Rachel Dolezal: ‘I’m not going to stoop and apologise and grovel’
March 3, 2017 6:21 PM   Subscribe

A long interview with Rachel Dolezal (who has since changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo) Topics discussed include her past, present on public assistance, and future memoir In Full Color.
posted by koavf (184 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for this, it was an interesting read.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:33 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


I remember when this story first broke and I had a mix of emotions ranging from anger for her being so opportunistic, insensitive and offensive to the black community to somewhat dismissive by just thinking she is just trying to live a strange fantasy. Well, like many things in life, reality isn't always simple to explain when it comes to humans.

If her narrative is true, I do feel for her though I cannot truly relate. Growing up in an extremely religious environment constantly feeling sinful and being told she is damned, if not beaten, for any natural human feeling will undoubtedly harm most people. When her first love was essentially raising a black baby, this would inextricably establish some unusual mental wiring for a 15 year old girl living in the remote wild of Montana. It would seem that early on, most likely on a subconscious level, she wanted to wrap her entire sense of self in her own idea of love. It just happened to be this love manifested as her own concept of black identity. In her mind, the risk of living openly as she desired but hidden was preferable to feeling broken, unloved and damned.

I still feel conflicted but to all my fellow humans, I hope she finds happiness without harming herself or others.
posted by Muncle at 6:49 PM on March 3, 2017 [22 favorites]


No. No. No. Do not give this person attention, clicks, or any space in your mind until you can find a significant percentage of African Americans that take her seriously. I'll bet you can't. She doesn't get to decide that she's black.
posted by rdr at 6:55 PM on March 3, 2017 [87 favorites]






Argh jinx
posted by Pallas Athena at 7:01 PM on March 3, 2017


until you can find a significant percentage of African Americans that take her seriously

How does this work exactly?
posted by rhizome at 7:06 PM on March 3, 2017 [24 favorites]




How does this work exactly?

I'll be the first data point. I'm black and I think she's a crazy fool. She's probably had a hard life but we have enough of our own crazies.

Obviously I don't know what how all black people feel but I'm fairly certain that my opinion is in the majority among African Americans.
posted by rdr at 7:12 PM on March 3, 2017 [39 favorites]


Wow, those Awesomely Luvvie stories from Rachel's old colleagues/students are something else.
posted by triggerfinger at 7:18 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


From the Luvvie Ayaji link:

LEMME CATCH YOU calling this woman anything but the Darth Becky (shoutout to Damon from VSB)that she is.

Almost ruined my keyboard, so thanks.

I feel bad for her, but I also don't. She's got agency, she's got choices, and she keeps doubling down and making shitty ones. She's got issues and she wants everyone to subscribe. I refuse and I wish everyone else would, too.
posted by rtha at 7:31 PM on March 3, 2017 [47 favorites]


Well I certainly knew at least one black person who wished they were white. What's so wrong about a white person who wants to be black?

When I first heard about her story it was easy to dismiss her actions as some kind of confidence scam. But when you dive deeper into her world it's pretty clear that she was earnest in her pursuit. She wasn't doing it because it was a way for to get fame and/or money; she was doing it because it felt right to her.

The real thing that her existence really brings to light is the fact that being a minority isn't just a matter of race--it's also a matter of culture. The African-American who grows up in affluent white America often can identify with the culture they were brought up in vs the culture that is supposed to be theirs based on the color of their skin. In (Rachael)'s case she simply decided to follow another culture because she connected with it.

If we ignore this cultural infusion then we have to make certain other admittances--like how only black people can play the blues or rap or play basket ball. The truth is anyone who wishes to do those things can do so regardless of the color of their skin. Is being a racial advocate any different?
posted by lester at 7:36 PM on March 3, 2017 [13 favorites]


Rachel Luther Queen

I don't

I

Rachel Luther Queen

Every time I think I've seen all the ways that a fundamentalist upbringing can produce broken people, I learn a new way
posted by Countess Elena at 7:37 PM on March 3, 2017 [56 favorites]


Dolezal might still have been leading that life today. But in spring 2015, the Spokane police chief wearied of his troublesome ombudsman chair, and hired a private investigator to dig around for dirt. The PI knocked on Larry and Ruthanne’s door in Montana. All it took was a few words and old family photographs, and the chief was rid of his irritant at a stroke. The press were tipped off, the “Rachel Dolezal race faker” story broke, and within days Dolezal’s whole life lay in ruins.

Now, to be clear, she deserved to be confronted with the truth, and based on everything coming from Awesomely Luvvie, she's not in a good way. Dolezal is an unfortunate distraction from the racism in that community. She's done a great disservice through her fraud.

So leave Dolezal or whatever she wants to call herself aside for a second.

I'm pretty sure that, had the "irritant" not been her, the Spokane police department would have gone after anyone who was a legitimate critic, it's just that we wouldn't have heard about it so readily.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:38 PM on March 3, 2017 [13 favorites]


So I think that there are a lot of interesting issues that could have been brought up by basically anyone who is not so terrible. Like, there are actually some really interesting issues based on how people self define their race - by skin tone, by heritage, by upbringing, by how they feel. But she's just such a red hot mess that we never get to talk about any of them because it's just set on fire by her inventing KKK attention and stuff like that.
posted by corb at 7:43 PM on March 3, 2017 [22 favorites]


> What's so wrong about a white person who wants to be black?

Because white people (in the US) have literally since the beginning of our history taken everything from black people, by force. Their lives, their agency, their children. Their freedom.

Also, you might notice that opting out of being black is very, very rare and dependent solely on melanin levels, and the consequences of being outed are enormous and can be fatal. Why? Because white people set the rules, at the founding of our nation, and though those rules have been obscured somewhat, they are still very much in effect. White people decide who is "white" enough to be white.
posted by rtha at 7:43 PM on March 3, 2017 [144 favorites]


> Is being a racial advocate any different?

Oh, I forgot to add:

I know people who advocate for people not of their racial or ethnic background, and they do so alongside people of those backgrounds without claiming to be of those backgrounds themselves. They are effective advocates and allies. And without the deception!
posted by rtha at 7:45 PM on March 3, 2017 [58 favorites]


Clearly she's got issues stemming from her fucked up fundie upbringing, no argument there. But for fuck's sake, she's not a goddamned murderer, nobody died, and she's got little kids to feed. Maybe people could flag it and move on since her life has been ruined? No, must have more blood?

Jesus Christ, America.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 7:51 PM on March 3, 2017 [42 favorites]


People are attackang her because she's a liar. Rachel Dolezal lied about her racial identity, calling herself black, while working as an anti-racist activist and professor of African Studies! People aren't still angry because she hasn't been punished enough; people are still angry because she doesn't seem to believe she's done anything wrong. She's shown herself to be another white person who believes that blackness is hers to appropriate and use for her own ends. Acting as though people should just get over her deliberate deceptions and her fanning the flames of racial hatred by sending herself fake hate packages from the KKK is asking quite a lot. I admire others who may be in a place of forgiveness. As a white person who strives to be an ally, I want to shake her by the shoulders and scream, "It's about racism, Rachel, not about YOU."
posted by epj at 7:57 PM on March 3, 2017 [87 favorites]


Maybe she could stop trying to make a buck off her deception. I'm not trying to stone anyone to anything, and framing the objections to her continued, willing engagement as wanting her dead is really fucking gross.
posted by rtha at 8:14 PM on March 3, 2017 [30 favorites]


There are a ton of conversations around identity, the confluence of race and culture, the history of white suppression, exploitation, and appropriation of black culture, growing up in a religiously repressive and physically abusive household, and other related topics. All are incredibly important conversations to have. Rachel Dolezal is a terrible person to have them with or about. Plenty of people, from respected scholars to authors to comedians, including actual people of color, have spent their lives pushing these conversations forward, sometimes in ways that make us uncomfortable, but rarely in ways as toxic as Dolezal. These conversations shouldn't stop, but please let them happen with her far, far away.
posted by zachlipton at 8:17 PM on March 3, 2017 [18 favorites]


As I read about her, I think, "awesome, she identifies with the black struggle, appreciates black culture. Why not just do that, and be an ally? Why do you have to say that you *are* black?"

