identities

WASHINGTON — Rep. Augustus Hawkins, 81, vividly remembers riding a bus in his home town of Los Angeles many years ago when a white woman sat down beside him. “She kept moving over to be next to me,” he recalled, “and then she said, ‘You know, we sure are getting a lot of blacks in this neighborhood. I don’t like sitting next to them because they smell.’ ”

Hawkins, both curious and offended, asked the woman if he smelled. When she answered no, he said, “If I were to tell you that I’m black, what would you say?” Her answer: “I wouldn’t believe you.”

‘Assumed I Was Lying’

“That woman’s view has never changed,” said Hawkins. “She probably assumed I was lying just to kid her.”

What was a disagreeable incident for Hawkins, who represents such areas as Watts, South Gate and Huntington Park, is an all-too-common occurrence for many very light-skinned black people: They are born between two worlds. Some choose to join the white world, “passing” in order to gain privileges denied to black people. Others prefer to live black, gaining the satisfaction of feeling true to themselves and their race.

As Hawkins’ experience shows, it is not a new predicament.

But today, with interracial marriages more common–according to the Census Bureau, there were 218,000 black-white marriages by last year, compared with 51,000 in 1960–and racial confrontations once again grabbing headlines, the issue of what determines a person’s race is more prevalent in our society. By being mistaken for white, black people often see white behavior and attitudes–ranging from the humorous to the sinister–that would otherwise be concealed.

Mistaken for White

What follows are some of the stories of blacks who have been mistaken for white.

Carla Dancy, 34, now a lobbyist with a computer firm in Washington, received a welcome to Raleigh, N.C., that she will never forget. “I went there on a Saturday,” she said, “and my boss was taking me around, introducing me to people.

“One of the people who greeted me welcomed me by saying, ‘Hi, so glad to meet you. You’re going to love North Carolina. We still lynch niggers and burn crosses down here.’ ”

Dancy, noting that the man was a customer of the firm she was starting to work for, said nothing to him because she did not want to sour the professional relationship. She said: “I didn’t tell him. I don’t know what my face looked like or how I handled it in front of him. I said, ‘Yeah, I’m glad to be here,’ or something like that, and kept on going.”

But “someone must have told him after that that I am black,” she said, because “he could never look me in the eye for the four years we worked together. And he never said he was sorry. We never discussed it.” Three other white people present, including her boss, knew she was black and “were flabbergasted,” said Dancy.

On another occasion, she was waiting a long time in line for a North Carolina driver’s license, slogging her way through the bureaucracy and finally dashing out of the examination office only to find that her license said she was white.

“The people had never asked me my race,” she said, “so I had to go back and get the picture taken again. I don’t know why they did not have me fill out something that told my race.”

Dancy’s reaction to being mistaken for white is not uncommon, according to Joyce Ladner, a sociologist and professor of social work at Howard University. The mistake “is like calling you out of your name,” she said. “You want to be recognized for what you are.”

Ladner asserted that attention to race continues, even though many legal barriers to race-mixing have fallen, largely because the Reagan Administration fostered “a heightened awareness of racial tensions.”

“That unleashed people’s most base instincts,” she said.

Amid increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in the United States, race remains unshakable as the ultimate identifier. One can change dress, life style, weight and many other characteristics, but race, as Ladner put it, remains “fixed and immutable.”

When Carol Tyler, 54, a Red Cross executive in Columbus, Ohio, went to a blood banking meeting in Toledo, she and a few white associates started a conversation about another acquaintance, who was black. They were “speculating about her age.”

Amid the banter, one of the white women said, “Don’t you know you can’t tell about those people?”

Tyler remembered being “completely taken aback, but I didn’t say anything about it. The next day somebody said something about my age.” Recalling that moment, Tyler laughed and said, “Oh, that was the perfect set-up.” She said she told the group: “You know I’m one of those people whose age you can’t tell about.”

The white woman, who also was taken aback, “was so upset that she couldn’t look at me,” Tyler recalled. “I finally said, ‘Hey, I didn’t intend to make you feel bad, but you never know who you’re talking to.’ ”

Tyler said that when she saw the woman during annual meetings after the incident, “our relationship was a little strained.”

Like Tyler, many light-skinned blacks “enjoy being able to smoke out white people,” said Charles King, who as director of the Urban Crisis Center in Atlanta, conducts seminars for businesses, schools and government agencies to help them deal with racial problems.

But mistaken identity can lead to angry confrontations.

