White-to-Black Passing in American Culture.

Long Time Passing

By AMY FINNERTY

NEAR BLACK

White-to-Black Passing in American Culture.

By Baz Dreisinger

184 pp. University of Massachusetts Press. Paper, $24.95

How black is Eminem? How white is our president? We can’t help asking these awkward questions as we digest “Near Black,” by Baz Drei­singer. A freelance journalist and an assistant professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, she explores cases of “reverse racial passing” — as distinct from the more conventional, black-as-white “passing,” for so long a feature of our tortured society. Presenting “narratives about white people who either envision themselves or are envisioned by others as being or becoming black,” and drawing on examples ranging from Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” to the sophomoric genre film “Soul Man,” she argues that the appropriation of black identity by whites — both literally and metaphorically — has been a potent strain in American culture for centuries. READ MORE...[NYT]