BLACKSHIRT, BLACKFACE

A fascinating article about Lawrence Dennis, a driving force in America's home-grown fascist movement, who was, in reality, the son of a black woman:

"As a boy he was a famous child preacher, spreading the gospel first among black American congregations and then later abroad, even in Britain. But at some point in his adolescence, he did something quite dramatic: he cut all ties with his family so that he could attend the prestigious school of Exeter, and then Harvard, as a white man. After that he briefly pursued a career as a diplomat and broker, and then in the wake of the Wall Street Crash went on to become the public face of American fascism."

Echoes of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, no? "Passing" is one of those subjects that is, even now,  little understood. One reason why the film adaptation of Roth's novel bombed was that critics and audiences alike thought the idea of Anthony Hopkins playing a black man was absurd. But that, really, was the whole point of the story. I thought Hopkins gave an excellent performance, as a matter of fact. The Nicole Kidman character was much harder to take, but then that's also true of the lover in the book.

So much has changed since the days of the colour line that it's almost impossible to conceive how it affected even the closest family relationships. Here's a reminder from a Times piece that I wrote prior to The Human Stain's release:

The Washington Post columnist Donna Britt recently described how, after taking her septuagenarian mother to see The Human Stain, she was appalled by her reaction: "If I’d had a child back then who could have passed and wanted to, I’d let him go. We’d just have to meet secretly every year." 

A thought worth remembering next time you see Barack Obama's face on your TV screen.

Comments

[Recusant]

Just because Gary Younge calls him a fascist doesn't mean that he was: in fact it frequently pays, when reading Younge's work, to assume the opposite of what he asserts, cf(as well)Lee Jasper.

As to Dennis, he was clearly an extraordinary man and one would be foolish to attempt to attach such a one size fits all label to him. He would not have seen himself as a member of the right or the left, but definitely as a rebel against the establishment and the consensus: a much more intelligent, imaginative and creative Jose Bove if you will.

[POMMI]

Awhile back I happened upon a fascinating book on the passing phenomenon: Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are, by Brooke Kroeger:

http://tinyurl.com/3ay4v3

It's an easy, journalistic read.

[dearieme]

Here's how my father taught me about it. He took me to watch South of Scotland vs The Springboks back in the early 60s. He made sure we arrived early so that we could go and see The Boks get out of their coach. Against a background of white people and grey sky, many of the Boks were obviously of mixed race. (Quite unlike cinema film of South Africa, where the sky would be bright and the comparison would be with black people.) When the teams came out I looked in my programme and noticed that it was the Boks with the Boer names who were mixed race - the men with the British names were white. On the way back from the match, we discussed both the rugby and the hypocrisy of the race classification scheme in South Africa and the Boers who had introduced it. Subtle old boy, eh?

[Clive]

POMMI,
Thanks. That's the book I mention in my article.