A Cartography of Passing in Every Day Life

Symbolic Interaction

, Vol. 27, Issue 4, pp. 485–506, ISSN 0195-6086, electronic ISSN 1533-8665. © 2004 by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. All rights reserved. Please direct all re-quests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of CaliforniaPress’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.

Direct all correpondence to Daniel G. Renfrow, Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Box353340, Seattle, WA 98195-3340;

e-mail

: [email protected].

A Cartography of Passing in Everyday Life

Daniel G. Renfrow

University of Washington

This analysis of student narratives explores various forms of passingencounters whereby individuals are not who they claim to be. I distinguishbetween (a) passing along highly stigmatized identities and everyday pass-ing across less threatening ones; and (b) proactive passing, which individu-als initiate, and reactive passing, in which individuals embrace an identityothers have mistakenly assigned to them. These strategies are complex pro-cesses whereby individuals interactively negotiate definitions of the situa-tion and sometimes give idealized performances. They underscore throughcontrast the sense of an authentic identity that enhances the stability ofself. Although theorists claim that passing is inconsequential for the individ-ual, the narratives in this study suggest that masking a central identity canbe emotionally costly.

I noticed several of the white people glancing at me and then after the secondlook, they looked off. I had had my hair freshly done, and when it is fresh it looksdark brown and wavy, and I did look decent because I was wearing my best. . . .The conductor came up and after removing his hat and apologetically clearinghis throat said, “I know this is highly irregular, miss, but—uh—pardon me—mayI ask what nationality you are? Uh—are you Jewish?” I could have kissed theconductor for giving me the lead. (Drake and Cayton 1945:161)

Last year, I was chatting on the computer and I met a girl whose age was twenty-three. At that time I was only twenty years old. After she told me that shedoesn’t want to meet a guy who is younger than her, my only option was to lieabout my age. I told her I was twenty-three because that was the only way Icould see her face. (Solomon, university student)

The accounts above illustrate that appearances can be deceiving. In the first, an Af-rican American woman confronts deeply ensconced racial boundaries while travel-ing south of the Mason-Dixon line in the early 1900s; in the second, a contemporaryuniversity student recounts his solution to a problematic on-line interaction. Eachaccount provides an example of passing, or cultural performances in which individ-uals perceived to have a somewhat threatening identity present themselves or are

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categorized by others as persons they are not (Goffman 1963; Renfrow 2004).Each of these transgressed identities carries social meaning rooted in a unique so-ciohistorical-political milieu. Juxtaposed to one another, these accounts suggestthat while passing continues to be an important type of identity negotiation, theforms it takes may differ from previous conceptions. This observation raises ques-tions about whether traditional views are broad enough to capture contemporaryidentity negotiations.

Goffman’s (1963) notes on information management remain the most influentialreflections on passing. Yet these reflections primarily examine passing across specificsocial boundaries—mostly stigmatized racial, gender, or sexual transgressions—andtherefore do not fully attend to several other significant forms of identity negotia-tion. Moreover, contemporary views are beginning to contest that identities are sa-lient and have rigid boundaries (Root 1992; Zurcher 1977). As social boundariesbegin to blur, passing practices in everyday life may take on new forms (Goffman1963).

Drawing on interactionist insights, I explore the social processes involved in day-to-day identity negotiations with an eye toward the relationship between self-perceptionof identity and the perceptions of others. I analyze personal narratives to identifythe various forms passing takes and the strategies individuals use to transgress so-cial boundaries in everyday life. This account pays particular attention to theinfluence master statuses and intersecting identifications have in shaping passingprocesses as well as how individuals who pass respond to these encounters. This ex-amination suggests that contemporary forms of passing differ from Goffman’s (1963)concept in two ways. First, while all passing involves the movement from one set ofidentities to another,

everyday passing

involves transgressing more peripheral andless threatening identities than those implicated by Goffman’s concept. Second,both passing and everyday passing are often responses to miscategorization. Inother words, when an audience miscategorizes an individual, she or he may decideto go along with the audience—and hence pass reactively—rather than contest themiscategorization. Some scholars may challenge this reformulation, arguing that in-cluding these self-performances stretches the passing concept too far. Traditionalconceptions, however, ignore a great deal of important identity negotiation. Theseeveryday movements are particularly significant in light of postmodern claims thatidentities and the boundaries between them are more fluid than ever before.

This study builds on Goffman’s (1963) and more recent work by reconceivingpassing to include new forms of identity negotiation and moving us toward a morecomprehensive understanding of passing practices in everyday life. While previousstudies have been limited to single identities (Williams 2000) or to passing in a par-ticular setting (Garnett and Buchner 2000), the use of personal accounts advancesstudies of passing and identity negotiation by allowing us to empirically assess thesepractices across several identity boundaries and numerous contexts. Accordingly,the written narratives provide a unique vantage point to observe a phenomenonthat is often invisible.


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SELF-PRESENTATION AND (MIS)COMMUNICATING IDENTITIES

Whenever individuals come together, we share information about our identities.Our words, gestures, and physical appearance, even our style of dress, send cluesabout

who we are

(Goffman 1963) and about

who we are

not—

cues that then guidesocial transactions (Freitas et al. 1997).

Who we are

, symbolic interactionists sug-gest, reflects the overall organization of society. In the preindustrial past, societywas centered on communal life, and the self and identity were lesser concerns forindividuals. The rise in individualism accompanying industrialization led to new ex-periences of selfhood and new visions of who we are—individuals who must dailymanage multiple identities (Stryker 1980). Moving from a modern, industrial soci-ety to a postmodern, postindustrial one, the self has become increasingly illusoryand ephemeral (see Erickson 1995; Howard 2000). Boundaries between specificidentities have become fluid, and postmodern writers question the existence of acore or true self altogether (Gecas and Burke 1995; Zurcher 1977). By suggestingthat identities are nothing more than staged performances, Goffman (1959, 1963)raises questions about the authenticity of self and the identities we communicate toothers.

Interaction relies on a degree of trust between social actors. While the identitieswe present typically reflect our genuine sense of who we are, on some occasions thepresence or absence of identity cues can be misleading. Social encounters may beconducive to such (mis)communications and at times even exacerbate their occur-rence. As Goffman (1963:58) observes, “[I]t is plain that many performers haveample capacity and motive to misrepresent the facts.” When it comes to informationabout identities, we should not be surprised (and perhaps should even expect) thatothers will attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. Below I outline several methodsof (mis)communicating identities in order to draw analytic distinctions that illus-trate how theorists have conceptualized passing to date.

