Passin' - A Novel
by Karen E. Quinones Miller

"Lisa"

I first met "Lisa" when I was a reporter at The Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia in 1993. She was working at another media outlet, but we'd see each other at various parties and business functions. She always hung out with blacks, only dated black guys, lived in a black neighborhood, and sounded black, and hell . . . she even looked a little black . . . so like most people I just assumed she was. It wasn't until a year into our acquaintance that I found out otherwise. Lisa (not her real name) agreed to speak to me about her "racial ambiguity" as she called it, but asked not to be identified.

Most of the people I meet think I'm black. Well, at least most of the black people. And when white people see me around blacks they also think I'm black. I never bother to correct them, because to me a person's color doesn't matter, so I don't think mine should matter to other people. My mother was Italian and my father was Jewish, and I just naturally have a light olive complexion and dark brown curly hair, so I look like I could be a light-skinned African-American even though I have blue eyes. And I like hanging around black people more than whites because blacks are more uninhibited. And I think whites tend to be more judgmental than blacks. I don't like judgmental people.

I was raised in an integrated section of Cleveland. Well, actually there were mainly blacks in my neighborhood and a few whites, but I mainly played with the black kids for some reason. I don't know why. Growing up I never liked going out with white boys, all my boyfriends were black. That bothered some of the black girls in the neighborhood, so I started dating mostly outside the neighborhood.  That way no one was bothered. Did I tell my boyfriends I was white? No. None of them ever came out and asked me that. Most just assumed I was very light-skinned, though some did ask me if I were bi-racial. I learned to avoid answering the question directly because I never wanted to actually lie. I would just say, "I prefer not to discuss my ethnic background." Most left it at that. For those who pressed on I would say, "Yes, I came from a mixed-marriage, and my mother's is Italian." It wasn't a lie.

Later I went away to school. I went to Virginia, to Norfolk State University which is an HBCU (authors note: Historically Black College/University). The faculty and the other students just seemed to assume I was black so I left it like that.

The first job interview I went on after I graduated was at a newspaper in the South, and the recruiting officer was a middle-aged African-American man. I had worked at the school newspaper, so all of my clips had to do with African-American life or entertainment, and that, coupled with the fact that I attended an HBCU, must have convinced him I was black. He never asked me, and I never thought to tell him otherwise. I didn't go in there posing as a black, but I realized later that I wouldn't have gotten the job otherwise, because this was in the mid 1990s, and the newspaper was trying to hire more African-American reporters in order to help diversify the newsroom. I promise you I didn't realize that when I applied for the job, or when I first got the job, but I have to admit that once I did find out I didn't rush out to the editor and say, "Hey, you made a mistake. I'm white."

Besides, I felt right at home covering the "black" stories they sent me out on. The newsroom was mostly white with only a handful of black reporters who called themselves the "Black Pack." I naturally hung out with them.

It wasn't until I left the paper and moved to South Carolina and got into PR that I decided to get more in touch with my white roots. Why? Probably for a number of different reasons, but nothing in particular. In my mind I was never actually passing for black, I was living my life and having a good time with the people I wanted to have a good time with. By the time I moved to South Carolina I was a bit older, a bit more conservative, and a bit more introspective. I guess I was a bit more white.

I'm married now, to a white man, and I've never mentioned my past, or that there was a time that people thought I was black. He's not the type who would understand, so why get him bothered? What was done was done, and it's all over now so that's it. I have no regrets, though.

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