The Los Angeles Times reviews One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life -- A Story of Race And Family Secrets, which is Bliss Broyard's inquiry into the life of her late father, leading literary critic Anatole Broyard (pictured) who hid the family's black ancestry and passed himself off as pure white. "Broyard's 'One Drop' is an examination of one of the most dramatic crossovers of the last 50 years, her father, New York Times literary critic Anatole Broyard. His daughter is determined to know more than just the facts of his life (she didn't learn of his secret until after his death in 1990): She wants to know the particulars of racial oppression, how it fueled the whole phenomenon of crossing over, and how that affected her own family. Why and when did Anatole Broyard do it? How tragic -- or successful -- a mulatto was he? Why did he keep up the whiteface as times changed? And, most critically, what effect does this knowledge of his identity have on her, a white, WASPy girl from Connecticut who, prior to embarking on this project 16 years ago, had almost no experience with black people of any complexion?"
The review continues: "Role-playing is the central theme of 'One Drop,' and whether Anatole was faking it or rightfully claiming his place in a world of artificial boundaries that left him no choice but to fake it is a central question.....As a young woman, she remarks to her dad over breakfast one morning that an admiring black man at a dance club had asked her if she were black. She laughs, although Anatole raises his brow. 'What could he have been thinking in those moments?' Bliss writes with more than a little bitterness. 'Did he worry that someday one of us might be found out?' I wish there were more visceral moments like this, but Broyard defers to the ponderous politesse that tends to wrap most discussions of race in a kind of cocoon."
And more: "In the end, she retreats into the neo-liberal view that color doesn't matter, that it's a social and scientific fiction. But that is, of course, the ultimate white privilege -- the freedom to decide, after careful consideration, that color doesn't matter to you. Blacks have no such freedom to choose. Even Creoles like Anatole knew they had to purge themselves of their blackness to some degree to even aspire to such consideration. The tragedy of Anatole was that he was never the same as his white peers, not because he was less able, but because he paid too heavy a price for his neutrality, a neutrality they got every day for free. Bliss Broyard has expanded the 'tragic mulatto' story, but the moral is still the same."
My response: I don't begrudge Anatole Broyard for passing for lily-white back in the day (although I question how fellow whites could have possibly thought he was pure white - as being considered white in America back then meant being lily-white and not being mostly white but with about 20% black ancestry - because Anatole Broyard was obviously of mixed racial ancestry). Almost half of my 86-year-old grandmother's cousins passed for white back in the day, one of whom is still alive. Cousin Charlie passed for Italian to get a better job. However, why Anatole Broyard was despicable and why it was good for black historian Henry Louis Gates to out the deceased writer in 1997 in order to set the historical record straight was because (1) Anatole Broyard cut off ties to his family, including his siblings, parents, and abandoning his black first wife and their daughter; (2) completely hid his black ancestry because he was a self-hater; and (3) even made derogatory comments about black folks and was not supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. It is one thing to claim that you are white if you are genetically mostly of European ancestry and question how whiteness is defined in America. Fine. It is another thing to try to completely excise your African ancestry as if it didn't exist and dog equal rights for black folks, which reinforces white supremacy. At least my Cousin Charlie did not cut off family ties (he was even married to a dark-skinned black woman so he was a part-time passer; luckily back in those days co-workers didn't visit your house). In fact, Cousin Charlie told me that sometime in the 1960s, his white boss came into the office saying "we gotta hire some n___s, the law says we gotta hire some n____s, do any of you know some n____s we can hire?" Cousin Charles then outed himself, responding, "I am your n___r, sir", to which the workplace was astounded to find out that he had been passing for white all that time.
'One Drop' By Bliss Broyard
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As the book "One Drop" states repeatedly, Anatole did not lie even once about being racially mixed to anyone who directly asked the question. He might answer and he might avoid answering, but he did not lie. And it was out in the open with his friends and girlfriends. To acquaintances or people who would be prejudiced (such as some WASPs), he wouldn't bring the subject up. Also, he was ironical. So you sometimes had to read between the lines--pick up the clues. On the other hand, he did not tell his children. To protect your children from choices before they are old enough to make the choices without undue outer influence is a parental instinct. He may have been right or wrong to exercise it here. As for breaking ties with his cousins, I wonder how many people keep ties with cousins who live in states hundreds or a thousand miles away. He did not give up his heritage either. He would go down into Harlem, taking others to a nightclub, as you can read about in Kafka Was the Rage (by him). Anyone can read between the lines. Or he would listen to James Brown, jazz and music in the "black" side of his heritage. Also, without DNA results, it was not clear whether you had "one drop" of nonwhite blood or a much larger percentage. His father had to sign his race as white to get into a carpenter union, thus to support his family. But I knew Anatole and I was told from the first moment of meeting him his race situation. I was told it by Milton Klonsky, who introduced us. Anatole tried to transcend race, just as he wished to transcend fame and, as he told me 6 months before he died, that everyone "talk to him as an equal." The Anatole I knew was not obsessed by race and he certainly did not have a coverup. He did, as mentioned, insist on concealing this fact from his children (but not his wife). He did not hide it from a workman, with whom he joked. Or anyone in Greenwich Village. For a Depression child, who grew up at times very very poor, it is pretty phenomenal that he rose to his status. Wrapping him in a focus that is purely about race really camuouflages what kind of personality and values he had, and what kind of energy when he entered the room. And, again, I knew, and was never told not to mention it, that Anatole was Creole or mulatto. And no one said don't repeat it. No one said to keep it quiet or hush it up. There were large numbers of people in that position. Margaret A. Harrell (Margaret)
Anatole Broyard's first wife Alia identifed fully as White and identified his parent's which she knew as White. So the whole claim that he abandoned his Black wife is false.
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