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT AND PASSING

Goffman’s (1959) notes on impression management explore one set of strategiesindividuals use to claim to be what they are not. Scholars conceptualize impres-sion management as a broad category of situationally induced and intentionalpresentational strategies. Often, the identity a person presents and its social valueare embedded in and limited to the particular interactive context in which theperformance takes place. Tony, a student from this sample, provides a commonexample:

I was at a hockey game with a friend and three other people I had just met. Thisgirl was asking me some questions about the game. I acted like I knew more thanI did about hockey. Probably tried to impress her by giving more informationthan I knew. I felt fine. I think my experience is fairly common and shouldn’tmake me feel any particular way.

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Tony’s lack of knowledge and fabrication do not pose a serious threat to his sense ofself or the interaction at hand, even if others discover his deception, as in Paul’s case:

I was at my girlfriend’s house, and her mom was playing cards with her brother.She asked me if I was a good card player. I said, “Yes, I am. My father playscards a lot.” Then she asked me to play with her and offered me many types ofgames, but I could not play any of them. I was embarrassed. I introduced myselftoo high.

Though Paul’s exaggeration is uncovered, he faces no real consequence other thanembarrassment. In short, impression management includes self-presentation stra-tegies individuals use to enhance their favorable impression in the eyes of theiraudience.

Whereas impression management typically involves identities linked to a partic-ular interaction, Goffman’s (1963) later work on passing concerns situations inwhich individuals transgress the boundaries of highly stigmatized identities by hid-ing information about who they “really” are. Masking discreditable identities withmore socially acceptable ones through passing offers individuals the potential to es-cape the expectations others impose on them because of their group membershipand its related stigma—whether physical, character, or tribal (Goffman 1963). Stig-mas signal significant social boundaries, and passing allows individuals to transgressthe lines that permeate most sites of interaction.

1

Framing passing as a strategy individuals use to distance themselves from stigma-tized racial identities and to open the door of opportunity, Drake and Cayton’s (1945)classic ethnography of urban African Americans presents accounts that focus prima-rily on men who pass for economic reasons.

2

It examines passing as a social process(see Goffman’s [1963:79]

natural cycle of passing

) whereby individuals initially maynot realize they are passing. In these encounters, other people make assumptionsabout their identities that turn out to be incorrect. Recognizing these incorrect as-sumptions, these miscategorized individuals follow suit and begin to intentionallycross social boundaries for convenience or fun or out of economic necessity. Such per-formances likely require passers to partition their worlds into regions varying accord-ing to the degree to which they must control information about their true identities(Goffman 1963; Weitz 1990). The final and most extreme form of passing occurs whenindividuals take on the other identity permanently. To do this “means sociologicaldeath and rebirth” (Drake and Cayton 1945: 163), because individuals must break alltheir current social ties and then create new ones in order to pass successfully.

Recent studies continue to examine passing among such deeply discredited iden-tities as being homeless (Anderson, Snow, and Cress 1994), HIV/AIDS status(Weitz 1990), and suffering from learning disabilities (Rueda and Mehan 1986). In-dividuals view these identities negatively across contexts, as opposed to the situa-tional identities negotiated through more fleeting moments of impression manage-ment. Is this traditional conceptualization of passing broad enough to capturepassing practices we are likely to encounter in our contemporary everyday lives?


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(RE)CONCEPTUALIZING PASSING IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Traditional conceptions of passing focus on strategic and wholly intentional per-formances by individuals to mask a hated identity with a less threatening one. The stu-dent narratives collected here, however, depart from this traditional view of passingin several ways. First, they suggest that while many individuals

pass

across highlystigmatized identities, others use

everyday passing

to cross less discrediting socialboundaries.

Second, while previous conceptions focused on the social actor as the initiator ofthese boundary crossings (

proactive

passing

), the present analysis examines in-stances in which individuals cross social boundaries in response to others’ incorrectassumptions about their identities (

reactive passing

). Individuals may unintention-ally give off a cue that others use to evaluate their identities, which may lead to mis-communications as a result of cognitive shortcuts that streamline the processing ofthis social information (Howard and Renfrow 2003). Individuals often decide toembrace the mistaken identity rather than reject it. Thus one’s audience plays acentral role in shaping identity negotiation. Plausible selves emerge as others ac-tively construct definitions of the situation, and this definition largely depends onwho others’ cognitive templates allow us to be.

Third, while traditional views of passing generally refer to the straightforwardtransgression of one identity, where individuals replace a discredited identity witha more socially acceptable alternative, the present analysis suggests that passing isa subtler process of negotiation whereby both actors and their audience alignplausible definitions of the situation, a process that includes defining who eachactor is. Consequently, actors often give idealized performances to preserve a mas-ter identity. At times this involves transgressing one social boundary to preserveanother.

Finally, while Goffman (1963) believed passing, like all forms of impression man-agement, is emotionally inconsequential for the individual, the narratives suggestthese identity negotiations may be emotionally costly.

METHOD AND DATA

Passing is elusive, as “the mark of passing successfully is the

lack of a mark of pass-ing

”(Tyler 1994:212; emphasis added). Since its raison d’être is to go undetected,passing escapes observational methodologies and poses difficulties for social scien-tists. To explore micro-level questions regarding passing and information manage-ment in everyday contexts, I rely on a content analysis of written narratives. I re-cruited 123 undergraduates at a large western university to participate in a study of“how people share information about

who they are

with others in everyday inter-action and

why

different types of information are shared.”

3

Using a sample ofundergraduates limits the scope and generalizability of this analysis. However,previous research provides compelling evidence that identity maintenance and ne-

490



gotiation are important processes in the life experience of young people as theytransition into adulthood and enter the university, where identities may be chal-lenged, defended, altered, or abandoned (Hunt and Miller 1997; Karp, Holmstrom,and Gray 1998). The nature of the university—the presence of a large number ofyoung people and ample opportunity for the development of superficial relation-ships among individuals—makes students an appropriate sample for a study ofpassing.

