Passing: Melanin as Malady
Published by Nella Larsen in 1929, Passing immerses readers in interwar America, exploring a social fabric woven from tense race relations and rigid class hierarchies. Within a world regulated by social status based on an individual’s race, the novel emphasizes the allure of “passing”; the freedom to move between a white and Black identity unlocks doors barred by racist conventions and the inherent privileges of whiteness. By delving into the nuances between Irene and Clare, the novel’s main characters, Larsen portrays two women staunchly defined by their roles in society, governing the people they may speak to, the places they may go, and those they may look down upon. “Passing” is not just the ability to pass as white; “passing” is the ability to stand above—be better than—others. However, by applying Claire Jean Kim’s theory of “racial triangulation” to Passing, the novel breaks free from its racial binary. Rather than Black and white, references to Blackness as a disease and disability fulfill the third party used to emphasize how power and acceptance into American society are luxuries extracted from relative status rather than static advantages tied to identity.
Before exploring the dynamics between racialized individuals and disease, setting the foundation of this paper’s theoretical subversion requires a brief explanation of “racial triangulation.” Coined in her article “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Claire Jean Kim’s concept is a cornerstone of Asian American studies. By posing Black Americans, white Americans, and Asian Americans on three vertices of a theoretical triangle, Kim purports that the racial groups are assigned authority through their identities in relation to one another; society is fueled by a finite amount of power that is monopolized by the white majority with all other groups left to fight over the remaining scraps. With white Americans at the top of the social hierarchy, America’s white hegemony controls the oppression of Black and Asian Americans by placing them in conflict. The two races are measured in terms of “relative valorization” and “civic ostracism,” wherein Asian Americans are seen as culturally superior but perpetually foreign compared to Black Americans, and vice versa (Kim 107). By pitting minorities against one another, Kim’s theory argues that the white majority is empowered to maintain its superiority over both groups as Black and Asian Americans are caught in a binary struggle rather than united in protest against the white dominant party.
While Kim did not coin “racial triangulation” until 1999, Nella Larsen anticipates the terminology by mirroring similar power dynamics in her early 20th-century novel. By establishing the stratification between Black and white Americans, Passing draws a line of logic between two of the three involved groups—two of the three vertices of “racial triangulation.” As seen in Irene’s introduction to “passing” society—having tea with Clare and Gertrude—Blackness is understood as an inherited disease. When the women speak of having children, Gertrude exclaims she “nearly died of terror…for fear that [her daughter] might be born dark” (Larsen 38). As Clare and Gertrude feed off of one another’s internalized racism, they connect over an aversion to their heritage that “skips generations and then pops out…nobody wants a dark child” (Larsen 39). The uncensored distaste they hold for darker skin vilifies Blackness as though it were a disease, lying dormant beneath the surface of their skin and infecting their genealogy.
Thus, the women’s anxiety lies in the unpredictability of phenotypic expression; they refrain from having children and conspire about melanin marring their offspring, akin to ableist rhetoric surrounding children born with disabilities. In a study titled “‘This Lifetime Commitment’: Public Conceptions of Disability and Noninvasive Prenatal Genetic Screening,” authors surveying perceptions of prenatal screening and subsequent termination of pregnancy marked a common belief that “a child born with disabilities may be disadvantaged by biological differences…or by social reactions to or perceptions of their condition” (Steinbach et al. 365–366). In the mothers’ fears of birthing a child who exposes their Black ancestry, Steinbach’s surveys and Clare and Gertrude’s discomposure over darker skin appear parallel. There are social ramifications for both the mother and the child that mirror stigma towards disability, implying that disadvantage and lowered status are as inherent in Blackness as they are in harmful beliefs surrounding children born with health conditions. If either of the women were to have children who revealed their mothers’ deceptions, both mother and child would be rejected by the dominant society for phenotypic differences. In line with ableist sentiments, the women of Passing absorb the beliefs of white hegemony as they enable hate to marginalize their children before they are even born, prevented by the fear of Blackness as an infection—a hereditary disease.
With the dynamics established between Black and white racial groups, Americans affected by disease are posed as a third party in the contention for power, acting as a competing minority against Black Americans while implicitly perpetuating white authority. Later in the novel, after Clare and Gertrude gasp at Irene marrying a man with darker skin, Larsen illustrates a conversation between wife and husband, Irene and Brian. While speaking about Irene’s preparation for the Negro Welfare League (NWL) Dance, Brian interjects his wife’s grievances with complaints about his work as a physician: “‘Lord! How I hate sick people, and their stupid meddling families and smelly, dirty rooms, and climbing filthy steps in dark hallways” (Larsen 64). The language surrounding his patients is wracked with negative connotations, dehumanizing “sick people” and their families as mere objects of derision (Larsen 64).