Derek Henson, 35, a Los Angeles hotel executive, was in a Veterans Administration counseling session earlier this year with a group of white men in Long Beach, when a casual conversation turned ugly.

“This guy was talking,” Henson recalled, “and he said, ‘You know, my daughter is hanging around with a whole lot of (blacks), and it’s really starting to (irritate) me.’ ”

A furious Henson told the man: “Excuse me, we’re all men here. We’re all veterans. We can talk (about sex and profanity) and all this stuff, but if you say that word one more time, I’m going to bust you over the head. . . .

“He was shocked. He was beet red. He followed me to my car and said, ‘No offense.’ I said there was offense.” Henson said he sees the man weekly and “he’s never brought it up again.”

Henson, who is suing a Beverly Hills hotel, charging that he lost his job as executive assistant manager last year when his boss found out he was black, said he frequently has to “pull people to the curb” to warn them of his color.

He told the moderator of the VA class that he was shocked that he would allow such a conversation.

“It was totally inappropriate, even if there weren’t a black person there. I looked at everybody in the class and I said, ‘You can talk all the (black) talk you want, but when I walk through the door, it ceases because I don’t want to hear it.’ ”

If Henson had not spoken out, it is unlikely anyone else would have, said King. “Very seldom will a white person correct another white person about race. They feel it’s impossible to get that person to change his mind.”

This cold reality conflicts with America’s idealistic view of itself, King said. “America lives in a myth of a melting pot, teaching children that this country is for everyone. But the practical reality is that equality has never been lived out.”

Hazel McConnell, a widowed 74-year-old retired federal employee who lives in Wakefield, Mass., dated a man long ago in Columbus, Ohio, “and we were out for a ride. All of a sudden, four white men drove up beside us on the side I was sitting on.

They shouted racial slurs, she recalled. “My friend reached down and said he had a club under the seat, just in case they stop and try to do anything. It was really scary. There were four of them, and I thought they might jump out and beat us up or something.”

Her friend was “really angry,” McConnell said, “and I was scared. It was a very threatening situation. But afterward, I felt he just expected it as something that you have to deal with when you’re a minority person.”

King says that, whether light- or dark-skinned, black people always expect the worst in race relations.

“Being black,” he said, “means you don’t expect to have a good time. There’s no shock value left in being black.”

Nonetheless, cases of mistaken identity can lead to some remarkable responses. Jessica Daniel, a Boston psychologist, said that some light-skinned blacks “go to extra lengths to prove they’re ‘blacker’ than somebody who is dark-skinned.” In the 1960s and 1970s, wearing the biggest Afro and the brightest dashiki provided the proof. Today, joining black groups and speaking out on black issues show blackness, Daniel said.

Why does a person’s race matter?

For Anthony Browder, a Washingtonian who studies and lectures on African culture, the answer is simple: “We live in a racist society where people are judged by the color of their skin.”

Underscoring his assertion, Browder was a key organizer of the third annual Melanin Conference, which explored political, economic and social issues involving skin color.

Browder sees the emphasis on color as part of the “divide and conquer syndrome” fostered historically by whites. “Many African Americans have bought into this idea that if you’re light, you’re all right,” he said.

Browder and others noted that light-skinned blacks used to be deemed by whites as more intelligent and better looking. Blacks, in turn, used various “tests” to determine whether a person was light enough to join certain organizations.

Nowadays, in an ironic twist, darker skinned blacks often are deemed more desirable by some employers who want to make sure their affirmative action employees are visible.

Gus Hawkins remembers the days after the 1965 Watts uprising, when he “had to be careful going through” the area he still represents in Congress because “there was a strong hostility to whites in the neighborhoods at that time. It hurt me not to be able to get around the area,” he said, but he was afraid someone “might take a shot at you” thinking he was “a white face passing through.”

In fact, Hawkins said, “I recall once in Will Rogers Park, I was walking from the clubhouse out to my automobile and some fellow ran down to attack me on the basis of ‘here’s whitey in our neighborhood.’ ”

Hawkins said friends who knew he is black rescued him. He did not report the incident, he said, but it taught him a lesson.

“Usually, in the areas where I have that situation,” he said, “I always have a person obviously black along with me. You learn to adjust to some of these situations and reduce the risk.”

One of the ways he reduces the risk of being mistaken by whites these days is by removing his Masonic ring, which identifies him as a member of the secret fraternity whose members use secret handshakes in greeting each other.

“I have had white Masons attempt to give me the (white) grip,” Hawkins said. “I have become so embarrassed . . . I just refuse to be a Mason when I’m traveling.”