The study uses grounded theory to collect and analyze the micro-level experi-ences and thought processes involved in identity negotiations rather than testing apriori expectations. Consequently, randomness and representativeness are lesserconcerns, so long as the sample has reasonable variation along relevant dimensions(e.g., race, ethnicity, gender). My sample meets this criterion and resembles the gen-eral enrollment for the university. Slightly more than half of the sample is female(57.7%), and whites (44.7%) and Asian Americans (33.3%) make up the largest ra-cial constituencies. The remaining fifth of the sample is divided among AfricanAmericans (4.9%), multiracial individuals (10.6%), and other races (5.7%). Stu-dents’ ages range from 16 to 54, with an average of 22.2. Most students report beingsingle (90.2%) and identify themselves as heterosexual (91.1%). Based on these de-mographics, the sample includes sufficient variation to suggest some initial observa-tions on passing practices in contemporary life.

Social scientists have long relied on personal narratives and other open-responsetechniques (Kuhn and MacPartland 1954) to explore identity and how identities are

presented

during social interaction (Plummer 1983). I asked students to write abouta specific time when they were taken to be some type of person “you do not con-sider yourself to be.” The prompts directed students to discuss contextual elementsof the situation (e.g., Who was involved? When did it occur? Where did it happen?),reflections on their reaction to the situation (e.g., How did this experience makeyou feel?), and the cognitive or thought processes taking place throughout the en-counter (e.g., Why do you think you decided to represent yourself in this way? Or,why do you think others assumed you were this type of person? Forty-four students[35.8%] responded to the first option; sixty-seven [54.5%] responded to the sec-ond). Eleven students chose not to complete their essays, and I omitted one essayfrom this analysis because it did not discuss a specific passing situation. On averagethe essays were 165.3 words, ranging from 17 to 484 words.

4

Using written narratives offers advantages over other methods. Narratives askinformants to reflect on past

social psychological processes

, allowing assessment ofmicro-level cognitive processing of past experiences that otherwise would be difficultto assess (if not miss entirely) with other methods.

5

The narratives also require themto identify and describe in detail a specific experience, systematically providing

con-textual details

that other examinations of passing have not assessed. This cross-sectional snapshot allows some degree of comparison across encounters as focusingon nuances of specific passing situations helps to identify the forms passing takes.


491

Finally, the writing exercise permitted a larger sample to participate than interviewsalone would have done.

Rather than begin with the formulation of a priori expectations, the existing dis-courses on the self, stigma, and impression management inform both data collectionand analysis (Gecas and Burke 1995; Goffman 1963). The existing theories and cat-egorizations in these literatures, as well as the broader symbolic interactionist andsocial cognition literatures, guide the study by identifying important concepts suchas social expectations, master identities, and intersectionality (Blumer 1969). Framingthe narratives with these concepts, I categorized them according to what identitythe student transgressed, who initiated the act, how the student communicated theidentity, and how the student accounted for and responded to the incident. Whennarratives fell outside of my categories, I developed new ones and reorganized thedata in light of their emerging themes.

Below, drawing on the data, I outline what passing encounters look like in every-day life and identify how these forms depart from previous work. This analysis sug-gests passing takes place across a range of identities—from highly stigmatized toless threatening—and that it is a more nuanced process of aligning definitions of thesituation than previous studies have considered. Social expectations—especially forracial groups—give way to idealized performances that shape passing strategies. Ithen discuss students’ reflections on and reactions to their passing and conclude bydiscussing the study’s larger theoretical implications.

FORMS OF PASSING IN EVERYDAY LIFE

Proactive Passing

Goffman (1963) used the term “passing” to describe situations in which individu-als proactively cross the boundaries of highly stigmatized identities. Replacing dis-creditable identities with less threatening ones allows individuals to avoid detectionand the negative treatment associated with these hated positions. According to thenarratives, this type of passing is common among young adults. Carol provides oneexample of this proactive passing:

I’m a very masculine or butch woman, very muscular and about 5’10.” I’m anelectrician and have worked in the field for more than ten years. The problemwith this type of job is that women are treated like they know nothing. I’ve dealtwith harassment and physical violence at work sites before.

Being a woman in a traditionally male occupation and facing mistreatment at thehands of her coworkers, Carol decides to pass as a man. Fear for her well-beingprompted this act. Ironically, this attempt to move out of harm’s way could turnmore dangerous (as Carol acknowledges) should others uncover her deception.

Another set of proactive passing accounts discusses more complex negotiations.Lucien, an ex-con, describes one of the most extreme cases of becoming an entirelydifferent person:

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In 1978, after having been jailed for the second time in Seattle King County jail,I left for Portland, Oregon. My purpose using a false identity was to hide in plainsight, a theory and process I developed. It worked quite well. I have multipleIDs and have developed a way to legally become anyone that I want.

Manuel, an illegal immigrant, writes about another kind of “total transformation”:

I took the name [alias omitted] and used it twenty-plus years as my main iden-tity. I used a variety of other aliases for credit and other purposes but maintainedthis name. This came about for several reasons: my wife was an illegal alien andwas deported. We went to Canada where I lived under my real name, but aftertwo years, I was found to be an illegal alien myself and deported back to the U.S.

Stories such as Lucien’s and Manuel’s are unique because individuals are not proac-tively passing along a single identity but posing as other persons completely. Whileboth of these performances target intimate relations such as family, friends, and co-workers, other forms are limited primarily to strangers and acquaintances who lackpersonal information about the individual.

Proactive Everyday Passing

In contrast to the students who document proactive passing across highly stigma-tized social boundaries, other students write about instances of proactive everydaypassing, whereby they transgress less threatening and more peripheral social bound-aries. Darlene, who belongs to a sorority, gives one account:

People ask where I live or what I do at the university and I choose not to tellthem that I belong to a sorority. Many people have a stigma about sorority girlsthat I don’t feel accurately represents me as a person. . . . If someone asks meand they sound like it’s a bad thing, I sometimes say no.

As students are just below society’s “legal age,” it is not surprising that severalhave pretended to be older than they are. Amy writes about her experience: “WhenI was seventeen and trying to get into bars with my friends who were legal, I woulduse my friend’s driver’s license whom I looked similar to.” D.J. provides a similar ac-count of fabricating information about his age: “The golf tournament was for boysaged 15–17 and I was only 13. But I really wanted to play because I knew I couldcompete with the older boys. I sent in the application form and lied about my age. Iplayed good and finished third overall.” As age limits restrict who may participatein certain activities, proactive everyday passing allows young people some freedomto play with the identities they present and gain access to forbidden areas. Taken to-gether, these accounts illustrate that a good deal of identity negotiation involvesproactive crossing of the boundaries of less threatening identities.

