Class and Privilege Theme Analysis

Within the novel’s broader examination of racial identity, The Vanishing Half looks at who, exactly, gets to live a prosperous life in the United States. When Stella transitions into white society, her identity as a Black woman isn’t the only thing she leaves behind—she also leaves behind a life of rural poverty and steps into a world of privilege and opportunity. The fact that she ends up with Blake, a successful white man from a wealthy family, isn’t necessarily a coincidence. After all, when she starts presenting herself as a white woman, she suddenly has access to an entirely new world full of opportunities, and these opportunities quickly build on one another. First, Stella poses as a white woman and secures a well-paid job at a respectable marketing firm. And as a result, she becomes friendly with her new boss, Blake, developing a relationship that eventually leads to a life of riches and worldly comforts. The path she follows, in other words, all begins with her decision to pose as a white woman, since these opportunities wouldn’t have been available to her if she had been forthright about her racial identity. In turn, the novel suggests that white people in the United States have easier access to life-changing opportunities than Black people do, since wealth and social class are often directly related to the various privileges—or disadvantages—that come along with a person’s racial identity.

All of Stella’s reasons for passing as white can be traced back to the fact that racism and discrimination made it extraordinarily difficult for Black people to financially support themselves in the mid-20th century. The intersection of racism and economic class is apparent very early in The Vanishing Half, when Stella and Desiree have to quit school to help their mother earn money—all because a group of racist men murdered their father and thus made it much harder for the Vignes family to stay afloat financially. Then, while Stella and Desiree work as housecleaners, their white employer sexually abuses Stella. Because he’s a powerful white man, Stella doesn’t think she can tell anyone about what he does to her, so she does the only thing she can think to do: she flees. Once she and Desiree reach New Orleans, they find work at a laundromat, but Stella eventually gets fired. If she doesn’t find a new job, she and Desiree won’t be able to survive in the city, which is why she ends up applying to a job at an all-white marketing firm. The reason she starts passing as white, then, is because it’s a necessary means of survival. She doesn’t pose as a white woman just because she wants to try out a new identity, but because the racist environment of the United States in the mid-20th century has deprived her and Desiree of stability and success.

Having shown how hard Stella worked to secure wealth and opportunity, the novel emphasizes the fact that white people living in a racist society begin life with an automatic advantage. Stella’s own daughter is a good example of how whiteness often comes with inherent privileges. Because Kennedy looks white and was raised in a white community, she doesn’t face the same challenges that Stella faced as a child and teenager. Of course, it’s true that part of the discrepancy between their lives has to do with the fact that Stella grew up poor, but such concerns cannot be separated from a discussion of race. After all, Stella’s financial struggles began when a racist mob killed her father, thus hindering her family’s ability to support themselves. There are also systemic ways that racism impacts economic class, like the fact that well-paying jobs like the one Stella finds in New Orleans only hire white people. To that end, while there are many impoverished white people who face extremely difficult challenges, the fact remains that they—at the very least—don’t have to deal with racist discrimination and exclusion on top of everything else they’re facing. Kennedy, for instance, has both the privilege of presenting as a white person and the privilege of coming from a wealthy family. Consequently, she doesn’t have to work as hard as her mother in order to attain stability. When it’s time for her to attend college, it doesn’t matter that her grades are terrible, since her parents make large donations to USC in order to bribe the admissions office into admitting her as a student. The novel therefore spotlights the glaring discrepancy between what it takes for white and Black people to succeed in the United States, ultimately implying that white people have an easier path to prosperity than Black people do.