And then I realize that this line of thought, this logic has a lot of similarities to TERFs, who say transwomen aren't women because they were "born men" and bear male priviledge.

And then I'm like, "oof, it seems unfair to compare trans folk's struggle to hers. She seems like she's got some trauma and mental issues and needs to see a professional."

Then I think, "wait, didn't we just get past (or not yet get past) calling trans folk and gay people mentally ill? How am I qualified to judge this?"

Basically, I just am not sure I'm comfortable taking a stance here, and it's really confusing.
posted by explosion at 8:19 PM on March 3, 2017 [99 favorites]


The most effort I can give her is an eyeroll.

She grew up in this fantasy fundamentalist bullshit. These people have to somehow try to believe that Noah got 600,000 beetles on the ark - 300,000 breeding pairs. Come on, how could he tell male from female beetles, what did he keep them in, what did he feed them for 40 days?

Come on, how did that 600 year old dude collect all those beetles?

She seems like a screwed-up person that just CAN NOT get it and any more attention seems like just exploiting her and distracting us. Let's move on. There's some really serious issues going regarding race right now. I think we should pay attention to that stuff.
posted by ReluctantViking at 8:20 PM on March 3, 2017 [4 favorites]


She also got a damn book deal.
posted by Rainbo Vagrant at 8:23 PM on March 3, 2017 [12 favorites]


“This is obviously an issue a lot of people want to say things about,” reflects Dolezal now. “And it needs to be talked about, so it’s kind of helpful to create a punching bag. There’s nobody saying, ‘Well, that’s racist if you say that about Rachel’, or ‘That’s sexist if you say that about Rachel.’ There’s no protected class for me."

It is... impressive how even in her own words and her own summary about responses to her actions, she refuses to own the things she's done or acknowledge why reasonable people would find them problematic. Damn.
posted by sciatrix at 8:25 PM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]


I feel about her the same way I feel about those 'Stolen Valor' whack-a-doodles.
You can play whatever silly dress-up games make you happy. When you start committing fraud to further those games you lose all sympathy from me.
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:44 PM on March 3, 2017 [10 favorites]


I knew a white woman who did something similar to Dolezal. I'm not sure she ever claimed to BE black, but she said she "felt black" and she joined a black church, did the tanning, the hair, the clothes, etc. I'm struck by the similarities -- this woman had some trauma in her background (not as serious as Dolezal's, I don't think; but I do know she was treated mental illness and it was a tough struggle). Her self-concept really centered on being a victim -- a victim of, variously, her parents, society's sexism, and later racism. She had a really strong need to be at the center of stories, to be the protagonist, which is something that stands out to me about Dolezal; and, like Dolezal, she was something of a fabulist when she had to be to get herself the spotlight. She struck me as deeply insecure and immature in the way that she was never okay with NOT being the center of attention and the star of a story that was moving forward with a coherent plot narrative (which, for her, the sole narrative was "victim fights oppression"). When plot elements were needed, she would drop them in, create events that never happened, that made sense to her emotional understanding of herself. The story about Dolezal sending herself threats and nooses strikes me as similar.

Anyway, eventually that story stopped feeling validating to her (like the sexism and the parental alienation had before it), and she converted to a minority religion and became hyperreligious which came with a new wardrobe, new vocabulary, new hairdo, new manners and morals, and now her victim narrative centers on her faith, and plus she gets to martyr herself and suffer for God. (I'm sure she's given up 300 billion unreasonable things, like electricity, and shoes, for Lent.) It's ... actually not the worst thing because her pastor seems to know her deal and doesn't let her submerge herself into her victimhood thing too far? And there's a legit outlet there for suffering narratives where your pain is redeemed by God? But she always feels one step away from joining an actual cult.

I have very little contact with her because -- I find her victim narrative, and her successive identities assumed to better live out her victim narrative, really stressful. (And in her earlier victim iterations she did some actual harm with her made-up stories about being victimized. This one seems a little less-fraught since she can like kneel on frozen peas or whatever to suffer and overcome.) I have a lot of sympathy for her because it's really obvious she struggles a lot with her self-concept, her life, finding her place in the world. But otoh she's kind-of a whirlpool of drama threatening to drag everyone down with her, and you just can't lie and lie and lie for years and years without damaging all your relationships. (I truly don't think she realizes when she's lying, the stories she tells about herself are so emotionally true to her and so important, and she iterates them, slowly exaggerating the details over time.) It's sad, and it's hard to watch, and I kind-of understand why she does what she does, but that doesn't really excuse it or and it definitely doesn't make bad actions she does in pursuit of her narratives okay.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:48 PM on March 3, 2017 [50 favorites]


Wow. It's a pretty complete universe she's built for herself. Too bad nobody else is nutty enough to share it with her.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 9:15 PM on March 3, 2017


Mod note: Folks, this subject is hard on a bunch of often-intersectional levels, and if we're going to have the conversation, the one thing that is absolutely off the table is telling people what they are and are not allowed to have a problem with. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:37 PM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]


What really strikes me is how much her claim of being attached to black culture, and her knowledge about black and African cultures are so at odds. She claims to be black while attempting to marginalize women of color? She puts all of this effort into changing her appearance, and then renames herself from two different languages? It's an oddly white/colonialist thing to do; it flat out shows she is identifying with her fantasy of "black" and "African" without actually engaging with the Igbo and Fulani people she is stealing from. That's what makes it appropriation - she's not actually interested in finding out even what a cursory google search might tell her on her way to cargo cult "authenticity".
posted by Deoridhe at 9:57 PM on March 3, 2017 [49 favorites]


I do like how the piece alludes to her rich history of fabulism whilst urging us to take the other half of what she says at face value.

I certainly believe she had a tough childhood; I also believe what she did was wrong and inappropriate. There is an interesting article hiding out in here about social construction of transgression and norms - and the enforcement/punishment thereof, insider/outsider stuff. But I feel like the writer is missing it by edging around the huge elephant in the room that is race and its treatment in America today.

Reducing discussion to Dolezal's limited sphere does a disservice - and arguably replicates the most problematic aspects of her own actions.
posted by smoke at 10:16 PM on March 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


One thing about her appropriation is that she did not claim culture in the name of white people. Perhaps aligned with the religious victimization-drive mentioned by Eyebrows, she didn't want to be a white person, and so invited (so to speak) interactions with her representation of herself and her desired black culture as a black person. To varying degrees of success.

Now she obviously wasn't the best person to walk this path. Her strategy wound up having some bugs. However, I believe she felt it was honorable, perhaps eliding the privilege that allows her to do so. But she spit that silver spoon out fairly completely, I'm certain she devoted a lot of thought to her ongoing act. Then someone ratted her out.

She wasn't that high in any organizations, by my read kind of an up and comer, and she apparently did decent work. I dunno, I'm not trying to go to bat for her, but there's an element of "banish the race traitor" in the story that bugs me.
posted by rhizome at 10:30 PM on March 3, 2017 [6 favorites]


But she spit that silver spoon out fairly completely

Except the part where she sued her college for discrimination against her for being white??