Reactive Passing

In his work on passing across discredited identities, Goffman (1963) primarilylimited his attention to individuals’ self-presentation strategies. In other words, be-


493

cause Goffman conceived of the actor as the initiator of all passing attempts, theo-rists have traditionally limited passing to

proactive

transgressions like those I havedetailed thus far. Other narratives, however, include multiple instances that beginless intentionally, thereby shifting our focus from the actors to their audience. Inthese encounters, individuals are surprised to learn their interactive partners havemisread their identities. These accounts depict transgressions across several socialpositions. Jim writes about experiences when others assume he is straight:

I think of when individuals mistake me for being straight (when I’m gay). For in-stance, girls may try to talk to me, or guys may ask me about girls. . . . I guess I don’tact the typical (or stereotypical) way a homosexual acts, so I guess that’s why peopleperceive me to be straight until I tell them, or they figure it out for themselves.

Here hairstyle, fashion sense, and general demeanor send cues that may lead othersto incorrectly assess who one is and invite one to unintentionally cross (at least ini-tially) social boundaries.

Once individuals recognize their audience has miscategorized them, they mustdecide how to respond. Should they reject the identity or embrace it? Numerousstudents describe instances of reactive passing in which they embrace the mistakenidentity as the encounter progresses. Mae, a twenty-six-year-old Native American,discusses an instance when she is mistaken as Samoan:

People’s assumption of my heritage made me want to act like someone [else]. . . .People will just assume (even other Samoans) and they will speak to me in theirnative tongue. This assumption of my identity triggered me to act like I wasSamoan in certain settings where the assumption took place. This way bywearing certain clothing patterns and shell necklaces like an islander wouldwear, so instead of making the assumption this would make them believe, sothey wouldn’t ask.

Reactive Everyday Passing

Others’ assumptions often make it possible to cross less threatening social bound-aries as individuals draw on the miscategorization to help the interaction continue.Antony writes about this reactive everyday passing:

I must look like an artist. People always assume by the way I dress and look thatI must be studying art in school when in reality that’s far from true. I’m a chem-istry major, but when I tell people that they don’t seem to believe me. So I letthem think what they want.

Taken together, the narratives about reactive passing and everyday reactive passingshow that many transgressions initially occur because audiences rely on social ex-pectations they hold for some category of person; yet the social actor’s willingnessto embrace the identity then perpetuates rather than challenges the stereotype.While hinting at individual agency, this process highlights how social scripts and cul-tural schemas shape identity performance and negotiation by setting limits for whatselves are

plausible

in an encounter.

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The students’ accounts document transgressions across gender, sexuality, social class,American citizenship, race, and numerous other identities. They explain passing and ev-eryday passing primarily as attempts to avoid detection or to fit into a social group. Stu-dents use these strategies to gain access to arenas and social groups that would other-wise be formally or informally closed to them. These instances often involve strangersor acquaintances. Controlling personal information among intimates is less common,thereby providing some support for Goffman’s (1963) claim that individuals who passmust partition their world into regions with varying levels of information control.

In sum, passing practices take several forms. Table 1 presents the typology out-lined here.

6

While individuals continue to cross highly stigmatized boundaries, stu-dents document

everyday passing

where they transgress more minor identities. Fur-thermore, both forms vary according to who initiates the performance, with mostpassing being

reactive;

that is, it occurs because audiences make incorrect assump-tions about a person’s identity. The narratives reiterate Goffman’s (1963:56) claimthat “the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thingthat can be shattered by very minor mishaps.” The unintended consequences of aperformance, where an audience misreads one’s identity, may cause such a distur-bance. Misidentified individuals must then decide how to respond, which can leadto both passing and everyday passing. These observations necessitate broadeningthe concept. While individuals such as Amy and D.J. may playfully style their per-formances, most encounters—both

when

and

how

they occur—result more from so-cial expectations and cultural schemas than from one’s initial choice. As a result,these social expectations then contour how these performances unfold.

SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS, IDEALIZATION, AND PASSING

Identities carry social expectations for what their performance is (not) supposed tolook like and in which situations they are (not) likely to be encountered. To createbelievable performances, individuals must draw on their cultural knowledge of re-lated symbols. As Goffman (1959:35) states: “A performance is ‘socialized,’ molded,and modified to fit into the understanding and expectations of the society in whichit is presented. . . . [An] important aspect of this socialization process [is] the ten-dency for performers to offer their observers an impression that is

idealized

in sev-eral different ways” (emphasis added).

TABLE 1. Typology of Passing

Identity

Initiator Stigmatized, Central Minor, Peripheral

Audience Reactive passing Reactive everyday passing

Self

Proactive passing

Proactive everyday passing


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Individuals strategically manipulate symbols to fashion the impressions othershave of them. The narratives identify both

distancing moves

, which dissociate one froman identity, and

aligning moves

, which allow one to conform to others’ expectations ofan identity. These strategies enable informants to give idealized performances.

Distancing Moves

Distancing moves allow individuals to conceal information that would cue iden-tities they would prefer to keep hidden. Walter and Jeff write that when they pro-actively pass, they present themselves in ways that deviate from the standard expec-tations others hold for gay men:

This has been my entire life with all my friends and family. I’ve continually triedto disassociate myself from “gay” identity and culture by surrounding myselfwith nongay culture and by trying not to be any gay stereotypes.

I continuously try to blend in and not stand out. I try to satisfy popular culture’sidea of a real man.

Resisting “gay culture” in order to “not stand out,” Walter and Jeff succeed at keep-ing their audience at bay by providing a detour, so that they are more likely to beread as holding a socially acceptable identity rather than the highly stigmatizedalternative.

Other students distance themselves from their identities during proactive every-day passing. Darlene, who sometimes hides that she belongs to a sorority, writes: “Ioften won’t wear my letters [the symbol for her sorority] off campus. It’s just easierthat way.”

