Racial passing and class mobility in Philip Roth's The Human Stain and Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light

Abstract

This article explores the phenomena of racial passing and its relation to class mobility in South African and American literature. The paper compares the American novel The Human Stain by Philip Roth and the South African novel Playing in the Light by Zoe Wicomb. We first discuss how racial passing has been present in American and South African history and literature. We then show the ways in which race is a social construct in both novels. We then argue that the act of passing is not only an escape from oppression and marginalization, but also a desire to belong to 'whiteness' and get access to its privileges. This condition is revelatory of the persistence of racism, racial discrimination and inequality in post-segregation America and post-apartheid South Africa.