More broadly, I'm sorry: you can't "spit out" the silver spoon of whiteness. This is not to downplay, or ignore, the difficulties that white people can face, but put a black person in her exact situation growing up, and I guarantee it would be harder for the black person than the white person. You can't erase that privilege. And you certainly can't do it by exploiting opportunities, roles, identities that are traditionally reserved - and rightly so - for people who are culturally black.

She took the suffering of millions to fuel her own personal narrative. GTFO.
posted by smoke at 10:41 PM on March 3, 2017 [53 favorites]


I have to say that I’m surprised by some the reactions here and to this story in general over the past 18 months. A few things that don’t seem to be talked about very much:
  • Was her work with the NAACP any good? It seems like it must have been for her to advance, right? Did she actually help anyone?
  • She got a book deal after 30 publishers turned her down, so I would imagine that the amount of money she made was paltry. I don’t think it’s unfair to let her tell her own side of the story and she has hardly profited off of all this unwanted attention and scrutiny: in point of fact, she has suffered quite a bit.
  • The criticism mostly stems from some issues about cultural appropriation—I’m pretty on the fence about that—but it also veers off into truly cruel and malicious mockery of her for (allegedly) being mentally ill. Okay, so maybe she is—does that mean it’s okay to turn her life into a joke? To publisher her private correspondence? To spread her semi-nude photos on the Internet? She may be a self-indulgent artist and not a very good one but there are a lot of those. The purely academic or theoretical criticism of her is more-or-less warranted but this is not: it’s shameful.
If she is someone who is supposedly monstrous or has done something wrong, it should be balanced with what good she has evidently done. She has in no way profited off of the past year and a half which is surely the worst one of her life. And if she is actually afflicted somehow—either by abuse, some chemical imbalance, or a general disjuncture with reality—does that really justify all of the hatefulness? What did this woman ever do to anybody to warrant that? As far as I can tell, nothing. I hope she can find a way to take care of her family, be gainfully employed, and figure out ways to help in her community, which are really baseline things that I wish for everyone and it seems like that is pretty much all she ever asked as well. Her inflated sense of self-importance or victimhood notwithstanding, she is still a human being who is trying to live her life and I imagine that if any of us had our most embarrassing or shamefully selfish moments broadcast as a joke for a few years, it would be a nightmare.
posted by koavf at 10:43 PM on March 3, 2017 [34 favorites]


True story, the other day I met a person who looked and sounded basically "white" American, and who had recently found out that one of their grandparents was black. This person decided they were going to change their name from an ethnic white surname to the surname of their black grandparent, and raise their young children children as black as well. And upon hearing this I was like, "wow that's pretty cool."

But, I wonder, what if, after having changed their identity, they found out, years later, that the grandparent hadn't really been genetically their grandparent, but had just adopted their parent. Would the young children have to go back to being white after having converted to black and raised as black? Does Paris Jackson, with a black father and a black family, get to think of herself as black? If, the answer is, sorry, no, does it change if it turns out that she's got a black great-x-grandparent somewhere in the distant past?

I guess, as a black person who wasn't really raised that strongly in the black tradition, I find it hard to get really worked up about Dolezal. If she wants to be black that much, I'm not unokay with it.
posted by xigxag at 10:55 PM on March 3, 2017 [23 favorites]


Sociopath.

Imagine someone like Kalanick saying any of this. Equally fraught?
posted by aramaic at 11:06 PM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


> Was her work with the NAACP any good? It seems like it must have been for her to advance, right? Did she actually help anyone?

Why did she insist on lying about her background? Lots of people who aren't African American advocate with and on behalf on African Americans and causes that pertain to them and they do it without lying.

And she's not owed a book deal.

This country has a long history of "one drop" and it's not people of color who made that rule, and it's not white people who have paid the price for breaking it. Pretending like it never existed doesn't make it go away. Pretending like it doesn't matter doesn't make it go away. We have actual "hi happytameetchya" white supremacists in the White House, so pretending like the past is past is an even greater folly.

Dolezal doesn't need to be ridden out of town on a rail but she could really help the process along by not insisting that she had a right and still has a right to deceive people about her background and her motives, and it would be really nice if she'd stop appropriating all over the place. It'd be nice if she'd at least act like she was listening.
posted by rtha at 11:25 PM on March 3, 2017 [32 favorites]


Jay Smooth's comments on this woman are worth remembering, "Empathy Does not Preclude Accountability".

She has not been accountable to the community and people she hurt.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 11:31 PM on March 3, 2017 [26 favorites]


"Come on, how did that 600 year old dude collect all those beetles? "

He had a lot of time on his hands.
posted by el io at 12:11 AM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


Basically, I just am not sure I'm comfortable taking a stance here, and it's really confusing.

It's a lot less confusing once you realize that pretending to be black is not the same as being trans.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:13 AM on March 4, 2017 [44 favorites]


Mod note: Folks, let's please move away from the "is this like/not like being transgender" thing, which was a big internet troll drive back when the Dolezal story was first making the rounds, and which we don't want to abet here, even with simplistic (rather than malign) off-the-top-of-the-head "I don't know anything about it, but ..." apples/oranges thought experiments.
posted by taz (staff) at 1:43 AM on March 4, 2017 [15 favorites]


Was her work with the NAACP any good? It seems like it must have been for her to advance, right? Did she actually help anyone?

I can't help thinking there's a black person - an actual black person - who would have been great at that job, but whose chair at the table had a white woman in it instead.

It's not that her voice was bad, it's that her voice is there *instead* of actual black people. She's sucking up the bandwidth.
posted by Jilder at 2:05 AM on March 4, 2017 [41 favorites]


Yeh. It's weird. It's almost as if America had a 400 year history of policing racial boundaries in the name of profiting off the labor of black people but we've had a black president so why don't we just let a crazy, lying white woman dictate the frame in which we discuss racial fluidity. Who else could we possibly chose?
posted by rdr at 2:55 AM on March 4, 2017 [46 favorites]


It's not really that weird given the history of race in the US. If she was pretending to be Swedish-American I don't think this would be such an inflammatory topic.

(Incidentally one of my husband's school friends did decide he was really Italian in middle school, and changed his name from *WASPY name* to the most Italian name he could think of, which given he was 12 was the name of a well-known ice cream company. He did get the piss taken, but he ended up learning Italian and moving to Italy so happy ending for him. I don't think he kept the name.)
posted by tinkletown at 2:58 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure that trying to make analogies with Americans of European decent identifying with the countries of that (or, heck, any other) European decent with this situation. Despite the shifting boundaries of "who is white and who isn't" in the US, Black people have always been on the wrong side of that line. I think the twisty story of Diallo (nee Dolezal) has to be anchored firmly in discussions of race and specifically the Black experience in America. It's already hard enough to grasp and discuss without arguing about whether analogies, no matter how appealing, actually fit.

For example, she's actually made it hard to talk about her with the name change. Because,on the one hand, it's a weird choice and it plays into a ton of horrible stuff (e.g. "Black people have funny names which are funny") and it's super stunty the way everything she'd done so far has been stunty. On the other hand, the ability to choose one's name and have it respected has been very critical -- American slaves literally had their names taken away from them, and, upon emancipation, had to deal with what to call themselves with little or no knowledge of their heritage, and then it came up again in the 60s (50s) after a century had shown a lot less progress than promised, Black people made a huge range of decisions about how they were going to relate to their names, something that they have gotten the stick for ever since then. So respecting a Black person's name, which they embraced, whether it was given them by their previous owner or a parent or self selected, is a really important part of respecting that person's agency and personhood. So Diallo has created a situation where if we use her name, we are buying into her narrative (which is a problem) and if we don't, we play the same game that Whites have been playing for at least 60 years (which is a problem). Did she plan this? I don't know, but I'm kind of resenting it right now.

