Passing In Society

Does society play a role into feeling unaccepted in today’s culture? Many would say that our country as a whole has gotten better at accepting those who are different than the “normal”, but if this were the case then why do people feel pressured to pass? In the book, Passing When People Can’t Be Who They Are, Brooke Kroeger explained passing as, “Passing involves erasing details or certain aspects of a given life in order to move past perceived, suspected, or actual barriers to achieve desired ends.” (8) As you can see passing means to act as something you believe yourself not to be, like putting on a front. Reasons as to why someone of color would want to pass as a different race, could be issues like; society, white privilege, and safety. …show more content…
Is it society or the individual to blame for passing? When talking about racial passing it is society to blame. Now you may be thinking that this is all wrong and it is the individual who is solely responsible for their actions, but it is in fact society to blame.
Society has put a lot of pressure on people, making them feel like they don’t belong. Society is guilty for constantly making people feel like they’re not “good” enough. Which then leads into people feeling like they need to put on a front and pass as something they’re not. It’s ridiculous that society has made these “standards” that make people feel less worthy. In a video called “The Doll Test”, a study was done that asked elementary aged children different questions about a white and black baby doll. Some of the questions were, “Which doll is pretty? Which doll is nice? Which doll is ugly? Which doll is bad? Which doll looks like you?” All of the kids answering the …show more content…
Unfortunately, caucasians seem to have more opportunities than all people of color. Many businesses and corporations are racist and aren’t always fair when it comes to hiring employees. In the book Nickel and Dimed the main character Barbara Ehrenreich, who is also the author, goes out and tries to work a low wage job to see if people can survive off of minimum wage. Ehrenreich is a white middle aged woman, and in the book she notices that a lot of the low wage employees are other races than white. In these low wage jobs, Ehrenreich wasn’t used to being treated with such disrespect and was shocked by the way she was talked to and treated. Ehrenreich said, “Maybe, it occurs to me, I’m getting a tiny glimpse of what it would be like to be black.” In other words Ehrenreich is noticing that black people are treated with so much disrespect. Also, this tells me that it seems to be people of color having to work the “undesirable” jobs and are treated like garbage in the process, maybe this is due to businesses wanting to only hire white people. Society has made people of color look “undesirable” and because of it businesses aren’t always as likely to hire them. Don’t get me wrong this isn’t true for all businesses but unfortunately this has been the case way too often. In the movie “Imitation of Life”, Sarah Jane passed as white several times so she could work the job she wanted to. It’s pretty bad that