Reflecting the experiences of many people like himself, Hawkins said, “I get accused on both sides. Blacks think that you’re passing, and whites think that you’re the uppity type and are challenging them. So, in a sense you’re an outcast. This has been a problem all through the years for me.”

And for many others, including Walter White, who led the NAACP through the 1930s and 1940s until he died in 1955. In his 1948 autobiography, he wrote of his “insistence, day after day, year in and year out,” on identifying himself as black, asserting that when white people discover his color they are upset by a “startling removal of the blackness.” Then, he said, “they find it impossible suddenly to endow me with the skin, the odor, the dialect, the shuffle, the imbecile good nature traditionally attributed to” black people.

“Instantly they are aware that these things are not part of me,” White wrote. “They think there must be some mistake. There is no mistake. I am a Negro.”

Many light-skinned black people today are just as avowedly black and take pains to avoid being mistaken for white–partly because they are proud of their race and partly because they want to avoid the pain of hearing other blacks denigrated. They, like White, say many whites are amazed that anyone would decline to be white.

Whites often assume black people are white because of context–where they live, shop and go for fun, say many blacks. To signal her race, Dancy said, her resume “has always said, NAACP, Urban League, African Methodist Episcopal Church–you know, things that make people look and say, ‘Oh!’ ”

She and others note that black people are more likely than whites to believe that a person is black, regardless of how light his or her skin may be.

Henson said: “We always know. I don’t care how light you are, if you have green eyes or whatever, there’s something about you, and when you pass each other, you’ll get that look.”

Whenever mistakes are made, light-skinned blacks say they often get blamed for them.

“It’s as if you’ve insulted people,” said McConnell, “by allowing them to believe you’re white. They think you’re supposed to say, ‘Don’t talk to me. I’m black.’ ”

Mistakes are made in all kinds of ways, as Beatrice de Munick Keizer of Boston knows. Personnel administrator at the headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Assn., she said a black woman came to her office and said, “It’s so wonderful to see a black person in this job.”

“Yes, it’s great,” replied de Munick Keizer, who is white.

Recalling the conversation, she said, “It all goes to show how meaningless these things (racial distinctions) are.”

Ideally, yes. Eventually, maybe. But not yet. After all, until six years ago Louisiana had a law saying anyone was legally black if she had more than 1/32 black blood. The law was repealed in 1983 because of a contentious court case involving Susie Guillory Phipps, who wanted to change the designation on her birth certificate from “colored” to “white.”

While the 1/32 law was repealed, Phipps is still legally black.

“We lost,” said her lawyer, Brian Begue. “The world wasn’t ready for a race-free society.”

Race freedom is available only to whites, said King. “They never have to deal with any problem of who they are.” He added: “One of the truisms is everyone in America has to adopt to another identity to succeed except a white male Protestant heterosexual. He is the only one who escapes the trauma of identity.”

For light-skinned blacks, there is no way out.

“They’re in a twilight zone,” King said.

The British government has secretly resettled thousands of Afghans in the United Kingdom for fear they might be targeted by the Taliban after their personal details were leaked, Defence Secretary John Healey revealed on Tuesday.

Details about the accidental data breach by a British soldier and the secret relocation programme for Afghans were made public after a rare court order known as a “superinjuction”, which barred the media from even disclosing its existence, was lifted on Tuesday.

Here is what we know about what happened and how the government responded:

Whose data was leaked and how did it happen?

A spreadsheet containing the personal information of about 18,700 Afghans and their relatives – a total of about 33,000 people – was accidentally forwarded to the wrong recipients by email in February 2022, Healey told lawmakers in the House of Commons.

These were people who had applied for relocation to the UK between August 2021 and January 7, 2022. That was the six-month period following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan after the US and allied forces withdrew from the country. Most had worked as translators, assistants or in other capacities for the British military in Afghanistan.

They had applied for the UK’s Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) scheme, which, like its predecessor, the Ex-Gratia Scheme (EGS), had been set up for Afghans who had worked for the British forces.

The EGS was originally established in 2013 following a long campaign by activists and media in support of people who had assisted the British military in Afghanistan and who were considered likely to face reprisals from the Taliban.

The British soldier at the centre of the leak, who had been tasked with verifying applications for relocation, is understood to have mistakenly believed the database contained the names of 150 applicants, when it actually contained personal information linked to some 18,714 people.

The soldier was under the command of General Sir Gwyn Jenkins, who was director of special forces at the time and now heads the British Navy. His name had also been suppressed by the court order until this week.

