Constructions of 'Race' in Nella Larsen's "Passing" and James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" (PDF)

Introduction:
Chapter 1, Introduction:
Negro Announces.
Remarkable Discovery.
Can Change Black To White in Three Days.
(Schuyler: p.9).
This quote from George S. Schuyler's short story Black No More advertises the benefit of a remarkable discovery' that empowers black people to free themselves from the resentments of racial separation and all the disadvantages that come with a life as a person of a dark skin color during the time of the separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws in the US.
Although this remarkable discovery' has yet only been invented in fictional literature, albeit rumors about Michael Jackson's skin bleaching therapy will supposedly never stop, it can be speculated that it would have had a breakthrough commercial success among the black community as generations of African Americans have suffered and are still suffering from discrimination and racism in the US, even now that the President is of African descent.
For that reason passing' narratives are part of a genre that is continuously popular in American literature and popular culture. Starting from the early slave narratives with the likes of Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom in 1860, which even includes a cross-dressing, thus gender-passing' story to Philip Roth's The Human Stain in 2000, or TV series such as Gangster Rapper Ice Cube's reality show Black.White. in 2006, passing' stories have always caught the attention of a wide audience.
This is, of course due to the fact that a passing' novel usually includes a lot of the ingredients that make up for an exciting read as the passing' protagonist is willing to give up everything, leave his family and friends behind to pursue his individual happiness and freedom, thus making the passing' character a symbol of American individualism looking for what is the most popular myth about The Land of the Free': the American Dream.
The focus in this paper though is not on individualism or the pursuit of the American Dream but on the constructions of race in two selected novels, Passing by Nella Larsen and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson. The essential assumption for this central question is, of course, that race as a category of human classification, evaluation and grading is constructed and is by no means a biological fact that literally only knows black or white with the vague mulatto as the in-between. [...]