I think the reason passing took on a different meaning on the page than it did in lived experience is because passing challenged the biological essentialism at the core of newly developing race theory of the late nineteenth century. For whites actively working to segregate public and private life throughout the United States, passing was an active threat. The moral basis of white support for segregation and racial terrorism was the “fact” that humans belonged to separate races, with inherent, immutable traits that directly aligned with moral aptitude and capabilities. So what was a segregated
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I think this is also why gender nonconformity, queerness, transness similarly see such an obsession. What is a structure such as patriarchy dependent on gender essentialism to do with people who slip its bounds?
