From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: PASSING by Langston Hughes
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 04:49:34 GMT

From time to time, when I have a few minutes, I read a
little bit from whichever book I presently have in my
backpack.  Today's book is THE WAYS OF WHITE FOLKS, a
Langston Hughes collection.  I don't know anything about
Langston Hughes; the book was cheap and he is one of the
people I've wanted to read for a while.  I hope this is a
representative selection of his work.  Most notably, I find
the story PASSING, which I expect Sargon and Melmac and
their chums to scoff away with great noise and thunder and
then think about cold-sweatedly from the dark recesses of
their bed in the wee hours of the morning.

			       PASSING
			   Langston Hughes

                                                  Chicago,
                                          Sunday, Oct. 10.

Dear Ma,

    I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and
not speaking to you.  You were great, though.  Didn't give
me a sign that you even knew me, let alone I was your son.
If I hadn't had the girl with me, Ma, we might have talked.
I'm not as scared as I used to be about somebody taking me
for colored any more just because I'm seen talking on the
street to a Negro.  I guess in looks I'm sort of
suspect-proof, anyway.  You remember what a hard time I used
to have in school trying to convince teachers I was really
colored.  Sometimes, even after they met you, my mother,
they wouldn't believe it.  They just thought I had a mulatto
mammy, I guess.  Since I've begun to pass for white, nobody
has ever doubted that I am a white man.  Where I work, the
boss is a Southerner and is always cussing out Negroes in my
presence, not dreaming I'm one.  It is to laugh!

    Funny thing, though, Ma, how some white people certainly
don't like colored people, do they?  (If they did, then I
wouldn't have to be passing to keep my good job.)  They go
out of their way sometimes to say bad things about colored
folks, putting it out that all of us are thieves and liars,
or else diseased -- consumption and syphilis, and the like.
No wonder it's hard for a black man to get a good job with
the kind of false propaganda going around.  I never knew
they made a practice of saying such terrible things about us
until I started passing and heard their conversations and
lived their life.

    But I don't mind being "white", Ma, and it was mighty
generous of you to urge me to go ahead and make use of my
light skin and good hair.  It got me this job, Ma, where I
still get $65 a week in spite of the depression.  And I'm in
line for promotion to the chief office secretary, if Mr.
Weeks goes to Washington.  When I look at the colored boy
porter who sweeps out the office, I think that's what I
might be doing if I wasn't light-skinned enough to get by.
No matter how smart that boy'd get to be, they wouldn't hire
him for a clerk in the office, not if they knew it.  Only
for a porter.  That's why I sometimes get a kick out of
putting something over on the boss, who never dreams he's
got a colored secretary.

    But, Ma, I felt mighty bad about last night.  The first
time we'd met in public that way.  That's the kind of thing
that makes passing hard, having to deny your own family when
you see them.  Of course, I know you and I both realize it
is all for the best, but anyhow it's terrible.  I love you,
Ma, and hate to do it, even if you say you don't mind.

    But what did you think of the girl with me, Ma?  She's
the kid I'm going to marry.  Pretty good-looking, isn't she?
Nice disposition.  The parents are well fixed.  Her folks
are German-Americans and don't have much prejudice about
them, either.  I took her to see a colored revue last week
and she thought it was great.  She said, "Darkies are so
graceful and gay."  I wonder what she would have said if I'd
told her *I* was colored, or half-colored -- that my old man
was white, but you weren't?  But I guess I won't go into
that.  Since I've made up my mind to live in the white
world, and have found my place in it (a good place), why
think about race any more?  I'm glad I don't have to, I know
that much.

    I hope Charlie and Gladys don't feel bad about me.  It's
funny I was the only one of the kids light enough to pass.
Charlie's darker than you, even, Ma.  I know he sort of
resented it in school when the teachers used to take me for
white, before they knew we were brothers.  I used to feel
bad about it, too, then.  But now I'm glad you backed me up,
and told me to go ahead and get all I could out of life.
That's what I'm going to do, Ma.  I'm going to marry white
and live white, and if any of my kids are born dark I'll
swear they aren't mine.  I won't get caught in the mire of
color again.  Not me.  I'm free, Ma, free!

    I'd be glad, though, if I could get away from Chicago,
transferred to the New York office, or the San Francisco
branch of the firm -- somewhere where what happened last
night couldn't ever occur again.  It was awful passing *you*
and not speaking.  And if Gladys or Charlie were to meet me
in the street, they might not be as tactful as you were --
because they don't seem to be very happy about my passing
for white.  I don't see why, though.  I'm not hurting them
any, and I send you money every week, and help out just as
much as they do, if not more.  Tell them not to queer me,
Ma, if they should ever run into me and the girl friend any
place.  Maybe it would have been better if you and they had
stayed in Cincinnati and I'd come away alone when we decided
to move after the old man died.  Or at least we should have
gone to different towns, shouldn't we?

   Gee, Ma, when I think of how papa left everything to his
white family, and you couldn't legally do anything for us
kids, my blood boils.  You wouldn't have a chance in a
Kentucky court, I know, but maybe if you'd tried anyway, his
white children would have paid you something to shut up.
Maybe they wouldn't want it known in the papers that they
had colored brothers.  But you was too proud, wasn't you,
Ma?  I wouldn't have been so proud.

   Well, he did buy you a house and send all us kids through
school.  I'm glad I finished college in Pittsburgh before he
died.  It was too bad about Charlie and Glad having to drop
out, but I hope Charlie gets something better to do than
working in a garage.  And from what you told me in your last
letter about Gladys, I don't blame you for being worried
about her -- wanting to go in the chorus of one of those
South Side cabarets.  Lord!  But I know it's really tough
for girls to get any kind of a job during this depression,
especially for colored girls, even if Gladys is high yellow,
and smart.  But I hope you can keep her home, and out of
those South Side dumps.  They're no place for a good girl.

    Well, Ma, I will close because I promised to take my
weakness to the movies this evening.  Isn't she sweet to
look at, all blonde and blue-eyed?  We're making plans about
our house when we get married.  We're going to take a little
apartment on the North Side, in a good neighborhood, out on
one of those nice quiet side streets where there are trees.
I will take a box at the Post Office for your mail.  Anyhow,
I'm glad there's nothing to stop letters from crossing the
color-line.  Even if we can't meet often, we can write,
can't we, Ma?

                                   With love from your son,
                                                 Jack.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
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