The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) became aware of the leak when someone else posted parts of the data on Facebook on August 14, 2023. The Facebook post was first spotted by an activist who was assisting Afghans who had worked with UK forces.

The activist contacted the MoD, saying: “The Taliban may now have a 33,000-long kill list – essentially provided to them by the British government. If any of these families are murdered, the government will be liable,” The Guardian newspaper reported.

How did the government respond to the leak?

The MoD told Facebook to take down the post with the leaked information, citing security threats from the Taliban. It also warned some 1,800 ARAP applicants who had fled to Pakistan that they or their families could be in danger.

The UK government, led by former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, then sought a court order barring any media disclosure of the data breach.

On September 1, 2023, a High Court judge in London issued a “superinjunction”, which not only prohibits the disclosure of any details but also forbids revealing that the order exists at all. That superinjunction was lifted on Tuesday following a campaign led by The Times newspaper in London.

In April 2024, the government created the Afghanistan Response Route (ARR) to support Afghans who were not eligible for ARAP but were considered at high risk of reprisals from the Taliban as a result of the data leak.

This scheme, which was kept secret, has now been closed, Healey told the House of Commons. However, he added that hundreds of invitations were issued to Afghans and their families under the scheme and these invitations “will be honoured”.

The government also launched the secret Operation Rubific to evacuate those Afghans deemed to be at risk directly to the UK.

How many Afghans have been relocated to the UK under the secret scheme?

As a direct result of the leak, the government says 900 people and about 3,000 relatives have already been flown to the UK under the secret relocation scheme and put up in hotels or military bases. In total, about 24,000 Afghans affected by the breach have either been brought to the UK already or will be in the near future, according to UK media reports.

Through broader resettlement schemes, 35,245 Afghans have so far been relocated to the UK, official data suggests.

Why is this information being disclosed now?

The court order barring the details about the leak from being disclosed was lifted at noon (11:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

Following several private hearings, a High Court judge ruled in May that the injunction should be lifted, citing, among other reasons, the inability of the public or parliament to scrutinise the government’s decisions.

British news outlet The Times reported it had spearheaded the two-year legal battle which resulted in the injunction being lifted.

That decision was, however, overturned by the Court of Appeal in July 2024, due to concerns about the potential risks to individuals whose information had been leaked.

Then came the “Rimmer review”.

Healey, a member of current Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ruling Labour party, said he was briefed about the leak when it happened as he was serving as shadow defence secretary at the time. However, he added that other cabinet members were only informed about the leak when Starmer’s party was elected to power in the general election of July 2024.

“As Parliamentarians – and as Government Ministers – it has been deeply uncomfortable to be constrained in reporting to this House. And I am grateful today to be able to disclose the details to Parliament,” Healey said on Tuesday.

Healey said that at the beginning of this year, he commissioned former senior civil servant and former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence Paul Rimmer to conduct an independent review.

Quoting the “Rimmer review” in Parliament on Tuesday, Healey said that four years since the Taliban’s takeover in Afghanistan, “there is little evidence of intent by the Taleban [sic] to conduct a campaign of retribution against former officials.”

He added that the information the Taliban inherited from the former Afghan government would have already allowed them to target individuals if they had wished. Therefore, Rimmer concluded it was “highly unlikely” that someone’s information being on the leaked spreadsheet would be a key piece of information enabling or prompting the Taliban to take action.

“However, Rimmer is clear – he stresses the uncertainty in any judgements … and he does not rule out any risk,” Healey said.

How safe are the people named in the leak now?

The Times reported that after the superinjunction had been lifted, a new temporary court order was issued, barring the media from publishing specific sensitive details about what exactly was in the database.

The Times said the government cited reasons of confidentiality and national security, arguing that the leaked list still poses a threat to the safety of the Afghans.

In a webpage published on Tuesday, the MoD states: “At present, there is no evidence to suggest that the spreadsheet has been seen or used by others who might seek to exploit the information; however, the UK Government cannot rule out that possibility.”

It now advises those who applied for the ARAP or EGS programmes before January 7, 2022, to exercise caution, avoid phone calls or messages from unknown numbers, limit their social media profiles and use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) where possible.

UK-based media outlets have reported that a law firm is suing the MoD on behalf of at least 1,000 Afghans affected by the data leak.

How much has the leak cost the UK government?

Healey said on Tuesday that it had already cost 400 million pounds ($540m) to bring an initial 900 Afghans and their 3,600 family members to the UK under the ARR.

However, this does not account for the expenditures by other government schemes to relocate Afghans to the UK. Healey estimated that the total cost of relocating Afghans to the UK was between 5.5 billion and 6 billion pounds ($7.4bn to $8bn).