Thereby, individuals affected by disease form the last vertex in Larsen’s experimentation with “racial triangulation.” Brian, the man whose dark skin color evokes horror from the racist Gertrude, holds a parallel aversion for his patients; disease becomes abhorrent like the tainting risk of a child being born Black. He defines his superiority through comparison with a population he has the supposed authority to attack, pointing his anger at individuals relying on his medical care and expertise rather than fighting against the system that detests him for his race. He does not erupt with anger when Irene mentions her event for the NWL, pointing out that Black individuals would not require advocacy if they were not systemically marginalized for their skin color. Rather, his energy is focused on rejecting the people he is supposed to care for, tearing them down with hateful descriptions that parallel America’s ostracism of Black Americans; it is within his license as Brian the physician—not Brian the Black man. To define himself, he looks down on the sick, not up at his white oppressors.
With the warring minorities struggling for a share of power in hierarchical America, perceptions of Blackness as a disease fester from the internalization of hate. Clare, Gertrude, and Brian speak of dark skin and maladies as two sides of the same coin—a coin tossed by Black hands. The women, afraid of birthing a child that reveals their Blackness, reject themselves in the same breath. Brian, uplifting his position on the basis of dehumanizing his patients, participates in hate to remedy the insecurity and self-loathing derived from his social status as a Black man. The revulsion behind the rejection of dark skin, of disease, erupts from a well of internalized racism. Each character denies their Blackness or qualifies it against other vulnerable populations because they subscribe to the hegemonic agenda. Melanin is their malady. Therefore, while Clare, Gertrude, and Brian approach being Black as the sickness infecting their lives, Larsen’s social commentary peeks through in her characters’ self-rejection. They are harbingers of their own demise as they become complicit to upholding the white hegemony, infected by internalized racism and weakened by self-loathing.
When compared to the discord between Blackness and disease, whiteness has been neglected in exploring the “triangulation” of power: the unspoken authority at the top of America’s racial hierarchy. In Clare choosing to pass, Larsen uses the character’s foray into whiteness to introduce the narrative’s personification of American hegemony: Jack Bellew, Clare’s white husband. As he enters the scene of three “white” women, his views are quick to surface, spewing contempt toward “black scrimy devils” only known to him by harmful stereotypes (Larsen 44). Thus, Jack—the grating, offensive white man—epitomizes the top of the social hierarchy, where Larsen uses his position to confirm the hate internalized by Passing’s Black characters. He performs as the metaphorical “patient zero” in thinking of Blackness as a disease with his “smile fad[ing] at once” upon learning Irene’s true racial identity (Larsen 120). Jack, openly expressing his loathing of darker skin, stands in as the voice of the American hierarchy, negotiating the collapse of a Black individual’s social power in one fell swoop of withdrawn acceptance—withdrawn whiteness. At that moment, Larsen simulates the work of “racial triangulation.” By revealing her Blackness to Jack, Irene falls in status, her worth measured by a white man that performs the function of America’s racial politics. While Jack does not directly teach Clare, Gertrude, Irene, nor Brian to fear their skin color, he stands in for the white majority that has done so, contaminating all parties with vitriol to uphold a system that runs off of the degradation of non-white parties and infecting them with the hate that feeds off of their self-rejection.
Thus, rather than the conversation posed between Asian, Black, and white Americans in Claire Jean Kim’s scholarship, Nella Larsen evaluates the intersectional positioning of Black and white Americans in conjunction with understandings of disease. To use the same terminology as Kim in her definition of “racial triangulation,” on a scale of inferior to superior, Black Americans in Larsen’s narrative rank higher than individuals who are sick. However, in terms of foreigner to insider, an individual who is sick, and not Black, retains their own power over the racial minority. Regardless if posed in terms of Asian American Studies or Larsen’s writing, the “others,” marked with differentiation from the hegemonic white demographic, will be pitted against one another—whether by skin color or conditions of health. They will be infected with America’s viral rhetoric that burdens non-white individuals with internalized bigotry. Without the motivation or clarity to dismantle racialized society, America’s minorities are in constant competition for the sliver of rights allocated to them by the white majority. Black Americans like Brian, oppressed by racist social structures, see themselves as above a sick patient. White Americans, and white-passing individuals, see Blackness as a disease itself. The differentiation between Black Americans and individuals facing sickness is for naught. In the eyes of white America, they will always be othered, disempowered, and infected by the internal rejection of their heterogeneity.
References
Kim, Claire Jean. “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans.” Politics & Society, vol. 27, no. 1, Mar. 1999, pp. 105–38. SAGE Journals, https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329299027001005.
Larsen, Nella. Passing. Signet Classics, 2021.
Steinbach, Rosemary J., et al. “‘This Lifetime Commitment’: Public Conceptions of Disability and Noninvasive Prenatal Genetic Screening.” American Journal of Medical Genetics. Part A, vol. 170A, no. 2, Feb. 2016, pp. 363–74. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.a.37459.