Aligning Moves

Aligning moves allow individuals to explicitly display social markers consistentwith a particular identity. As we have seen, Mae, whom others often assume to beSamoan, draws on her cultural knowledge about Samoans to give an idealized andsomewhat exaggerated performance. Because others consistently assume she is Sa-moan, Mae embraces that identity. By wearing the appropriate clothing, she pro-actively tries to meet what she thinks others expect of a Samoan woman. As a re-sult, she no longer has to deal with questions about her race; others read her cuesand assume she is Samoan.

Brandy and Michelle also use this aligning strategy during their proactive every-day passing:

When I travel I often ride in first class. My mom is a flight attendant so I pay ba-sically nothing for the tickets. When I go across the country or wherever I dressup very nicely, bring my briefcase, and carry myself very maturely andconfidently. I’m a pretty good-looking young lady and while on these flights Iwant people to think I’m much older than I am (19). The reason this is different

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than the way I consider myself to be is because I’m pretty young and not the se-rious, successful businesswoman that I lead on to be.

RUSH, as it is called, is a week of being the most fake you possibly can be in or-der to be chosen to be in a sorority. I changed my appearance, views, and person-ality in order to mold myself into what I thought these other girls would believeto be an ideal “sorority sister.”

Distancing and aligning strategies can work in tandem, and individuals some-times employ both to pass. Carol, the laborer who proactively passes as a man, fash-ions her performance—both her physical appearance and gestures—to conform moreclosely to stereotypically masculine patterns and hide her overtly feminine traits:

I was on the job about three months passing as a guy the whole time. It was hot,but I always had to wear a tight T-shirt and a flannel shirt to hide my breasts.When women are taken for men, they are often taken for young men so I had tobe ten years younger without a partner and teenaged kids. I found myself “ad-justing” my crotch coming out of the bathroom and making homophobic jokes.

As Carol’s account illustrates, individuals use presentational styles to influencewhich cues they send to others. At times individuals must simultaneously hide infor-mation inconsistent with the image they are presenting and exaggerate other, moreconsistent displays.

The absence of expected markers can also promote reactive passing across socialboundaries as one’s audience misinterprets social cues. Mia, a lesbian who reac-tively passes as straight, provides a common example:

Most people assume I’m heterosexual, although I am a lesbian. There is not oneevent that I can pinpoint where I was mistaken, but it is more like when is the as-sumption

not

made. People think I’m straight just by looking at me because I am“normal” looking—long blonde curly hair, slim build, somewhat attractive—andnot the butch lesbian—shaved or short hair, overweight, plain-looking.

Mia’s lack of the expected lesbian identity markers perpetuates what Rich (1980)calls “compulsory heterosexuality,” where the burden of proof that someone is notstraight is left up to the individual. The end result is that even the possibility of“normal” gays and lesbians seems unrealistic, and the alternative sexualities be-come increasingly invisible.

When an identity fails to meet what individuals expect for a particular context,individuals may view it as threatening. Therefore, another strategy for hiding a stig-matized identity requires individuals to

partition their social world

into regionswhere some people know about one’s position while others do not (Goffman 1963;Weitz 1990). Karen, for example, hides her identity from classmates:

I feel that I am pretending to be something other than I really am on a daily ba-sis. I am a functioning academic stoner. I feel that everyday I come to school Ihave to hide the fact that I smoke pot everyday, all day. School is filled with mid-dle-class yuppies who have a holier than thou attitude when it comes to things


497

such as pot use.

In my circle of friends it is accepted and embraced. However, Ifeel that if my classmates were to know that I was a stoner, then I would lose cred-ibility in their eyes.

(Emphasis added)

In wider society and particularly in an academic setting, being a drug user may behighly discrediting and bring harsh sanctions. Although Karen decides to pass pro-actively when she is in an academic context, she makes it clear that her identity as aregular drug user is not discrediting in all situations. Among similar others, it is ac-cepted and embraced.

In a similar set of proactive everyday passing accounts, students hide informationabout their identities when they are inconsistent with other identities they musthold in a particular context. However, as Becky writes, moments of disclosure toothers who share this identity do occur:

I often hide the fact that I am married and have two children when I am atschool. If someone asks, I don’t lie about it,

but I don’t offer the information ei-ther

unless I know they have children.

I am not sure why I do that. I look a lotyounger than I am, so I guess that I feel college students may think that it isstrange that I have children. Most people are shocked that I am twenty-sevenand have two children.

I think people treat you different if they know you are anolder student.

(Emphasis added)

This wife and mother has difficulty reconciling her non-normative identities (i.e.,non-normative in the university setting) with her identity as a student. To blendcomfortably into her campus community, she decides to conceal information andrelease it only to those who share similar “deviant” identities. Karen’s and Becky’saccounts illustrate that schools act as regions where individuals must hide their un-expected and discreditable identities in most encounters.

Accounts detailing such partitioning sharply contrast with more extreme ones in-volving identities that are discredited across situations. As Gabe, a gay man, re-counts: “I have been forced into being dishonest with those whom I love. It’s hardto simply identify a sequence of events, or say who is involved. It has been my entirelife.” Gabe and others with highly stigmatized identities often keep their secretsfrom everyone, including those closest to them. Not surprisingly, individuals reportquite negative feelings when they proactively hide identities central to their self-definitions from loved ones.

People’s social expectations frame the strategies we use to present ourselves toothers. These strategies orient performances by distancing or aligning them withparticular identities or by dividing one’s social world into clandestine and open re-gions. Recent work by feminist scholars raises questions about how social expecta-tions bear on passing practices as identities intersect and overlap (e.g., Hill-Collins2000). They argue that a nuanced study will reveal how understanding the meaningof one identity may influence the meaning and performance of others (Almaguer1998). Individuals may hide one identity as a way of “doing” or accomplishing theconsistent and successful performance of another (Charmaz 1995; West and Zim-merman 1987; Williams 2000). The narratives suggest this may be the case.

498



SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS, IDENTITY SETS, AND PASSING

Certain identities act as master statuses, or lenses through which we view all othercharacteristics of a person (Hughes 1945). These more significant statuses take pre-cedence over other ones such that their performance may require individuals to dis-tance themselves from other “inconsistent” statuses. The narratives suggest thatrace and ethnicity are among these master statuses, and everyday proactive passingmay provide the foil successful racial performances require.

