Synopsis

Based on a memoir of the same name, I Passed for White (1960) revolves around Bernice Lee (Sonya Wilde). Though she is mixed race and black-presenting, she is often mistaken for a white woman. This makes her life more complicated than the life of the average black woman. After many attempts to get work under the umbrella of her black identity, Bernice leaves Chicago for New York City, where she adopts a new, whitewashed identity as Lila Brownell.

Things go smoothly until life throws a spanner in the person of the tall, handsome, and effortlessly charming Mr. Rick Leyton (James Franciscus). After a whirlwind romance, Leyton proposes and love-struck Bernice accepts. However, what should have been the first step in their happily ever after turns into a nightmare, as Bernice realizes her real background could mess with things. And this is where the lying games begin.

Analysis

99.999%

That is how similar we (humans) all are according to the human genome project. 0.001% of the human genome accounts for all the differences (in eye, hair and skin color, body shape, height, intelligence, personality, etc.) that we see. Unfortunately, because of the in-group out-group bias, this 0.001% becomes our primary focus and the reason we aggregate in (similar) groups and fight and segregate against other groups.

To paraphrase a quote from Adichie, I Passed for White (1960) was funny in the way sad things are funny. It becomes even funnier when you realize the producers had to cast a white actress as a mixed-race character because they felt an interracial romance would upset many white audience members. Phenotypically, our protagonist Bernice Lee is white. She has fair skin, European features, and type 2 hair and is consistently mistaken for white by Caucasians. However, Bernice is biracial. While I won’t deny the privileges Bernice has, when juxtaposed against the background of racially sensitive 1960s America, her life is frustrating and complicated. One minute, a recruiter offers her a job and assures of success in her career. The next, the recruiter rescinds the employment when she realizes Bernice is, in fact, black. This push and pull is the template Bernice’s life follows.

Heads, she’s privileged.

Tails, she’s disadvantaged.

It is as if her lived experiences are subtly forcing her to answer an existential question: to be black or not to be black. So, it did not surprise me when she folded and shelved her black identity and tested out the fit of her ‘white identity.’ I was interested to see how long she could keep up the charade. The opposite sex has a very glorious way of spoiling the best-laid plans. So when Rick ‘I’ve-got-the-hots-for-you’ Leyton came into the picture, I knew the whole thing would blow up in her face sooner rather than later.

Being loved is a privilege, and it is a very human feeling to want that privilege extended to people you hold dear. Obviously, your partner may not like some of your family members, but it becomes tricky when they love you to bits but detest the entirety of your race. It is kind of hard to factor yourself out of that equation of hate. Mr. Leyton was a loving husband. But the swift change from murmuring sweet nothings to her, to punching and cussing out a black guy and referring to negroes as ‘those people’ must have been disorienting and confusing for Bernice.

I believe that love, true love, cannot be cultivated on falsehoods. So I couldn’t help wondering if it was possible for Mr. Leyton to really love her without knowing the full breadth of her identity. And no matter how well she hid them, like a jack in the box, those parts of her always made an appearance.

Bernice made valiant efforts and wove an intricate network of lies to maintain the fabric of her marriage. But one question plagued her: Would the baby be as ambiguous as she was or would (s)he be a truth-teller? Added to the psychological toll of her actions was the fact that Bernice was committing a crime. Back then, the United States frowned at miscegenation. So Bernice was guilty of a crime and was also making an unsuspecting white male a party to it.

For me, the movie would have been generic if Leyton did not mind — or actually loved — black people. However, the fact that he, just like many white people detested negroes, tautened the plot and set up the conflict really nicely. The fact that every member of the refined upper-class Leyton family liked her heightened the stakes.

Her husband notices her strange behavior and how she constantly deflects questions about her family. He notices how she dances a bit different from the ladies he is used to and how she ‘forgets’ herself and talks freely with ‘those people.’ While he thought nothing of it at first, as time goes on, it begins to worry him. Things took a turn for the worse when he discovered she was looking at miscegenation laws. The poor man conveniently believes his wife is being unfaithful — with a black man. After her miscarriage, Bernice is not concerned with the sex of the child. Through a haze of anesthesia, she asks: Is the baby black?

