A Chosen Exile

Description:

Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community. It was, as Allyson Hobbs writes, a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and the leap into another. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one's own. Hobbs explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It is also a tale of grief, loneliness, and isolation that often accompanied the rewards. - Publisher.

subjects: Passing (Identity),  Race identity,  Race relations,  Racially mixed people,  African Americans,  Exiles,  History,  African americans, race identity,  Passing (identity),  United states, race relations,  New York Times reviewed,  African americans, history,  United states, ethnic relations,  SOCIAL SCIENCE,  Discrimination & Race Relations,  Minority Studies,  HISTORY,  Ethnische Identität,  Entfremdung,  Identitätspolitik,  Noirs américains,  Identité collective,  Histoire,  Métis,  Relations interethniques,  Afro-amerikaner