Why did Sarah Jane feel that she had to try to pass?

The second version of "Imitation of Life" may have been released in 1959 but the story starts in 1947. Early on Annie talks about coming from a place, presumably the south, where her color "deviled" her daughter. Spending most of her life in the south where Jim Crow was still the law it is understandable why she would have a problem with being black. While it is nor detailed in the movie the fact her father was light enough to be mistaken for white would have lead to some dicey situations in the south. Just use your imagination.

In grade school, in the New York, where classmates didn't know know she was black, she could be like anyone else. That ended when her mother brought her her raincoat. Now her classmates knew her secret and may shared their parents prejudices. During the late forties racism was socially acceptable even in the north.

The civil rights movement may have started during the fifties but to Sarah Jane, growing up in the New York area, it was still something on the fifteen minute TV newscasts of the time and buried in the newspapers. As far as her personal life was concerned it was cooler to be white; something her light skin allowed her to be. It also helped with her social life. She hooked up with Frankie. He found out about her background and beat her within an inch of her life. It was at this point she decided to start seriously distancing herself from her black identity if not completely from her mother.

She decided to lead a double life. She told her mother she was working at the library while she was really working at Harry's Club. It was a slezzy life but she was excepted. Her mother finds out and catches her act and once again exposes her. It is at this point she decides to brake with her mother and her racial identity completely.

As for Annie's health it is suggested early on she had some problems. When her daughter left her she lost the will to live. It can happen.

The real plot hole in "Imitation of Life" or other movies or novels is the fact that more often then not in the past when light skinned blacks passed for white it was their parents who helped or even pressured them to do it. They wanted their children to have the life denied them because of their skin color.


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She passed to get accepted.

The Civil Rights Movement may have only been a few years off, but it only changed laws. It takes longer to change people's hearts and minds. Even though there were no Jim Crow laws per se, it didn't take much brains to see that whites were treated much better than black people. And Sara Jane was plenty bright. She even said that she didn't want a life of going in back doors and sleeping in back rooms. A bigger question from Sara Jane's perspective would be, why _not_ pass, if you could?

How would she know that the civil rights movement was just a few years in the future? Are you able to divine what is going to happen in a few years? Of course not....nobody can. People live in the present, and the present for Sarah Jane was a time when being black meant being treated as a second class citizen, and having few opportunities.

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It didn't have as much to do with civil rights as it did Sarah Jane's own personal feelings about herself and her race. She obviously viewed blacks as an inferior race, compared to whites. Living with a white woman, who happens to be a glamorous movie star, while her own black mother was the maid, probably didn't help matters. Also, even though it may have been during the height of the Civil Rights era, being black was still harder. Not only was being black harder than being white but whites automatically had a superior standard of living (e.g., better education, employment, housing) and some people would rather take the easy way out, if they can. Believe it or not, there are some people in this modern era that are still passing for white.

All typos and misspellings courtesy of a public educational system.

To get advantages she wouldn't have had if she'd been white. Still very racist in 1950s in America. And everywhere I suppose. i would have done it too.

Seriously? THIS is why we are still accused of 'white privilege'. Given the choice, would you have preferred the treatment you received as a Black person, or a White one in '59?

Sarah Jane had eyes & ears and she could see that (a) colored people had de facto second-class status in 1947-59 America, and (b) she was thisclose to being perceived as white, which would open up the whole world to her. Hence the desire for the deception.

By 1959 only the desegregation of the armed forces and Brown vs. Board of Education had occurred. It was BY NO MEANS OBVIOUS in that year what the 1960's had in store as far as civil rights.