What Birdie learns is that race, like many other issues of identity is mutable, if your appearance is "passable." One thing that is particualy interesting is that blackness is an ideal in the work, and the white daughter (Birdie) is not the favored daughter. "Danzy Senna's 1998 novel, Caucasia, casts blackness as the ideal, desired identity. For protagonist Birdie Lee and her sister, Cole -- offspring of a civil rights movement union between their white activist mother and black intellectual father -- whiteness simply pales in comparison. (Harrison-Kahan 19) to a great degree whiteness is constructed as a lesser identity to blackness, based on cultural richness and identity, through appearance and inner knowledge. This is reflective of the Black Power movement that is idealized in this work by the Black Panther movement. To be black was to be a personal source of pride and any lessor version of it elicited...
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