This does resonate with problems other oppressed groups have around names, but it also has specifically American Black elements that get lost when we make analogies.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:29 AM on March 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


And, on another track, I get the feelings of empathy. She seems to have had a really difficult life, and there is probably some mental illness in the mix, and watching a person who's maybe not entirely competent to defend herself getting mocked and told she's full of shit and used as a stick to beat the community she supposedly supports is unnerving and not pleasant. But, if we let empathy for an at least somewhat (publicly) delusional White woman subtract from our empathy toward the really serious problems in American Black communities, and distract from very real threats toward those communities, we're all worse off. No one's gotten the help they need. And that's what's wrong with this woman who sucks all the air out of this room.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:35 AM on March 4, 2017 [12 favorites]


Because, on the one hand, it's a weird choice and it plays into a ton of horrible stuff (e.g. "Black people have funny names which are funny") and it's super stunty the way everything she'd done so far has been stunty... So Diallo has created a situation where if we use her name, we are buying into her narrative (which is a problem) and if we don't, we play the same game that Whites have been playing for at least 60 years (which is a problem). Did she plan this? I don't know, but I'm kind of resenting it right now.

I don't think it's stuntier than anyone else who takes a name they prefer. I don't see anything in her story that makes me think she chose it insincerely, or chose it to mock funny ethnic names -- that would be pretty out of character for her. It seems like she probably chose it because she likes it.
posted by value of information at 3:53 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's stunty because it's doubling down on her (untrue) narrative. Her sincerity or lack thereof can't be a "deciding factor," because we cannot ever know her sincerity. So I'm going to use Diallo because that is her name, but I'm not going to pretend that it's not another move in a story that's all about her rather than Black people in America in general.

(Amusingly, I deleted three different analogies while writing this.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:07 AM on March 4, 2017 [10 favorites]


Mod note: Earlier comment deleted. Sorry for any confusion, but no, as I said earlier.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:50 AM on March 4, 2017


One especially troubling aspect of the saga that I didn't pick up until this article is the reason this came to light. The Spokane police chief, who didn't like being questioned by a black woman (how dare she) hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on her, and succeeded in discrediting his critic. I'd like to see more attention paid to how the police chief runs his department as well.
posted by slmorri at 6:10 AM on March 4, 2017 [38 favorites]


I don't know how this can not be a poll on Dolezal, so I'll just add that I think she is tiresome and oblivious.
posted by dmh at 6:10 AM on March 4, 2017


I feel about her the same way I feel about those 'Stolen Valor' whack-a-doodles.

(stolen valor) An even more direct parallel, I'd think, is plastic shamanism and other versions of the phenomenon of non-indigenous people identifying as indigenous and even as authorities on indigenous culture or issues, which is shockingly common over the last century. (Though probably not shocking in its frequency to indigenous people themselves, I'd wager.)

I was thinking about the Diallo/Dolezal story recently while reading about the guy who was taken on as a consultant on Native American issues for the Star Trek: Voyager television series, despite having been outed more than ten years previously.
posted by XMLicious at 6:12 AM on March 4, 2017 [18 favorites]


I'm going to break the no-analogies rule because I found an actually applicable analogy: this is a lot like Joseph Boyden, a "celebrated Canadian author who writes about First Nations heritage and culture" and "was an honorary witness at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission", whose claim of Nipmuc and Ojibway heritage has been questioned after an investigation by an Aboriginal Peoples Television Network reporter.
posted by heatherlogan at 6:15 AM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I don't know whether it matters, but she took on some of the risks of being black.

If she'd been hassled by the police when plausibly presenting as black, I don't know whether she'd have said she was really white, but I don't think they would have taken it well if she did.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:15 AM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


I understand that the topic makes many uncomfortable. Racial identity has no specific genetic or family origin basis. It is something we invented as a society. We impose it on some individuals because of their appearance. We let others choose because of ambiguous appearance.

Then there is the portrayal of various races on screen and stage by various actors often in a penorative way.

Add to this also the industry of skin and hair altering cosmetics, plastic surgery and fashion that reinforce racial identities and create ambiguity and fluidity.

This isn't stolen valor. A military service record is a quantifiable and probable thing. Race isn't, it is more like the denfintion of obscenity -- we know it when we see it.

Consider how often contradictory and complicated our definitions and perception of race are. Consider that this women has been presented to us through a view created by her enemies to destroy her and then supplemented by tabloid news, trolls and gossip sites. That's the narrative we start with. Perhaps we should reconsider the narrative we've been given. We ought to at least let this woman tell it.
posted by humanfont at 6:29 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


Everything about this makes me sick.

Everyone defending this woman makes me sick.

White women can get away with literally anything up to and including stealing and exploiting black cultures, black history, black trauma, and black pain and every other white person will give her a free pass. She's out here exploiting her position of white fragile femininity (note all this concern trolling over her trauma and identity and consider how often white liberals give black women's traumas such kid gloves) in order to put on blackness like a costume when it's convenient for her and take it off when she stops.

I'm disgusted and I'm exhausted.
posted by sea change at 6:30 AM on March 4, 2017 [57 favorites]


Is there any independent confirmation on the lousy childhood? Or is she the only source for that, too?

This whole mess has got to have caused some difficulties for people who really are light skinned. But it feels kind of wrong to spend much time mocking the mentally ill, and I'm not black and not well enough informed about some issues within black communities to talk much about it.
posted by dilettante at 6:31 AM on March 4, 2017


If it turned out she had one drop of black blood, the whole narrative would change. But she wouldn't be a different person.

To me it feels like enforcing Jim Crow with howls of derision isn't really that progressive. Yes there is danger of white people taking black identities, and that is (more) important to defend and work against, generally. But I don't think she really represents that in any particularly powerful or meaningful way. I'm not sure there is enough evidence she is doing so much more negative than positive, that she deserves the storm of abuse she has received over this. Her experience and life is an interesting one, not shared by most appropriators.
posted by iotic at 6:42 AM on March 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


Yeah, mocking the mentally ill is pretty much what it feels like at this point.

I mean, does this person look like they're thriving? It's not like she's an ongoing threat and she has children to support. Everyone knows what she has done.

This has a whiff of misogyny to it as well.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 6:48 AM on March 4, 2017 [11 favorites]


I'm not sure there is enough evidence she is doing so much more negative than positive

Fabricating KKK attacks and reporting them to the police and/or other authorities seems to have been a pretty constant factor in her dealings with the world, and isn't exactly a positive thing.
posted by Dysk at 6:49 AM on March 4, 2017 [18 favorites]


White women can get away with literally anything up to and including stealing and exploiting black cultures, black history, black trauma, and black pain and every other white person will give her a free pass

Destitute, unemployable and ostracized, forced to contend with death threats and a unending torrent of abuse from the internet. You have a strange idea of what getting away with it looks like.
posted by humanfont at 6:57 AM on March 4, 2017 [24 favorites]


Any claim that criticisms of Rachel Dolezal are misogynist are utterly baseless. She is causing active harm to, stealing from, and exploiting black women and black communities. But for some mysterious reason*, no one is concerned about that misogyny. Peak white feminism: white women can do anything they want and call it empowering™, no matter the consequences to anyone else -- and anytime accountability is demanded, they can scream misogyny and pretend to have the moral high ground.

What a joke.

