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I just realized what my issue with the character Mary is. She thinks of herself as passing because her family has been passing. Her grandfather is half black and presumably has a child with a white woman, producing Mary’s mom. Momma has a child by a white man, producing Mary. My question is when is it no longer passing? The point of passing is to look white. But, at what point do the characters in the story say she’s actually white? Maybe, they don’t because context is everything: MS Delta in the 1930s, Jim Crow, one drop rule. Maybe, those characters never see her as white and only as a black girl passing.
But something about her passing narrative didn’t ring believable to me, especially if Preacher Boy (who’s Black and from her hometown) had to ask about it. Two generations removed from a mixed (mixed!) granddaddy, and you still saying you passing? Nope. I don’t buy it. Also, the number one rule of passing as white (ask Ramon, he wrote the book) is to stay away from your hometown and home race because they know the truth about you and can foil your performance. They can see through the facade. Were Black audience members supposed to see through it, too, because all I saw was a white woman?
Something different was happening with Mary and the idea of passing in the film. In fact, the film is showing us that passing is less about her full-fledge access to white spaces and more about gaining and maintaining entry into Black spaces. It’s giving…Rachel Dolezal.
I wouldn’t be as bothered if they’d left the passing narrative out. But how else do you explain a white girl being family with all of these Black folks? Ugh. It’s complicated. Did Coogler do it on purpose as another social critique? After all, it’s the “passing” girl with the social currency of whiteness who was turned first and turned somebody inside the juke first.
I’m still thinking on it though.
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