Signithia Fordham challenges the notion that we are living in a “postracial” society where race is no longer a major social category, as indicated by the rising incidence of interracial relationships and the popularity of biracial identities. On the contrary, she contends, a powerful fusion of historical memory and inclusive kinship compels Americans whose ancestors were enslaved to embrace a Black identity even when they have White as well as African ancestors. Fordham identifies this socially constructed racial identity as “passin’ for Black.” She argues that virtually every socially defined Black person connected to enslavement—regardless of skin color, hair texture, facial features, or paternity—must perform Blackness. Using narratives obtained from a recent ethnographic study of female competition and aggression in a racially “integrated” suburban high school, Fordham’s essay documents how the complex, charged matter of racial identity—concurrently biological and social—inflames the lives of adolescents and impairs their ability to navigate the school environment.

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Signithia Fordham, the former Susan B. Anthony Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, is a cultural anthropologist at the University of Rochester. She is the author of the ethnography Blacked Out: Dilemmas of Race, Identity and Success at Capital High (1996). Her research and essays have appeared in public media—including Education Week, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the London Times—as well as academic journals such as, Transforming Anthropology: The Official Journal of the Association of Black Anthropology, The Urban Review, Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Teachers College Record, and the Harvard Educational Review. Her current research, and the subject of her forthcoming book, Downed by Friendly Fire: Black Girls,
White Girls, and Female Competition at UGRH (Underground Railroad High), focuses on female competition, bullying, and aggression. She can be reached at the University of Rochester or at her home e-mail address: sfordham@rcn.com.