*white supremacy
posted by sea change at 7:01 AM on March 4, 2017 [32 favorites]


Some have mentioned it above, but I think it's worth highlighting the threats she fabricated. That's not a question of self-identification. It's a matter of adding to an existing narrative that racism isn't real, that threats against minorities are made up as a sympathy ploy, and that it's all a big scam. Her lies hurt the reputation of minority activists in general, and the NAACP in particular, across the country in a substantial way.
posted by pykrete jungle at 7:02 AM on March 4, 2017 [28 favorites]


Maybe she's got a weird-ass political version of Munchausen Syndrome. or something.

/half-baked, maybe even raw theory
posted by jonmc at 7:09 AM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


From my perspective no one gets to self-identify as a race, it's contextual, externally assigned and constructs into an social identity aligning along intersecting axes of power.

The power race has over people is a totalitarian social order borne out of a power play by western colonialism seeking to dominate all nonwhite lands and there's no escaping how you were born into and raised inside this multi-century spectacle of wealthy white people sowing the seeds of despair and violence on nonwhite lands.

As a result of my perspective on history, my opinion is that a white person appropriating and trying to pass into blackness is an exploitation of the power that constructed race which resulted in subjecting billions of people to misery so therefore it is something I can't support or defend in good conscience.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:17 AM on March 4, 2017 [17 favorites]


This thread is gross and frustrating. Look: I have (jokingly) been granted "honorary" status among some Korean and some Jewish friends; I can appreciate the culture; I speak some of the language; I love the food! None of these things are barred to me and I don't have to actually claim that I am Korean or Jewish to participate! (See also: the honorary Whites who will be allowed to join the Blaxit). There is absolutely nothing that ever prevented this woman from Loving All Things Africana and tailoring her hair, dress, music, food, and hell, even name preferences accordingly, without the appropriative claims which actually disempowered African Americans.
posted by TwoStride at 7:19 AM on March 4, 2017 [26 favorites]


... my opinion is that a white person appropriating and trying to pass into blackness is an exploitation of the power that constructed race which resulted in subjecting billions of people ...

How about the other way, black people performing whiteness, e.g. (arguably) Michael Jackson? We tend to police that pretty strongly, too. If we say these enforced essentialist boundaries really are immutable and absolute, how does that form part of working against the results of historical imposition of biologically irrelevant "racial" categories?
posted by iotic at 7:24 AM on March 4, 2017


Blackness have no actual power over whiteness. The reverse is not a fair comparison.

The only perspective I have on that is the concept of passing for black people as a form of survival and is not something I'm qualified to make any reasonable observations on other than I can't imagine how difficult and nerve-wracking it must have been.

As far as making mutable cultural boundaries aligned along something other than race, well, I'm all about deconstructing white supremacy as the first necessary step. That mostly involves a lot of reading works published by black feminists and being willing to keep getting it wrong until I get it better.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:34 AM on March 4, 2017 [12 favorites]


You know what frustrates me the most about the reaction to Dolezal? How most white people know exactly nothing about race, and yet still feel entitled to insist that their beliefs hold thrall over everyone else's. Just because you don't understand the harms of racism doesn't mean that you get to say that Dolezal is objectively doing no harm and thus we should all be letting her be and then painting the PoC who actually have to deal with this racism as noisy, blood-thirsty, and petty. Just because you don't understand the different ways gender and race are socially constructed, doesn't mean you should be drawing sloppy analogies to being transgender and then painting the PoC who do understand the differences as bigoted and not as progressive as you. Just because you don't understand the one-directional way that power flows between black people and white people, doesn't mean you should be claiming that since some black people wish they could have white privilege means that both sides do it, and painting the PoC who do understand power dynamics as hypocrites.

For god's sake, if you don't know the answer, it's okay for you to put down your hand, shut up, and sit down.
posted by Conspire at 8:01 AM on March 4, 2017 [72 favorites]


All I can say is 'right.' These things, based on some years of observation, generally degrade into some general signalling show of 'whose progressive credentials' are more authoritative, and ergo, their opinion has more weight. It's sort of tiresome.

My only take is that this woman is very obviously mentally disturbed, and that's pretty clear from the overall outcome of this scenario. It's a sad situation, and it's very ghoulish, approaching macabre to dissect it like this, in my taste.

The woman's on food stamps. She's got a family who's suffering. Hooray. 'Justice' was 'served', I guess?

As to why the local NAACP or her other organizations never investigated things at even the most cursory level prior, remains an open issue to me. This never came up at even the most casual level? No one said-- 'hey, you know, Rachel seems a little off to me?'
posted by mrdaneri at 8:10 AM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


White women can get away with literally anything up to and including stealing and exploiting black cultures, black history, black trauma, and black pain and every other white person will give her a free pass.

I don't think this comment thread (or the wider response to Dolezal's claim of black identity) supports the claim that "every other white person will give her a free pass."
posted by layceepee at 8:17 AM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Folks, if your comment is of the form "but what about THIS OTHER example, why isn't THAT a problem, HUH", please take a moment to consider whether there's some really, really, really obvious reason why the cases are relevantly different.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:18 AM on March 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


9 Ridiculous Things People Need to Stop Saying About Rachel Dolezal. From last year, but some people could probably use the refresher.
posted by TwoStride at 8:19 AM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Perhaps she should convert to Islam. Probably the quickest way of abandoning your whiteness these days
posted by iotic at 8:25 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I will not empower a liar by using her alias. It's the same way I feel about the white people I know who take Native names to give themselves indigenous cache and even power in the indigenous community (who may or may not realize the intrusion).

Fuck that shit. Naming ceremonies in some places have sacred power, and when a white person takes it upon themselves to honor themselves with a name instead of being given that honor by someone else, they are being shitty little shits. Just say no.

There are things about Rachel I sort of understand. I once wore African-print clothes (hey, it was the 90s), and as a teacher I went out of my way to educate myself about African-American and African history because I had a responsibility to my students, and I had been entirely mis-educated in white suburbia and college.

When I moved to the town I currently live in, I became (one) face of a movement to memorialize three Black lynching victims, a multi-racial effort. That effort grew out of my interest in history, and especially local history. Over the last fifteen years, I've become a sort of expert on various aspects of local history, one part of which happens to be local Black history. (In fact, I'm becoming the go-to on the subject. It's a small city, and just by circumstance, there hasn't been anyone else.) I could never in a million years pass for Black ... or at least I didn't think so until I saw Rachel's youthful photos. LOL

There is a unique sort of discomfort that comes from certain parts of both the white and African-American communities when you put yourself out there as deeply interested in in a subject that doesn't fit your own historical background. In other words, I don't just care about eliminating racism or being anti-racist, but I put a lot of effort into reading about history and literature and art, because I love knowing things, and it gives me a context to understand the local history I plumb.

It's an uncomfortable space to be an expert on something that doesn't really belong to you, and so you have to be careful about seeing yourself more as a steward or facilitator for those who need to know it, who need to know it to feel their place in the world. (I spend a lot of time with kids, but I also have been someone to share this sort of history with adults, by writing and by speaking out on it.) So, to my mind, Rachel took the easy route, even though it crashed down around her. I guess there are lots more people like her than we'd like to admit, but most of them don't have the privilege to pull off leadership or get professorships in that guise.

It's in some ways easier to be comfortable in your interests and expertise if you can feel like you own it too. (I'm not even going to get into her need to be the victim--that's pathology that she's clearly also showing.)

A sane person with a stable identity can do that--can just be who they are and tread that careful road without appropriating or taking the microphone from people who've earned it. A good ally will always use their privilege to amplify the voices who are lost or dismissed. NOT become the center of attention oneself. So that's what I concentrate on doing. I'm not consumed with white guilt, and I'm not "wanting to be black," but I just trudge along on the path I've taken. Rachel isn't some sort of transracial pioneer, she's just taking the podium from someone who is telling the truth.

