Passing 
by 

Nella Larsen

 

Our Most Common Prejudice

This novel is an extended example of a figure of speech called synecdoche in which a part is used to reference the whole. What makes it unusual, and highly creative, is that the part that Larsen uses is the gross and glaring fact of racial prejudice. The whole is a much more subtle and barely expressible prejudice that most of us find instinctive - prejudiced rejection of the purposes of others.

The storyline appears straightforward. Because she is light-skinned, Clare, Irene’s childhood friend, has been able to pass as the white wife of a high-flying international executive. He knows nothing of this deception and is in fact an avid racist, possessing all the most crude attributes of the breed. Irene is understandably shocked when she encounters Clare en famille, as it were. She judges Clare for her ambition, which had led her, she believes, to such idiocy.

That a person should attach herself knowingly to another who is inherently and openly hateful to what she really is, would be classed as a psychological illness. But such a diagnosis ignores the underlying motive entirely. Irene dismisses Clare’s intention as one of greed, of trading her racial identity for a lifestyle in the white cultural world. But this is merely a prejudiced presumption. She had not discussed the matter with Clare. And even if she had it is possible that Clare had never adequately articulated her motives, even to herself.

So has Clare made an error or has Irene misunderstood her objective? Ultimately one is forced to either impose an intention on Clare or attempt to understand that intention from Clare’s point of view. The latter course can be characterized as one of respect. The former course, that is the summary rejection of the purpose of another, much less its frustration, is a prejudice as profound as that directed toward race. But it doesn’t appear so, largely because it is a rejection justified as ‘moral’, that is, in terms of some abstract general principle. This is Irene’s initial reaction.

Respect is neither general nor abstract but always particular and concrete. It refers not to a moral code but to the specific existential circumstances of another. Respect means recognizing the intention of another as justified, that is, as grounded in the unique experience of that person. In fact, this is a good functional definition of a person, namely an entity which has a unique individual purpose. 

Almost simultaneously with her encounter with Clare, Irene discovers this intentional prejudice in the reaction of her husband to her own concern about her son’s education. Her husband considers her irrational and simply dismisses her concerns about the course of his schooling. His lack of respect for her intention - the welfare of the child - is obvious in the vacuous shibboleth he throws at her. This hurts Irene; but it also opens her to the possibility that she has been equally disrespectful to her childhood friend. 

This is the pivotal point of the story. Irene is on the verge of recognizing her own prejudice against her husband: “It was only that she wanted him to be happy, resenting, however, his inability to be so with things as they were, and never acknowledging that though she did want him to be happy, it was only in her own way and by some plan of hers for him that she truly desired him to be so.” Whatever her husband’s judgment of her, she is guilty of a similar judgment of him, and possibly of Clare.

The moral philosophy implicit in Larsen’s fiction is profound. What Irene discovers is that there is no morality which attaches to purpose. Purposes, intentions, commitments, ambitions may be shared or not, attractive or not, attainable or not, but they cannot be judged as reasonable, correct, or ethical. Only the actions undertaken to pursue purpose have moral content. Actions not thoughts are what affect others. It is actions we have control over not the experiences we have. It is from these experiences that we ‘extract’ objectives, either to avoid the things we have learned to fear, or to obtain things we may have been denied.

So Clare’s commitment to herself to have a life free from the burdens of racial prejudice must be respected. This is quite different from approving of her actions in marrying a white racist. This action is not only irrational, it is wrong for Clare. But it’s purpose is not. Ends are simply ‘there’, possibly to be discussed, modified, compromised, or even abandoned, but never to be disrespected or rejected in principle. Means have values which can be disputed, and Clare does dispute them. But ends do not.

Larsen’s point, or at least my interpretation of it, may be controversial but part of its profoundness lies in its controversiality. What she has to say is not some obvious truism like ‘racial prejudice is horrible and some people react to it in strange ways.’ Her book is a literary exploration of an extremely nuanced view in which behavior is the focus of moral judgment; and within which respect for the purpose of others is a central tenet, even when, no especially when, that purpose is unstated. 

This is not a worked out philosophy, but it is a valuable suggestion for a different way of understanding life’s responsibilities. It is a suggestion that puts racial prejudice in a larger and more general context while pointing to its real evil - the denial of the capacity for purpose to another human being. That it is a suggestion made in 1929 at a high point of racial atrocities in the United States, makes it even more remarkable.

Postscript 28Mar19: As If to make my point, I received a GR friend request with a comment, apparently provoked by this review, that I “sound like an apologetic white person.” It’s not clear if the remark was meant as a compliment of a slur. But it does demonstrate some instinctive reaction that human beings have to assign and judge motives with about as much care and attention as tying a shoelace.