Dear Friend I am ____

I am currently taking an African American literature class. Through the novels we read, issues of race, stereotyping, and prejudice are brought up and discussed in class each week. One thing we were recently discussing was what it means to 'pass'. This is a term I hadn't heard much about before but in the context of African American literature and history I have learned that 'passing' referred to people who were half black and half white but physically looked more white. Some biracial people that could pass as white physically would decide to pass as a white person culturally as well and would sometimes disassociate themselves with the black culture.  

We discussed a contemporary artist by the name of Adrian Margaret Smith Piper. Piper was half black and half white but had physical features that made her look white and was therefore capable of 'passing'. The work that she did was based off of studying the affect skin color had on the way people were viewed. One thing that Piper did in her pursuit of this topic as an experiment was to 'pass' as white to her acquaintances in order to study how white people make racist comments about African Americans when they feel they are not in the presence of anyone who is black. When someone would make a racist joke towards African Americans she would hand them a slip of paper that had a note on it and then walk away. The note says, 

"Dear Friend, I am black. I am sure you did not realize this when you made/laughed at/agreed with that racist remark. In the past I have attempted to alert white people people to my racial identity in advance. Unfortunately, this invariably causes them to react to me as pushy, manipulative or socially inappropriate. Therefore, my policy is to assume that white people do not make these remarks, even when they believe there are not black people present, and to distribute this card when they do.  

I regret any discomfort my presence is causing you, just as I am sure you regret the discomfort your racism is causing me.

Sincerely yours,

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper "

I thought this letter was extremely interesting. It made me think that it could really be done with any sort of race or ethnicity inserted where the term black is. I wonder what sort of reactions people give after reading this letter. They most definitely must feel pretty horrible - at least they should, about the comment they made!