibliography where only the specialist can find an interest in it. And the specialist doesn't needs to go to Wikipedia for information on his work. Another, more important problem, concerns the opinion style of the intro: although the article clearly speaks of an American subject, it tends to assume that the bewilderement of people before the phenomena of passing is limited to Americans. This is most contestable; any change of identity, race, gender, etc., will tend to surprise people not used to it. Furthermore, the article needs to be more explicit in that it is totally possible to have a child with a different amount of melanin in his skin without having engaged in "intermarriages." Maybe less insistence on what people think, and how things work, will be useful (although I know Wiki reports what people say, the point is not in reporting what "folk science" claims, except if a specific subsection or article is dedicated to the problem of "popular perception of passing" - which, one might argue, is exactly the point of this article.) Just some thoughts, which might be irrelevants... Tazmaniacs

A clear example: "Most Americans know that Black/White intermarriage has become more common since the Loving v. Virginia (1967) Supreme Court ruling that anti-intermarriage laws are unconstitutional." Is that really interesting? Can't it be condensed to something around the lines of: "The Loving v. Virginia 1967 Supreme Court ruling declared anti-intermarriage laws unconstitutional?" The reader will probably conclude by his own that "Most Americans know...", won't he? Tazmaniacs

Less than zero people?

This comes to 0.098 percent per year. Extrapolated to the Black census 2000 population of 36 million, this comes to about 35,000 individuals per year. But with the statistical margin of error, the true figure could be zero or less.

That last sentence seems very unlikely. Even without extrapolating to the entire population, the results on the subset alone indicate that at least 237 people (1.87% of the subset size) switched from "Black" to something else. If the "could be zero or less" claim was included in the source cited earlier in the section, it needs a bit more explanation to remove this apparent paradox. OTOH, if it's an editor's analysis of the source cited, that's original research and doesn't belong here. --Calair 13:34, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The whole thing is unlikely. The logical and statistical fallacy of this approach was exposed way back in the 1940s. Now it's in Wikipedia, and without a citation to a reliable source (Sweet's self-published pamphlets don't count).Verklempt (talk) 19:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Less than zero people passing from black to white would mean a net passing movement to being white, so it is possible. However, as Calair points out, it can't be zero if the study of just 12,000 odd had some; the mose extreme suggestion would be that they were the only ones, but that sounds a little crazy. I'd consider it logical that someone would be less likely to change the answer that they *would* give to a question about race if they *did* give an official answer only a year ago; there's a general tendency for people to try to be consistent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.230.169.225 (talk) 10:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

United States Bias

This article seems overly focused on the concept of black-to-white passing in the US. Although passing is an important phenomenon in American history, this article should be about the general concept, with just a subtopic on the specific US example.

Anywhere social heirarchy and ethnicity are tied together, racial passing could seem advantageous. What about mestizo/mestiço passing in Latin America? What about south Asia? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tysalpha (talk • contribs) 19:52, 11 May 2007 (UTC).

I think some of material on this page reads too subjectively. It should not be used to air individual opinions on race. I also recommend that this subject linked with the skin whitening page, internalized racism page, racial transformation page, Paper Bag Party page, the colorism page and the Black is beautiful movement page so the reader can easily understand the historical context of the term. Also, the concept of passing is remembered chiefly as an American phenomenon but can be expanded under other different types of peoples.71.129.109.237 22:02, 29 August 2007 (UTC)Genevieve

References

The first section of this article does cite some sources, but the majority of it reads like a high school essay. It really needs some citations and I agree it is too long. Shaz91 09:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Inappropriate content

The sections which refer to racially mixed people outside of the context of passing are inappropriate. BEING racially mixed is not passing. Passing is choosing to identify with only one of one's ancestral groups. These sections should be modified or deleted. Tmangray 16:34, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Angelitos Negros

From the article: "In the Mexican version, no such issue ever arises. No one in the film is "really Black" or "really White." They are all Mexicans of varying degrees of genetic admixture. The crisis comes when a predominantly European-looking couple has a predominantly African-looking child. Something like this happens about once out of every eight thousand births in Spain and with slightly higher frequency in Mexico."

I'm very skeptical about this African-looking throwback hypothesis. The darker features are always dominant genetically while the fairer are recessive. And, it takes the both halves of a gene to be recessive for a recessive (fair) trait to come up to the phenotype. So, if both mother and father have, say, blue eyes, it's impossible for them to have a brown eyed kid because the dominant gene for the brown eye is lost alredy; so how come two Mexicans who look white (supposed they both got some Indian or African but look South European) breed a very dark skinned kid when the dominant genes responsible for that are lost in both sides of the heritage? Doesn't make sense.

On the other hand, in which regards European-looking throwbacks, it's completely understandable why it happens because the recessive genes can survive aside the dominant ones over generations without showing up, unlike what happens otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.24.12.175 (talk) 00:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Removed ref tags??

This section was adapted from "Chapter 5. The Rate of Black-to-White 'Passing'" of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0-939479-23-0, which contains the detailed citations and references. A summary of this chapter, with endnotes, is also available online at The Rate of Black-to-White 'Passing'. An excellent collection of essays advocaan Journal of Human Genetics, 63 (1998); Frank W. Sweet, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule (Palm Coast FL: Backintyme, 2005), Chapter 2. "Afro-European Genetic Admixture in the United States."

This section was adapted from three different chapters of the book, Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule by Frank W. Sweet, ISBN 0-939479-23-0, which contains the detailed citations and references. They are "Chapter 15. The Invention of the One-Drop Rule in the 1830s North," "Chapter 16. Why Did Northerners Invent a One-Drop Rule?," and "Chapter 20. Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule." Summaries of these chapters, with endnotes, are available online at The Invention of the One-Drop Rule in the 1830s North, Why Did Northerners Invent a One-Drop Rule?, and Jim Crow Triumph of the One-Drop Rule, respectively.

I don't understand this edit. Why were these sources deleted? futurebird (talk) 05:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see WP:RS. Self-published pamphlets don't qualify as reliable sources. Also, it looks as if they were inserted as self-promotion by the pamphlets' author.Verklempt (talk) 07:16, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

If possible, this article could use a major rewrite. It's lesser traveled but a contentious topic, often an avenue of trouble on Wikipedia. A lot of the text in this article argues with itself. A good rewrite would really do a lot for it, but it will take someone committed but not terribly attached to the issue to really make it work I think --BHC (talk) 10:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Passing reprehensible?

"As mentioned above, Black-to-White passing is seen as reprehensible by most Americans today..." This and similar phrases occur several times in the article, always uncited. It's rather inflammatory, probably not true, and worse (from a Wiki standpoint) entirely unverified. I'd like some opinions on this, because really it needs to be chopped unless someone can find an objective and cited way to improve it. Vonspringer (talk) 02:54, 13 March 2008 (UTC)