In particular, individuals draw on

racial stereotypes

in order to give idealized ra-cial performances and hide information that is inconsistent with these stereotypes.Jeremy, an African American student, describes how he gives an idealized racialperformance by hiding aspects of himself in order to fit in with his friends:

This particular incident occurred back in high school. I was also carrying a3.94 grade point average and enrolled in 2 A.P. [advanced placement] coursesalong with being in an upper-level math class. The thing is that none of myfriends really knew about any of that—me being smart. To complicate mattersfor me, being African American automatically brings about stereotypes of in-ferior intelligence. Around my friends I would, in a sense, “dumb” myselfdown not to stand out. None of my friends were in my advanced courses and Inever spoke of them. When grades were issued I never spoke in detail ofthem.

The threat racial stereotypes can bear on interactions, including academic perfor-mance, is well documented (Cohen, Steele, and Ross 1999), and Jeremy is acutelyaware of expectations for African Americans’ academic abilities. Anticipating thathis excellent academic record would challenge stereotypes associated with beingblack and afraid of being alienated from his peers, Jeremy keeps part of his life hid-den. Since race is central to Jeremy’s sense of self, he feels he must portray himselfin ways consistent with cultural stereotypes. In this way, Jeremy preserves his racialidentity by proactive everyday passing across less significant identities and drawingon racial stereotypes to give an idealized racial performance.

When expectations for race and ethnicity conflict with identities central to one’ssense of self to the point that they impair one’s ability to “do” race, one may trans-gress race and ethnicity lines. The

venditas

, or ethnic sellouts, discussed by Almaguer(1998) and Moraga (1983) provide one example. Because the traditional family isthe cornerstone of Chicano culture, alternative sexualities are highly stigmatizedand do not easily fit into it. Consequently, some Chicana lesbians proactively passacross ethnic lines because society affords white women more sexual freedom. Inan autobiographical account, Moraga (1983:51) writes, “The more effectively wecould pass in the white world, the better guaranteed our future.”

Thus proactive passing across racial lines reduces the threat associated with ho-mosexuality while preserving the lesbian identity. Together, these accounts suggestidentities do not exist independently but rather as sets. Passing practices take shapeas individuals call on implicit theories about which sets of identities fit together.Preserving one identity within this set may require foregoing another.


499

MULTICULTURALISM, IMPAIRED PERFORMANCES, AND PASSING

Idealized performances are key to communicating who one is during an encounter,and performances inconsistent with social expectations may prevent one from accu-rately communicating this information. What happens, though, when individualscannot provide an idealized performance because their identities conflict with oneanother or are socially ambiguous? Narratives by multiracial individuals speak tothese issues.

Reactive passing plays a unique role in the lives of multiracial individuals whomothers frequently do not recognize as being racially mixed. As Andrew’s narrativeillustrates, audiences often assume these individuals are some other race altogether:“I am of Chinese-Filipino descent. A lot of places I go the people I meet assume myethnicity is Mexican. I guess my dark features are not usual for Asians.”

At other times, multicultural students are assumed to be only one of their com-ponent races. In these situations, informants like Kylee feel torn between affilia-tions: “It made me feel uncomfortable because she [an acquaintance] was assumingthings about me solely from my appearance, and it was pretty frustrating withsomeone who didn’t understand that being Japanese and white mixed isn’t the sameas [being] all Asian.” Chloe reported similar feelings about reactive passing acrossracial lines. She feels “discriminated against” because she has to “struggle betweentwo cultures, trying to be both at the same time.” When the individuals they interactwith fail to acknowledge their social position, these students feel that they cannoteasily fit into any racial identity (neither a multiracial identity nor a singular racialidentity).

Although individuals have some freedom to play with their identities and howthey present them, collectively shared generalizations about specific categories ofpeople constrain this freedom. Master statuses such as race and sexuality frame theidentities others attribute to the person. These individuals understand that to ac-complish these identities successfully, their related identities must also meet soci-etal expectations. As a result, passing may serve as an indirect strategy for accom-plishing a successful master identity performance by allowing individuals to hideinconsistent information. Passing practices do not follow a simple, one-to-one rela-tionship in which one identity is replaced or masked with another in isolation butentails a complex negotiation structured by societal expectations. These negotia-tions show that identities are an intricate package of interrelated statuses whereinthe meaning of one has serious implications for the performance of others.

REFLECTIONS ON AND RESPONSES TO PASSING

Theorists of passing and impression management assert that inauthentic perfor-mances are daily occurrences, as individuals embellish and otherwise strategicallystyle their performances to convince their audiences. Goffman (1963) presents pass-ing and other constructed presentations as largely inconsequential for the social ac-

500 Symbolic Interaction Volume 27, Number 4, 2004

tor, and claims that if we believe otherwise our reliance on “folk conceptions of hu-man nature” may mislead us (87). The narratives presented here, however, suggestthat our folk conceptions may indeed be closer to real life than social theorists haveassumed.

While Solomon described his on-line act of proactive everyday passing as rela-tively inconsequential, students such as Becky, who masked her identities as a wifeand mother, consider the encounters a negative experience. This observation sug-gests there is some variation in the extent to which students are committed to theidentities they hide during these everyday acts of passing and that responses can beharsh when they proactively transgress them. In general, those who initiated cross-ing social boundaries “felt bad” and “uncomfortable” or were “bothered” by theexperience and those who decided to routinely transgress an identity in response tobeing miscategorized were “annoyed” or “pissed off” immediately following the en-counter. Together, these reflections suggest that proactive everyday passing leads toinwardly directed responses, whereas reactive everyday passing leads to outwardlydirected responses.

On the other hand, individuals who pass proactively along highly guarded anddiscreditable identities consistently experience considerable dissonance, particu-larly when these identities are central to the sense of self. Walter describes his strug-gle to proactively pass as straight:

This situation has sadly become a reoccurring event in my life. Because of theadversity I’ve been forced to encounter because of my sexual preference. I de-cided to represent myself this way because I thought I would be more acceptedand loved by those I care for. Unfortunately, I’ve found that it has only broughtme more pain and adversity.

Walter says his sexuality is “a fundamental part” of who he is, yet he cannot sharethis part with those he loves most. He masks his sexuality out of fear that his familywill reject him. Fear prompts other passing as well. Carol, who proactively passesacross gender lines while working at extremely macho work sites, describes the tollpassing takes on her and the fear she faces daily:

They will feel they’ve been had, been made out as fools. This situation would beextremely, physically dangerous. I can’t tell you what a stressful time this was.But, of course, it didn’t end with the job.

