Passing as white

Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of one racial group is also accepted as a member of a different racial group. The term was used especially in the United States to describe a person of color or multiracial ancestry assimilating into the white majority during times when legal and social conventions of hypodescent classified the person as a minority, subject to racial segregation and discrimination.

In 1857, fifteen-year-old runaway slave Jane Morrison, blonde and blue-eyed, went to court Louisiana to win her freedom in the case Morrison v. White. Instances such as late 19th-century Jim Crow state laws establishing segregation in public facilities, and early 20th-century state laws establishing the "one-drop rule" for racial classification (as in Virginia in 1924) were examples of European Americans attempting to impose regulations of hypodescent. Then, someone who identified by appearance and majority ancestry might be described as "passing" for Caucasian. In Louisiana, people of color who passed as white were referred to as passe blanc.

The US civil rights leader Walter Francis White (who was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and very fair) was of mixed-race background, mostly European ancestry, as 27 of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents were white; the other five were classified as black and had been slaves. He grew up with his parents and family in Atlanta in the black community and identified with it. He served as the chief executive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1929 until his death in 1955. In the earlier stages of his career, he conducted investigations in the South, during which he sometimes passed as white to gather information more freely on lynchings and hate crimes, and to protect himself in socially hostile environments.

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