Passing (racial identity)

Racial passing occurs when a person who is classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another racial group. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black or brown person or of multiracial ancestry who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination. In the Antebellum South, passing as white was a temporary disguise used as a means of escaping slavery. Other instances include cases of Jews in Nazi Germany attempting to pass as "Aryan" and non-Jewish to escape persecution.

A phenomenon known as "reverse passing" has also been used to describe a number of instances of racial misrepresentation, in which certain individuals deliberately misrepresent their racial or ethnic background. A similar occurrence has been instances of persons passing or attempting to pass as Native Americans or First Nations people, sometimes given the name "Pretendians", a portmanteau of the words pretend and Indian.