These accounts suggest that some passing practices are shrouded in fear. Individ-uals fear other people will reject them because of their stigmatized identities, andonce they successfully pass, they are in constant fear that others will discover their“real” identities. Sexuality and gender remain rather rigid constructs that informhow people define themselves. Furthermore, as such transgressions often targetclose friends and family, it comes as no surprise that crossing these lines leads tonegative responses.

Reactive passing arouses particularly intense and enduring reactions dependingon who is making the incorrect assumption. Situations involving those who share anindividual’s group membership are in this category. As Sage writes:

A Cartography of Passing in Everyday Life 501

I used to always be mistaken for an ethnicity other than Filipino. I guess it’s be-cause of my “fair” skin color. I recall feeling hurt because that made me questionmy identity. What did it mean to be Filipino? Was I not Filipino enough for oth-ers [Filipinos] to recognize me as Filipino? It just made me question a lot ofthings about myself.

In addition to who makes the incorrect assumption, negative responses to reac-tive passing occur when audiences ignore students’ attempts to provide correctiveinformation. John, a white student, became upset by insistent questions from astore clerk about his apparent “Asianness”:

I tell them caucasian, and they don’t believe and demand of me a different an-swer. I had one lady mention about every Asian nationality after I had alreadytold her three times that I don’t have any Asian in me. She got very annoying tome, and I just left what I was going to buy on the counter and told her that she“needs to take a class in customer service.” I didn’t even know this lady or any-thing. All I wanted to do was buy a new toothbrush and toothpaste. And I endedup very upset.

John tries to fix the situation but is unsuccessful. Chera shared his frustration: “Myrace is not something I think about often, but it’s still part of how I think about andrepresent myself. And the incident upset me. . . . [H]e [an acquaintance who as-sumed she is Samoan] was uneducated and small-minded.”

Students sometimes confront situations in which they face “unfair” comments onthe part of the wise, those who know their “true” identity (Goffman 1963). For ex-ample, Tanya reported:

The other black students in my class knew I was mixed and even used to ask me:what was it, just easier to say white than explain I was mixed? They later said Iwas trying to act white. This was an insult.

Even when individuals are not extremely upset by the mistake, they sometimes findthemselves in the unexpected and troubling situation of getting an uncensoredglimpse of how others view their social category (Goffman 1963). Margaret, whomothers assume is straight, is upset by what this position allows her to discover:

I don’t mind this [others assuming she is straight] too much except for when peo-ple are joking [about gays]. It hurts my feelings. Whether I’m gay or not Iwouldn’t appreciate that type of humor or that others would think I’d agree withall that.

By embracing mistaken identities, students have the opportunity to learn firsthandthat they are despised, and perhaps more damaging, they find themselves invited toparticipate in degradation ceremonies aimed at people like them.

These accounts highlight how interactive partners affect responses to reactivepassing. Individuals in such encounters often levy harsh judgments against their au-dience, insisting they must be “closed-minded,” “unworldly,” or “not very cultured.”Many students said the encounter was “commonplace,” or that they had grown“used to it” when they reflect on the incident later. For example, Erich writes: “It[the incorrect assumption] didn’t really bother me, though, since I was used to being


mistaken for other ethnicities from time to time.” Erich and others minimize the ef-fects these encounters have because of their frequency and perhaps because havingoccurred in the past, they may be less emotionally charged. The change in reactionsmight also be a rhetorical strategy students used to explain away an unpleasant butpersistent occurrence and to minimize harm to their self-concepts.

Together, these narratives challenge the claims that inauthentic self-presentationdoes not lead to negative consequences for the individual (Goffman 1959). Bothproactive and reactive transgressions generally bring negative reactions, regardlessof the identity transgressed, with passing across identities central to one’s sense ofself eliciting particularly strong reactions. Furthermore, one’s audience and the au-dience’s response to the situation also has an impact on how students respond. Thenarratives identify a direction for future research in the area of intra- and interper-sonal reactions to inauthentic self-performances.

CONCLUSION, THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS, AND LIMITATIONS

This analysis of student narratives suggests that passing practices differ in significantways from previous conceptions. Traditional views of passing refer to a straightfor-ward transgression whereby a person purposefully replaces a highly discreditableidentity with its more socially acceptable counterpart (Goffman 1963). In contrast, Iargue that contemporary identity negotiations include both passing across stigma-tized identities and everyday passing across less threatening or less central ones. Myfindings show that both forms often occur when an audience miscategorizes an indi-vidual’s identity and prompts him or her to follow suit and embrace it. Such negoti-ations are complex processes whereby plausible selves emerge as others activelyconstruct definitions during encounters. Who one is during an interaction is a func-tion of others’ ability to categorize a performance into the appropriate cognitiveframework. Furthermore, the meanings attached to primary identities often leadto transgressions across other inconsistent identities, highlighting how identitiesintersect.

While interactionists who examine identity negotiations typically attend to pro-cess over structure, these narratives highlight the role of structure at multiple levels.Previous work assumes that passing practices allow individuals to actively over-come obstacles (avoid stigmatization, fit into social groups) or have fun with theiridentities (Goffman 1963). Passing practices, however, are structured by the com-plex systems of power that shape larger society. While individuals have some free-dom to play with their identities and how they present them, social forces shapethese instances of everyday passing because others must be able to categorize theperformance. Social expectations for particular groups—those for race for in-stance—influence which identities we present and how we present them. When ac-tors transgress identities, the transgression itself is shaped by these same social ex-pectations. Even at the extreme, proactive passing does not subvert systems ofoppression but instead may provide an alternative means for navigating them.


At the individual level, ironically, both proactive and reactive negotiations pro-vide insight into how the self emerges interactively and aid in the maintenance ofone’s identity—reifying the experience or “true” identity. Selves emerge from pass-ing and everyday passing incidents. In other words, the incident raises the issue ofidentity, focuses one’s attention on a particular identity, and heightens one’s aware-ness of one’s own identification through comparison with what one is not. In suchsituations, we (like others) learn who we are. Given the routine nature of our activi-ties and associations, some identities are more frequently called on and contributeto the experience of a transsituational self across interactions. When individualstransgress an identity, their heightened self-awareness has a self-confirming func-tion. It makes the issue of identity salient in their minds and allows them to self-identify and maintain their “true” identities—regardless of whether they performthe identity or others assign it to them. The “self” feelings and responses to thesetransgressions denote individuals’ attachment to particular identities. Consequently,passing practices underscore through contrast the sense of an authentic identity,thereby enhancing the stability of self.

