Ending on this: Black womanhood is not a monolith. It’s survival, creativity, grief, joy, rage, resistance. It’s sweet and sharp. It’s silence and song. It’s all of it.
@vdotfdot.bsky.social #NC25

Blackness in these texts isn’t static—it’s alive. But it refuses to disappear. These works also show the burden of being the "first" or the "only" — Stella as the only Black woman in white spaces, Jude as the only dark-skinned girl in Mallard, Peaches as the only one who speaks without a filter.

Just like Doechii’s rage isn't random—it’s strategic. Both songs show that rage is a form of memory, too. If passing is a way to forget your history, then refusing to pass is a way to remember—even when it hurts. The Vanishing Half shows both the burden and the blessing of memory.

Passing means editing yourself for survival. But survival without selfhood isn’t life. These works show us that the cost of passing is often too high to pay. In "Four Women," even Peaches' anger is a survival mechanism. It’s a refusal to die quietly.

the quiet, the angry, the exhausted, the fed up. What these works give us is a blueprint: passing is not liberation. Presence is. Black women deserve to exist in their fullness—dark skin, loud voices, trauma, beauty, rage, softness, resistance. All of it.
#NC25

Simone uses hair to mark class and racial identity. To pass, you must manipulate the visual. But real freedom means refusing to. Stella could only survive by disappearing. Jude survives by being seen. Doechii survives by being heard. Simone documents them all—

Bennett shows us what happens when you run from them. Together, they ask: What parts of ourselves are we allowed to keep? It’s interesting that in all three texts, hair is a site of tension. Jude is mocked for hers. Doechii uses it as weapon and symbol.

In these texts, it looks like public scrutiny, vulnerability, and systemic violence. But it also brings connection, truth, and voice. The tension is this: visibility brings violence, but erasure brings silence. “Four Women” makes each woman carry a stereotype. Doechii breaks them apart.

Stella could never experience that because her whole life is a lie. What’s the cost of passing? Emotional exile. Generational rupture. Self-erasure. In Stella’s case, even her daughter Kennedy suffers—never knowing her true history, constantly performing. What’s the cost of not being able to pass?

She can’t pass—she’s too dark, too visible in a town obsessed with lightness. But in refusing to shrink, Jude builds something more real than Stella ever could. Jude’s relationship with Reese is also important. It shows that real love can only happen in truth. Not performance. Not erasure.

It’s messy and loud and intentionally nonlinear. She says:
“I ain’t your respectability / I’m not your mammy fantasy.”
She’s not interested in being acceptable. She reclaims all the parts of Black womanhood that get silenced when you’re forced to be palatable. In TVH, Jude is the embodiment of this

She’s light-skinned, desirable, and used to being seen through whiteness. But Simone doesn’t let her escape either. Desire comes with danger. Doechii flips the narrative completely in “Black Girl Memoir.” She owns the rage, the trauma, the volume. Her song doesn’t pass—it crashes through.
#NC25

“My skin is brown / my manner is tough”
Peaches can’t pass. She’s too visible, too angry, too unyielding. She’s the response to the silence that passing demands. In contrast, “Sweet Thing” in Simone’s song is the closest to Stella.
#NC25

Passing isn’t just about race—it’s about being legible to whiteness. Stella trades her history, her sister, and her selfhood for access. She becomes “invisible in plain sight.”
Nina Simone’s “Four Women” unpacks the layers of this performance. Her character “Peaches” says:

In The Vanishing Half, Stella passes for white to escape the limitations of Blackness in America. But her passing doesn’t bring her freedom—it fractures her family, isolates her emotionally, and traps her in a performance she can’t escape.
#NC25

What does it mean to pass? And what gets left behind when you do? In this thread, I’m putting Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Nina Simone’s “Four Women,” and Doechii’s “Black Girl Memoir” in conversation to explore how Black women survive, shapeshift, and resist.
#NC25

@vdotfdot.bsky.social

Blackness is commodified. It is celebrated when detached from Black people and punished when it's actually embodied by us. At the end of the day, passing into Blackness isnt about racial liberation or solidarity. It's about privilege, access and the ability to move in and out of Blackness at will.

Some workplaces banned them and even schools implemented certain policies, yet Kardashian recieved praise and trendsetter approval for those same looks. In 2018, Kardashian was credited by outlets for starting a “new” trend, despite Fulani braids being worn by Black women for centuries. #NC25

However, consider how she appropriates Blackness. From frequently wearing cornrows and box braids. Which then were referred to as “KKW braids” instead of acknowledging their Black origins. Its okay when she does it but Black people have been discriminated against wearing these same styles.

While she has never explicitly claimed to be Black, her constant engagement with Black cultural markers– from hairstyles to body modifications to dating Black men–places her in a unique position in the conversation on passing and appropriation. Some say because she never explicitly said it, its okay

But what does this mean for our future? If white people can pass into Blackness when it benefits them what does that mean for our actual Black identity? Are we letting whiteness define what “Blackness” looks like? A prime example is Kim Kardashian and her appropriation of Blackness.

The lighter you are, the easier it is for you to navigate this world. What really gets me about all of this is how Blackness is constantly treated as something that can be performed or worn as a costume. Black people are often penalized for the same things white people “adopt” for credibility.

Dr. Darity also gets into colorism and how it plays a huge role in who gets away with passing. Dolezal and Krug did not pass as dark-skinned black women but they were on the lighter spectrum. This already is a “privileged” space within Black communities.

This is an example of passing into Blackness not being about survival but about access–access to credibility, grants, and attention. Black scholars, especially darker-skinned scholars, have to fight harder to be taken seriously in these same spaces that were supposed to be created by us for us.

This white woman built her entire academic career based on her fake Afro-Latina identity. She used her “identity” to get into elite institutions while writing about Black and Latinx histories. This is why I also feel like it's so critical to know who you are taking information from their history.

The key difference is that she was claiming it knowing that she had the option to just walk away from the consequences of being Black but Black people don't get to opt out of racism when it becomes inconvenient (Darity p. 6). Then there's Jessica Krug, a white woman.

After changing her hair and darkening her skin, she took on leadership roles in Black advocacy spaces when she never actually experienced what it means to be Black in America. And the Wildest part is that even when she was exposed, she still tried to claim Blackness.

Meanwhile, when white people pass as Black–like Rachel Dolezal or Jessica Krug–it’s about being seen as more ‘authentic’ in spaces where Blackness holds cultural currency. A difference like that is very major. An example of this is Rachel Dolezal who built a career off pretending to be Black.

Black-to-white passing was about escaping oppression, while white-to-Black passing is often about gaining social and professional capital (Darity p. 2). Black people who passed for white often had to cut ties with their families, and deal with the emotional weight of losing their identity.