So while an African American (and now African) person can see Dolezal as a fucked up appropriator, I also see her as a betrayer of what she could have been: a white person just aspiring to be a good ally. You can be a member of the NAACP (I am), and you can be a leader on anti-racist issues. You can care about Black history and art, even be an expert, without having to become Black. It's a little more difficult though, and it will gain you suspicion from some white and Black people, often unspoken. Having the stability to endure that minor inconvenience is not something she was willing to do. That's what makes her a white appropriative asshole.
posted by RedEmma at 8:42 AM on March 4, 2017 [44 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted; again, we are one million percent not going to talk about transgender issues in this thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:43 AM on March 4, 2017 [26 favorites]


I look forward to the future when we all need to produce a fully notarized expository of our personal genome before we are allowed to comment on an observation or hold a reasoned opinion.

Oh look! we're almost there.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 8:45 AM on March 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


Mod note: And as always if you want to talk about a moderation decision, please come to the contact form rather than doing it in the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:45 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's the same way I feel about the white people I know who take Native names to give themselves indigenous cache and even power in the indigenous community (who may or may not realize the intrusion).

You probably already know about Adolf Hungry Wolf but I never get tired of typing or saying that name and being unable to keep a straight face about it. He also came from a cultural background that was, at that time, genuinely loathsome and repellent, but on the other hand: no.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:46 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


The real villain here is the Spokane Police Department.

They were looking for a way to discredit a black (as far as they knew) person in a position of some authority, and to move the conversation away from whatever systemic abuses were going on there to something--anything--about her personal life.

They succeeded.

The fascists win again. Congratulations.
posted by The Horse You Rode In On at 8:50 AM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


I hadn't heard of Adolf Hungry Wolf. Interesting. Looks like he and his wife may have done good work. I'd like to read views from others in the Blackfoot community about whether he is accepted, and whether they define themselves solely along racial lines.

Ernie Lapointe (Sitting Bull's great grandson) honours his white wife, Sonja, for helping his work reclaiming his tribe's traditions and identity.
posted by iotic at 8:55 AM on March 4, 2017


The Horse You Rode In On, that's a very good point, but it's still ultimately on her. She built a house of lies, and it was knocked down, and people were hurt when it collapsed. I'm thinking here of John Edwards, who was campaigning as the Democrats' Great White Hope while he was building himself a fine dossier of blackmail material, or Anthony Weiner, whose inability to keep his phone out of his pants may have cost us not only an effective Democratic politician but, ultimately, the ability to steer the fate of the nation.

She accepted a position of responsibility, and that meant she needed to be responsible.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:56 AM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


Yes, the Spokane Police Department was using what they could to discredit someone they presumed to be Black--but it really wasn't just about her race, it was that she was an activist. Yes, that makes them assholes too.

But activists everywhere (should) know that your greatest ally against fascists is the truth, and being "clean" of any kind of truck they can use against you. It's why you don't carry drugs to a protest, or lie about getting harassed by people who would oppress you.

Also, people who wonder why the NAACP didn't out her [or investigate her] in Spokane: I don't know what the population of people of non-Native people of color is there, but I live in a small city that has a disproportionately small Black community. The problem there becomes that there's a lot of work to do, but not enough energy or people to do it. You end up with a few people who have the talent to be leaders doing *all* the work, and anyone willing to step up will quickly find themselves overwhelmed. It's a perfect atmosphere for pretenders, because people are just grateful to have someone step in.
posted by RedEmma at 8:57 AM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


I am actually kind of surprised at how this thread has gone. I did not expect so many comments defending Dolezal - but in hindsight, I should have. MetaFilter is a majority white space, and white people seem to - on average - have a very different response to Dolezal than Black people.

I'm not Black, and I don't want to speak for anyone. But I do think it would be a good time to think about why the responses are so different, and to seek out some Black perspectives.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:05 AM on March 4, 2017 [23 favorites]


Re: NAACP - she may also have done good work. They didn't just not out her, they stood by her until the outrage grew to a point where that was untenable
posted by iotic at 9:05 AM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


I will not empower a liar by using her alias.

I dunno. Apparently, it's now her legal name (I say apparently because most of the sources I found cited a Daily Mail story, but I found some evidence that it's legal). That being the case, no matter how problematic I find it, it's her name. I think regularly linking it back to her earlier name is probably good since I suspect that some of the reason for the change was obscure the trail and reinforce her falsification, but...
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:07 AM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


I think her NAACP friends stood by her so long for a couple reasons. Because she was doing work that was needed. But also because they were her friends. It's hard to deal with finding out someone you like is a compulsive liar about *everything* and it takes a while to process it.

There is a liar pretendian in my community who changed her name to a Native-sounding name, dyed her hair black and took leadership in local activist organizations while allowing others to believe she was indigenous. I knew for certain that she was doing this for years, but until she started taking the podium from people who deserved it in the press, I generally kept quiet. When Native people I know started to suffer from her manipulative and scary behavior (which was very related to her constant lying), I validated their anxiety by saying that their instincts about who she really was were correct. Even so, some of her friends and acquaintances are also invested in her self-styled victimhood. They resist the idea that their friend is a liar. And to their mind, she "does good work." The only way she's lost her position is because her behavior has ruined enough organizations and caused enough discord that the "good work makes her okay" argument has eventually fallen away. A liar can't stop lying. If they will lie about who they are, they will lie about everything. But it's not easy for some people to accept, that someone has lied about *everything.*
posted by RedEmma at 9:17 AM on March 4, 2017 [14 favorites]


In the press, she should forever be [new name] [AKA / formerly Rachel Dolezal]. That is accurate and true and contextualizing. She can call herself whatever she wants. I have no call to respect her and call her her new name, because it is about cementing her lies. I have no obligation to respect her in any way. Her friends may feel otherwise.
posted by RedEmma at 9:21 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I, too, am uncomfortable with the rush to defend Dolezal and the rush to compare her actions to those of transgender people. The fact that race is largely a cultural construct does not mean that it isn't also a real experience, and it does not mean that it is a mutable construct for any particular person.

Race is a way of talking about the context, legacy, and history that our families carried with them out of the past and into the present. It is a way of talking about where we came from and what groups of people spawned us. It's not a personally chosen aspect of our individual selves or our personalities; it's not even an unchosen individual marker. It's a reminder of what our heritage is, good and bad. And erasing that history as though it doesn't exist in favor of lifting someone else's more colorful, more interesting, cooler ancestry and heritage is possibly the most toxically white activity I can think of.

Look, it's not any other ethnicity's fault that white people dilute and colonially universalize our stories and our own experiences until they no longer seem unique to us or even continue to register to us as existing; that's the price we paid for the privileged stranglehold we've fused ourselves with, at least within the American context I am speaking of. And that's part of white context and legacy. It is not acceptable to erase that history and legacy and context for personal reasons rather than owning it and honoring it as you try to make amends to others under the umbrella of allyship.

This is literally why colorblindness fosters racism, you guys, even though other white people like it because it lets us shove all that unpleasantness under the rug as we pretend the history is gone and everyone can go on as if it never happened. History doesn't work that way, and neither do people. The effects of history and context mark and shape us whatever we do, and if we want to build a new future we need to acknowledge the scars of the past. And that means acknowledging race.
posted by sciatrix at 9:22 AM on March 4, 2017 [23 favorites]


Racism and cultural appropriation do most damage, overall, as large scale, structural effects. Individuals perpetuate these through wielding those power imbalances unknowingly, selfishly and unthinkingly. Racism and appropriation play out constantly along these lines, through a million micro and macro aggressions, exclusions and shoring up of financial and social barriers.