Different figures for how much the leak cost the UK have emerged. An unnamed government official told Reuters that the leak cost the UK about 2 billion pounds ($2.7bn). Other outlets have reported that ARR is expected to cost the UK government a total of 850 million pounds ($1.1bn).

The images are jarring. Across the country, federal law enforcement officers in plain clothes and wearing ski masks and balaclavas are seizing and detaining protesters, students and even elected officials. These scenes evoke images of government thugs in violent regimes disappearing opponents.

This is not how policing should look in a democratic society. Which is why everyone — regardless of political affiliation or stance on immigration enforcement — should support bills being introduced in Congress to address this growing problem. Three pieces of legislation — under consideration or expected soon — would prohibit masking by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one Thursday from Reps. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) and one expected Friday from Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). These are obvious, common-sense measures that shouldn’t need to be codified into law — but given the reality today, and what’s being done on streets across the country, they clearly do.

In the United States, those tasked with enforcing the law are public servants, answerable to the people through their elected representatives. Wearing uniforms and insignia, and publicly identifying themselves, are what make clear an officer’s authority and enable public accountability.

That is why U.S. policing agencies generally have policies requiring officers to wear a badge or other identifier that includes their name or another unique mark, like a badge number. That is why — not so long ago — one of us wrote a letter on behalf of the Justice Department to the police chief in Ferguson, Mo., to ensure that officers were readily identifiable during protests. This letter was sent by the federal government, in the middle of the federal civil rights investigation of the Ferguson Police Department, because ensuring this “basic component of transparency and accountability” was deemed too important to hold off raising until the end of the investigation. Exceptions have long been made for scenarios such as undercover work — but it has long been understood that, as a general rule, American law enforcement officers will identify themselves and show their faces.

This foundational democratic norm is now at risk. In February, masked ICE officers in riot gear raided an apartment complex in Denver, one of the first times Americans saw agents hide their faces on the job. In March, the practice came to widespread attention when Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk was snatched by plainclothes ICE officers, one of them masked, while walking down a street in Somerville, Mass. Throughout the spring, bystanders captured videos of masked or plainclothes ICE enforcement actions from coast to coast, in small towns and big cities.

ICE says it allows this so officers can protect themselves from being recognized and harassed or even assaulted. ICE’s arguments just won’t wash. Its claims about how many officers have been assaulted are subject to serious question. Even if they were not, though, masked law enforcement is simply unacceptable.

At the most basic level, masked, anonymous officers present a safety concern for both the individuals being arrested and the agents. People are understandably far more likely to disregard instructions or even fight back when they think they’re being abducted by someone who is not a law enforcement officer. If the goal is to obtain compliance, masks are counterproductive. It’s far safer to encourage cooperation by appealing to one’s authority as a law enforcement officer — which almost always works.

Related, there is a very real and growing threat of law enforcement impersonation. There has been a disturbing uptick in reported incidents of “ICE impersonations,” in which private individuals dress as ICE or law enforcement officials to exploit the trust and authority invested in law enforcement. Just this month, the assailant in the recent assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker was posing as a police officer. Other examples are abounding across the country. As Princeton University noted in a recent advisory, when law enforcement officers are not clearly identifying themselves, it becomes even easier for impostors to pose as law enforcement. Replicas of ICE jackets have become a bestseller on Amazon.

Most fundamentally, masked detentions undermine law enforcement legitimacy. Government agencies’ legitimacy is essential for effective policing, and legitimacy requires transparency and accountability. When officers hide their identities, it sends the clear message that they do not value those principles, and in fact view them as a threat.

Federal law currently requires certain clear accountability measures by federal immigration enforcement officials, including that officers must identify themselves as officers and state that the person under arrest is, in fact, under arrest as well as the reason. That should sound familiar and be a relief to those of us who are grateful not to live in a secret police state.

But those words are cold comfort if you are confronted by someone in street clothes and a ski mask — with no way to know if they are who they say or whom to hold accountable if they violate your rights.

ICE officials cannot be allowed to continue to enforce our laws while concealing their identities. Transparency and accountability are what separate democracy from authoritarianism and legitimate law enforcement from the secret police in antidemocratic regimes. The images we are seeing are unrecognizable for the United States, and should not be tolerable for anyone.

Barry Friedman is a professor of law at New York University and author of “Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission.” Christy Lopez is a professor from practice at Georgetown University School of Law. She led the police practices unit in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 2010-2017.