Mixed Race Studies

Feminism 101: What is White Passing Privilege?

FEM Magazine
University of California, Los Angeles
2017-12-16

Catherine Pham

Design by Jennifer Dodge

Racial passing is when someone’s features cause them to be mistaken for another racial or ethnic group. Depend on what race or ethnicity people pass as, they can experience different treatment which can be advantageous or detrimental. White passing privilege is the additional privilege some people of color (POC) are afforded when their features, such as skin color or hair texture, cause them to be mistaken as white. For instance, white passing Latinx people will most likely avoid being racially profiled, questioned about their citizenship or lack thereof, or doubted for their English-speaking skills or education status. Prominent actors of color like Rashida Jones, and Keanu Reeves tend to be white passing — because their white appearances allow them to get larger, more multidimensional roles rather than being typecast…

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Multiethnic Women

FEM: UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973
2015-12-04

Kali Croke

Out of all the things that compose an individual’s identity, one’s culture (defined by similarities in ideals, religion, language, habits, etc.) is perhaps the most significant. While we mostly understand the experiences of people of different singular cultures, oftentimes the experiences of individuals with more than one ethnicity are overlooked or unheard. I sat down with women of multiple ethnicities to better understand how their multiple cultures have shaped their lives, experiences and viewpoints on the world. Below are transcribed excerpts of these conversations…

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Colorism And Privilege: An Afro-Cuban American In Havana

FEM: UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973
2016-04-28

Graciela Barada

My father, born in Cuba at the end of Castro’s Revolution, migrated to the United States in 1980. He was a young, black, Spanish-speaking political refugee who left his wife and months-old daughter behind in hopes of building a better life for himself. A “Marielito,” my father braved the 115-mile stretch of the Caribbean sea to Florida under President Carter’s pardon of Cuban refugees. My mother is a white Spaniard who moved to Washington, D.C. in 1989 for graduate school at Georgetown University. An unlikely couple, my parents met at my father’s Cuban nightclub, a hub for Latino culture, music, and dance. Although my siblings and I were born and raised in the U.S., we have been fortunate enough to travel to our parents’ birth countries in order to familiarize ourselves with their respective cultures…

..In Cuba, the Communist Revolution is often portrayed as the “great equalizer,” not just economically but also in respect to race relations. In many ways, this has been true: people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds have access to education, jobs, transportation, healthcare, and other social services. Regardless, there are traces of racial hierarchy and a colonialist mentality which are deeply entrenched in Cuban society. As far as I know, all of my Cuban relatives are black. The majority of them are dark-skinned; when asked, two of my male cousins expressed that they do not feel hated because of their African ancestry and darker pigmentation. Still, they are well-aware that their roles within society are informed by Cuba’s history of racial hierarchy and discrimination…

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Gendered (Mixed) Race

FEM: UCLA’s Feminist Newsmagazine Since 1973
2016-05-26

Laura Jue

“You’re so exotic.”

That’s a phrase that many mixed race people like me have heard at least a few times in their lives. That sentiment is usually accompanied by other similarly dehumanizing compliments such as “mixed people are so beautiful,” “mixed babies are so cute,” or citing some article from National Geographic about how mixed people are the people of the future.

When conversations about multiraciality come up, a common theme is how it is exoticized by comments like those, in a similar way to how people of color in general are exoticized.

But there is another aspect of these microaggressions that is not brought up as often: assumptions of gender…

Read the entire article here.