Kiyan's reflection post

My favorite post was from Ellen Craft to the white male persona she embodied when her and William escaped to slavery. I wanted to explore the performative nature of race and gender, their intersection, and how this act of "passing" subverted the foundation of racial and gender identity.

The themes that interested me the most were passing and intersectionality. Passing complicates the construction of race, since it debunks myths about a biological basis for race, but show how race is informed by behavior and cultural artifacts. The idea of intersectionality interests me because various identities informed eachother. I was particularly fascinated by the conflation of race, gender, and class. For example, in the picture we saw in class of the racially ambiguous black family from New England many people believed them to be white because of artifacts that showed their elevated class status. Privilege and wealth is associated with whiteness, as we learned.

A question I have is how the "DL identity", a gay or bisexual male passing for heterosexual, complicates and affects black masculinity, and what is reveals about "Black men" as a constructed identity.