In terms of that, white people who try to jump the colour line and work for the NAACP are an outlier. White people who unthinkingly steal elements of black culture whilst excluding black people socially are far more common, and form part of a tide of racism and appropriation that has very real and serious consequences.

Personally I find rare cases like this full of interest and nuance, shading light on all sorts of aspects of race and culture. Whilst she has clearly been dishonest and could and should have gone about things differently, I don't think the contempt and shrill condemnation is fully justified. She is not solely responsible for societal racism. Nor is she a particularly common example of the way it occurs
posted by iotic at 9:34 AM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


Did we all miss the comments about the possible mental illness? Does her behaviour seem happy and well adjusted?

is it now ok to mock people who have mental health problems or some sort of identity issues?

She's now a pariah and I'm not sure what good the further exposure and hatred serves.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 9:36 AM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


*She* is the one who has furthered this conversation by writing a book and doing interviews. A decent person would say, "Yes, I lied about my identity and I'm sorry to those I hurt, and I have X mental illness, for which I am seeking help" and put her head down and get to work on the issues she says she cares about. She should be using her talents, and she could do that *if she would apologize and move on.* That is not what's happening here.
posted by RedEmma at 9:43 AM on March 4, 2017 [19 favorites]


Maybe the issues are deep and unacknowledged? Maybe this book writing etc is a manifestation of said issues?

This person is powerless and reviled. Maybe the greatest kindness is to ignore and pity?
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 9:47 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


P.S. If she would write a book where she was scrupulously honest about her journey, had explored that journey through the help of a good therapist, was not defensive and clinging to her deceptions (both self and outward), I would probably buy it.
posted by RedEmma at 9:49 AM on March 4, 2017 [9 favorites]


Did we all miss the comments about the possible mental illness? Does her behaviour seem happy and well adjusted?

is it now ok to mock people who have mental health problems or some sort of identity issues?

She's now a pariah and I'm not sure what good the further exposure and hatred serves.


First, that does not excuse the impact of the behavior on people of color. The invocation of mental illness to negate the systematic harm that racist white people enact is also in itself colored by racist tropes and privilege. See also: how every time a white dude goes and shoots up a black church, they're always infantilized because they're mentally ill lone wolves.

To put this more bluntly: the reason why you are evoking mental illness here is because it lets you dodge an uncomfortable conversation about systematic racism, since you can attribute her actions to her as a lone agent.

Second, this is the reason I will never, ever trust white people who pull this shit. Nothing has changed about what people of color have been saying since day one, and nothing has changed about what Dolezal has been saying since day one either. Her treatment of race is reprehensible and has tangible harm on people of color, and it is fully appropriate for us to continue to point that out so long as the behavior persists. If you were originally receptive to our arguments, but you've changed your tune because she's done what she's done long enough that she's become sympathetic, because some people have listened to the arguments of people of color and decided to make the decision to avoid associating with her until she changes her behavior, because you think that our prolonged whining about this issue makes us annoying, that's normalizing the behavior.

If you won't defend the voice of people of color who choose to continue to point out prolonged shitty behavior just because you've been exposed to it long enough for you to become desensitivitized and jaded to it, and just because you sympathize with the person we're trying to hold accountable, how can we trust you to uphold our voices on the other long-drawn out political battles?
posted by Conspire at 9:52 AM on March 4, 2017 [36 favorites]


I have pity for her. I can do that and also hold her accountable as well.
posted by Annika Cicada at 9:52 AM on March 4, 2017 [19 favorites]


If it turned out she had one drop of black blood, the whole narrative would change. But she wouldn't be a different person.

And when people say "what's the harm this does"? This. This is the harm. For those of us who're multiracial but pass for white, we have to deal with this kind of shit all the time, the idea that our lives must be virtually identical to the lives we would have had if we were actually white. But they aren't. If it turned out she was part black and had done all of this not even knowing that, yes, there'd be a narrative change, because where everything came from would probably have been different. She would have been raised differently; there would be complex history of family trauma stemming from ethnic oppression and that would matter.

Being a white-passing person is not the same as being a white person. The reason this is not just a weird tragedy is that all of us who're white-passing, every time this comes up, find it just a little bit harder to get people to believe the kind of shit we've gone through, because apparently looking white means that differences in your heritage can't possibly have had any other impact on your life.

I do think she's probably got mental illness issues and I'd rather she were just ignored; I don't think endless pieces about this help things at all. But this was not harmless. There is a difference between people whose lives are the product of multiple ethnic backgrounds and who're still dealing with the fallout from generations of that and people who are just white and troubled. She would not be the same person if you changed out part of her family history for one that was even marginally less privileged on that axis.
posted by Sequence at 9:58 AM on March 4, 2017 [37 favorites]


Maybe the issues are deep and unacknowledged? Maybe this book writing etc is a manifestation of said issues?

This person is powerless and reviled. Maybe the greatest kindness is to ignore and pity?


I am uncomfortable with all speculation her "potential mental illness." Very few of us are qualified to diagnose mental illness, and none of us (to the best of my knowledge) have access to the sort of information that would allow such a diagnoses even if we were qualified. That applies to both demonizing and excusing her by appeal to armchair diagnosis.

I agree with RedEmma that Diallo could do some good in the world if she faced up to her past and the damage she caused, but that doesn't seem to be be what she's doing. Rather, She seems to be perpetuating story in a slightly different form, which is likely to lead to further betrayal and damage down the line. Forgiveness is a great thing, but it requires admission and atonement, not further obfuscation.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:01 AM on March 4, 2017 [7 favorites]


If it turned out she was part black and had done all of this not even knowing that, yes, there'd be a narrative change, because where everything came from would probably have been different. She would have been raised differently; there would be complex history of family trauma stemming from ethnic oppression and that would matter.

Thanks Sequence, I appreciate your point of view on that.

Her family might have plenty of racial trauma in it (and members of colour) with herself still having a fully white bloodline though, surely? Whether it does or not is, I agree, not arbitrary or theoretical.
posted by iotic at 10:05 AM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Dolezal reminds me of Laura Albert, who pretended to be a queer/trans street kid with AIDs for attention and material gain. In the documentary 'Author: The JT LeRoy Story,'* she talks about a terrible childhood, and how it led to her inventing JT. .She is absolutely unrepentant about what she did, and even used her notoriety to get involved with an LGBT group, even though I haven't seen any sign of her being anything but cis/straight.

*The other documentary about the subject, 'The Cult of JT LeRoy,' gets more into how she exploited people.
posted by LindsayIrene at 10:33 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


If it turned out she had one drop of black blood, the whole narrative would change.

So, this is a super complex issue, because you're right, it would - but also, we don't know that she doesn't, and what does that even mean? Like, I got my own genetics analyzed and was startled to find I guess I'm like 3% West African, which means maybe, say, the grandmother of one of my great grandmothers may have been West African. Or a more recent ancestor was mixed. Or a lot of things. There's also some Ashkenazi and other odd stuff. It doesn't define me. I'm still Hispanic.

But I wonder, what would someone like Dolezal do with that. Would she hold onto that one drop? Would she cling to it? Would she find deep meaning in any connection she felt to African culture? And what would it mean if she did? Would she be wrong? Right? Would it actually make such a difference? And if so, why?
posted by corb at 10:38 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


And what would we do with it
posted by iotic at 10:45 AM on March 4, 2017


Using genetics like this to prove one's connection or alliance to a particular race is something I'm super sketchy about and not really comfortable exploring other than to say "doing that is a really bad idea and talking any more about this will invoke Godwin's law and can we please avoid that?"
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:47 AM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Her family might have plenty of racial trauma in it (and members of colour) with herself still having a fully white bloodline though, surely?

