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.
James Weldon Johnson, author of the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Rachel Dolezal in 2015
Edward Stirling
The Englishman Archibald Belaney, commonly known as Grey Owl. Photo by Yousuf Karsh, 1936.
Pretendian is a pejorative colloquialism used to call out a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by professing to be a citizen of a Native American or Indigenous Canadian tribal nation, or to be descended from Native American or Indigenous Canadian ancestors. As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities from which they do not originate. It is sometimes also referred to as a form of fraud, ethnic fraud or race shifting.
Sacheen Littlefeather at the 45th Academy Awards in 1973, which she attended on behalf of Marlon Brando
Iron Eyes Cody and Roy Rogers in North of the Great Divide, 1950
Grey Owl (Archibald Stansfeld Belaney) feeding a Swiss roll to a beaver