Postmodern writers claim the social boundaries between groups are shifting andoften point to multicultural groups as an example of this trend (Root 1992). Whilethe narratives show some indication that racial and ethnic identities are becomingless recognizable for multicultural individuals, they point to the enduring significanceof these identities and suggest that crossing these boundaries is no less significantthan before. Whereas Goffman (1963) characterizes passing and other impressionmanagement as psychically inconsequential for the actor, students in this study de-scribe the fear that often permeates passing. Inauthentic impersonations generatefeelings of dissonance, and these responses are overwhelmingly negative acrosstypes of passing and identities transgressed. Furthermore, students struggle to pre-serve their identities during encounters, as some individuals intentionally draw onracial stereotypes to distance themselves from inconsistent identities in order togive a successful racial performance. Together, these findings show that individualsare committed to particular identities and seek to preserve them, thereby suggest-ing that the self has some degree of stability. In short, performance alone is notenough to foster a “true” self; claims that we have entered into a fully postmodernera may be premature.

Reconceptualizing passing to include reactive instances draws attention to howinteractive partners guide interaction and identity negotiation. Gecas and Schwalbe(1983) argue that sociological models often run the risk of being overly determinedor astructural. One way to preserve the interactionist looking-glass self—whichthey suggest should fall in the middle ground between these extremes—is to con-sider individual agency as well as the unintended consequences of action. One unin-tended consequence may be that communication can go awry, as other actors standin for social structure. Through processes of negotiation between actors and theiraudiences, the self is shaped by the reflection of others and the cultural schemasthey carry. These expectations may then shape passing and everyday passing en-


counters either by providing the scripts individuals use to actively pass or by provid-ing cognitive shortcuts leading individuals to incorrectly read others’ identities(Howard 1994). These mental structures provide the rules that guide interactionand make such identity negotiations possible.

There are limitations to this study and the implications that can be drawn from it.The student sample restricts the generalizability of the findings. As the transitionallocation of this sample enables only tentative statements about the nature of theself, they should be interpreted with caution. The writing prompts also limit whatwe can learn from this examination of passing. They ask respondents to recall pastincidents. These incidents occurred several weeks, months, or even years earlier; yetwe know memory is imperfect and subject to numerous cognitive errors (Howardand Renfrow 2003).7 Such problems may be amplified because the students are de-scribing subjective and abstract experiences. Furthermore, the writing prompts cap-ture a single passing situation, and the format limits which and how much informa-tion students provide. Therefore, we cannot assess individual differences acrossthese situations. This analysis provides only a snapshot.

While shedding light on some long-standing issues, this study raises additionalquestions. The findings suggest that individuals’ ideas about which identities shouldexist together influence how both passing and everyday passing encounters takeshape. Future research is needed to elaborate which sets exist and how these bearon identity negotiations. In particular, these narratives as well as previous work(Charmaz 1995; Williams 2000) indicate that passing strategies may be influencedby social expectations about gender. How does gender shape these strategies andthe significant boundaries that are crossed? Furthermore, passing and other elusive,interactional phenomena offer a unique site for the development of innovativemethodologies. Exploring the answers to these questions and using more rigorousmethods will provide a fuller picture of the passing practices that occur during andshape our everyday lives.

Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Susan Pitchford, Denise Johnson, JodiO’Brien, Gil Herdt, Ross Matsueda, Kathy Charmaz, Colin Bjorklund, SimonGottschalk, and several anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of andthoughtful comments on drafts of this paper. I am especially grateful to JudyHoward, my mentor and collaborator, for her encouragement and guidance on thismanuscript and the larger study from which it comes; to Paul LePore for manyhelpful discussions; to Denise Johnson, Elizabeth Lammert, and Jenni Holsingerfor coding assistance; and to the students for sharing their stories.

NOTES

1. Allport (1954) presents passing as one of several possible compensatory responses to prejudiceand discrimination. Other responses range from clowning, or exaggerating one’s affiliation witha stigmatized group, to self-hatred. Levine (1998) outlines similar responses to homophobia.


2. Several passing studies came as responses to popular press claims in the mid-twentieth centurythat nearly 200,000 African Americans vanish from public records each year (Asbury 1946).Lacking obvious explanations for these missing people, Asbury assumed they must havecrossed the color line. Using census data, Eckard (1947) and Burma (1946) account for most ofAsbury’s missing people and provide a more modest estimate of 25,000 racial passers per yearfor the early to middle part of the last century. Studies continue to explore how individuals usepassing to cross racial lines. Denton (1975), for example, explores how Canadian Indian mi-grants use passing strategies to avoid stigma associated with being identified as “Indian.” Otherresearch examines passing along other identities. Garfinkel’s (1967) ethnographic work onAgnes, a male-to-female transsexual, is one example.

3. I informed the students about the nature of this study and the consequences of participating init. All students who participated granted me permission to use their data. The Human SubjectsDivision at my university approved the design and all procedures carried out in this study.Where the text includes excerpts from narratives, I provide aliases to protect each student’sanonymity.

4. Responses from a pilot study indicated that subjects provided the types of accounts relevant tothis study of passing. A reliability check on randomly selected essays from the actual data indi-cated that coders agreed on what type of passing was taking place, what types of identities wereinvolved, and several contextual factors in the accounts. Reliability coefficients for the essays(.895), the identity statements (.856), and the combined materials (.876) suggest the codingscheme is reproducible. Disagreements were resolved through discussion among the codersand clarification of the categories. Assessments suggest the instrumentation provides a validmeasure of passing with highly reproducible results.

5. Since the students were asked to reflect on past experiences, the narratives provide constructedversions of what happened.

6. This typology is for analytic purposes. In practice, these forms are more fluid than this typologymight suggest. I thank Simon Gottschalk for suggesting this visual display.

7. Most essays (60.3%) describe events occurring during the student’s college career. Given therelatively short time between when the event occurred and it being reported here, these ac-counts of passing encounters are likely to be accurate.

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