Though her husband finally puts two and two (or rather black and black) together, Bernice ends up leaving him and going back to her family.

While this movie addresses a lot a lot of racial themes, I think it can also be an analogy for life, a lesson on 1.) The duality of man and 2.) The need to stay true to your identity.

The Duality of Man

Human beings are neither black nor white but a mass of shifting greys, darkening and brightening with each situation. Despite this non-conforming and dual nature of humanity, we still see life in extremes. You are either good or bad, beautiful or ugly, black or white. There is no middle ground, no space for nuance, and definitely nothing like the best of both worlds. I like to think Bernice was neither black nor white. She was both. Just like racial laws back then compartmentalized people in neat boxes, in our personal lives and interactions, we box people up and summarize them into titles. Good, bad, annoying, fun, pretty, unattractive, and so on. But the truth is that a bad person is a good person to some people and vice versa. That boring person is the dictionary definition of fun to somebody and vice versa.

It might seem like I am reaching, but just like Bernice had two different worlds in her genes, human beings have the propensity to be good or bad. Sure, we might express one more than the other, but that doesn’t negate the existence of the other. The core of who we are is not found at the traits we express, but at the intersection of what we express and what we do not express.

Staying True to Your Identity

While human beings are a cocktail of sometimes paradoxical traits, we all have enduring aspects of our person. For Bernice, it was her black ancestry and family and her lived experience as a black/quadroon person. For you, it might be your continent, country, or state of origin, your values, or your likes and dislikes. And it always pays to stay true to those core aspects of your person. It is often tempting to want to change certain facets of yourself under the light of certain societal expectations and if Bernice’s case is anything to go by, it never ends well.

(Disclaimer: This is not me encouraging you to marinate in your faults. If those core aspects of yourself include faulty belief systems and harmful behaviors, then you need to work on them.)

Verdict

Though I Passed for White (1960) was based on real-life events, I still have to grade it using story/movie parameters. However, to put things in perspective, I will give the reason for each grade.

Strength of the Plot- 5.5: Though certain aspects of the plot like miscegenation laws and the disdain for people of color are airtight, it made little sense that the uppity Leyton family with their reverence for family and family backgrounds would let their only son marry someone without meeting their family.

If the wedding was a Vegas wedding, I wouldn’t have had a bone to pick with this. But seeing as it was a traditional carry-the-bride-across-the-threshold schtick, I have an entire skeleton to pick with the story writers. This part of the plot becomes especially flimsy when you add the fact that they were living in more traditional times than we are today. Second, I like to believe passing for white is not as simple as they made it seem. It is one thing to easily use the ‘Whites Only’ bathroom and yet another thing to build an entire career on racial falsehoods. Most identification documents have your racial antecedents plastered on them and sweet, dancing-makes-my-blood-sing Bernice doesn’t look like one to get fake IDs.

Plot Progression- 6.0: You cannot really build a solid house on a shaky foundation. As some aspects of the plot were already wafer-thin, the entire progression of the plot was affected. Bernice met Mr. Leyton 15 minutes into the movie and they were already talking about marriage by the 30th minute. Bernice is not a good liar. Her lies are so porous it is unbelievable that it took the Leytons 50 minutes of run time and a sham marriage to realize their daughter-in-law was hiding something.

Character Development- 9.0: This was one enduring and effective aspect of the movie. The flat characters (Mr. Leyton, his family, and Bernice’s family) did not shock us too much and the primary round character, Bernice, developed with the progression of the story. She went from being unhappy about being neither here nor there to actively cleaving to one identity, hoping things would look up for her. Finally, the movie ends with her re-accepting her mixed-race identity.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I Passed for White (1960) is a 6.8 and triggers discussion on the gray areas of race and the ethics of presenting as one race and passing for another to get benefits.

Originally published on Medium.

Do you love movie reviews? Then check out When the Lights Dim: Review of Gaslight (1944)