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Aldwin Aguilar asked this question about The Great Gatsby:
My teacher keeps on insisting that Jay Gatsby is black. Is he?
Cherrae People in these comments are thinking of blackness in modern terms. Nobody is saying he was Samuel L. Jackson Black, or even Barak Obama Black, but co…morePeople in these comments are thinking of blackness in modern terms. Nobody is saying he was Samuel L. Jackson Black, or even Barak Obama Black, but could he have been Wentworth Miller or Rebecca Hall or Pete Wentz black? Maybe. Back then you couldn't be White with some mixed ancestry. If you had ONE DROP of black blood, you were Black. Period. There are plenty of books written about the concept of PASSING for white, Mark Twain's Puddin Head Wilson, Fanny Hurst's Imitation of Life, Even Eliza In Uncle Tom's Cabin was very nearly white. I can't believe that Fitzgerald would bring up race and miscegenation and eugenics so much in Gatsby for no reason. Gatsby and possibly Jordan are Passing for Nordic White. Is Gatsby black? Maybe, (with deeply tanned skin and hair he cuts every day) but he could also be Jewish, or Mediterranean, or some other that would feel the need to hide his heritage in order to Pass for the ideal at the time version of Whiteness. (less)
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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