This woman having black siblings did not give her ownership of their pain. That doesn't mean that she doesn't have her own pain, but that pain was a different kind of pain.

I'm sure she sat around wondering if her friends would abandon her if they found out. If her boss would find a reason to fire her if she was found out. But in that case, what they had to find out was not her actual ethnic heritage, it was a lie she told. Her pain is like the evil mirror universe version of mine, where she deliberately put herself in a position of hiding that I never chose for myself. A position I have been trying to reject since I got an email forward about how Mexicans are stealing our jobs and decided it was easier to think maybe my friends were being racist behind my back than to never tell them and have them be racist to my face instead. Even if I tell people I'm white, it's not true, and whatever treatment I get on that basis cannot be taken as their authentic feelings about me. Whatever they think I am, everything they say about Mexicans, they mean me. I don't get to make a choice about that. She doesn't get to make a choice about that, either. When people talk about black people, they do not mean her, and there is no opting in to that group. It isn't a choice.

Caring about people who don't get that choice can be painful, but there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to deal with that pain.
posted by Sequence at 10:48 AM on March 4, 2017 [15 favorites]


From my perspective no one gets to self-identify as a race, it's contextual, externally assigned and constructs into an social identity aligning along intersecting axes of power.
A few years ago I heard a fascinating story on NPR where one sibling identified as black and the other identified as white. Being radio, I can only assume they were light-skinned PoC. The siblings were loving and close, but the black identifying sibling clearly strongly disapproved of "passing." On the margins, there seems to be some room to choose the identifier most convenient and meaningful to you, and these edge cases seem to cause the most pain for those enmeshed in this struggle.

But your comments on inherent externality also reminded me of a friend from college, a very light-skinned, biracial, lesbian, Jewish woman with a glorious 'fro. She used to cry because no one wanted her--the black sorority wouldn't let her pledge, the queer activist groups on campus were male-dominated and focused, and people at her new Temple were polite but distant. All her friends were white cis girls like me who enjoyed her company very much but couldn't truly understand her struggle on a deep level. I still think of her and hope she found a community that she identifies with that also welcomed her.
posted by xyzzy at 10:58 AM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


@xyzzy: I've learned a lot by reading what zadie smith has to say about her upbringing as well raising her multiracial kids in this NPR interview:

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/20/510600755/novelist-zadie-smith-on-historical-nostalgia-and-the-nature-of-talent
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:05 AM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sequence - OK. But surely there might be people who are say, 1/16 black and 15/16 white, who are able to spend their lives passing and rarely think about it. Do they "own" their one black great great grandparent's pain? If we say they have the right to call themselves black, whilst saying that a genetically 100% European white person, raised by black people, who also can "pass" without question if they choose (because they are white) has no valid claim or connection to the black heritage they were raised in - aren't we then helping enforce the idea that race is real, an essentialism wholly based on genetics and descent?

I accept these examples wander from the case in question. But it seems to me at a certain point this way of looking at things actually serves to support the arbitrary racial boundaries we have created for humanity - which is the program of racism. At some point, we need to get away from that.
posted by iotic at 11:07 AM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Using percentages of bloodline as some measure of passing as another race is meaningless IMO.

There are fuzzy edges to every system of classification. The classification system of race is externally assigned and if you are in a fuzzy racial space and then depending on how you intersect with the local flavors of racism have the most impact in determining the course of action you take. And depending on your color of skin, how you intersect with your perceived race will have a huge impact on the amount of privivilege you are granted in that locality.
posted by Annika Cicada at 11:20 AM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


Get back to me when some of these mythological 15/16 White people completely fabricate their family histories by passing off Black strangers as immediate family, by silencing other Black activists, and by seeking to profit from the whole business with book deals and sob stories.
posted by TwoStride at 11:20 AM on March 4, 2017 [18 favorites]


Going down the road of genetics in a speculative way as a white person without reading what PoC have written i

I don't think you meant this badly, but I am not white. One of the reasons I am finding this so difficult is that the process of identifying and when you get to call yourself white and if you ever should is so complex. I'm Hispanic - what is my daughter? She changes how she identifies all the time and it's always emotionally fraught.
posted by corb at 11:26 AM on March 4, 2017 [12 favorites]


If you won't defend the voice of people of color who choose to continue to point out prolonged shitty behavior just because you've been exposed to it long enough for you to become desensitivitized and jaded to it, and just because you sympathize with the person we're trying to hold accountable, how can we trust you to uphold our voices on the other long-drawn out political battles?

There is no unitary black "voice" on this issue or any other issue. We all have personal opinions. For those who feel strongly that Dolezal's behavior is damaging to all black Americans, I completely support your right to express that idea, but I don't support the attempt to paint it as THE official black response. I happen to think that some of the things Dolezal has done to perpetuate her pretense have been abhorrent. Yet, as for her desire to be black, I think it's worth exploring why it's has become so all-encompassingly important to her, to the point that she is compelled to embrace pariah status, and why it is on some levels such a polarizing issue to the rest of us.

There's no question that we as black people have been the victims of white supremacy full stop. But as a regime that imposes a warped reality and corroded value system on our entire society, it unquestionably imposes psychological harm on white Americans as well. And Dolezal, by virtue of being raised under white supremacy while filled with admiration for her black siblings, seems to have been irreparably broken by the act of lifelong cognitive dissonance. Keep in mind that she is also apparently the victim of physical abuse at the hands of her white parents and this may have caused her to resent their whiteness and by extension her own.

None of that excuses her deceptions to the public at large. Nobody that I can see here is attempting to excuse it. In my case though, I feel sympathy for her as a human being with deep trauma. I'm not saying that because I want to give her a pass as a white woman. I'm saying it because I don't grant some unfortunate, faraway damaged woman who happens to be white the power to faze my everyday existence. But also, I feel a certain degree of sympathy to her cause. White supremacy employs the tactic of otherizing us as black people. It's a baseline premise. But here's a person who, however inchoately and perversely is attempting to countermand that edict of otherization. And no, of course no, the way she's doing it is all wrong because she's damaged and/or foolish. But I absolutely can't hate her for it. I don't demand that anyone else agrees with that perspective, and I'm not discounting that some people have been legitimately injured by her behavior, but please stop acting like the depth of your own anger gives you authority to speak for all of us black folks.
posted by xigxag at 11:33 AM on March 4, 2017 [32 favorites]


I really, really, really, really, really don't think anyone "defending" Dolezal here thinks that what she did was right or justified. Just that she doesn't deserve literally YEARS of ridicule for it. That she doesn't deserve VISCERAL HATRED, which I have seen directed at her. Especially when her intentions, though deeply flawed and ignorant, were positive at some level, at least from her perspective.

Maybe when someone has also invited vitriol and mockery from white conservatives, it's a natural reaction to find her, or any other well-meaning dolt, undeserving of that.

She's a stupid, damaged person! But she's a person. And with all the out-and-out HATRED that comes from white people, what good does it do to bash this poor lost soul, over and over?
posted by mellow seas at 12:12 PM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


> Nobody that I can see here is attempting to excuse it.

There are people in the thread who are questioning whether she does any harm at all, and talk about how her life "has been ruined" - as if she has had no hand in ruining it - and act like getting a book deal is her only way off food stamps. And that simply by talking about the ways many of us object to her actions and continued appropriation, we are the ones who are furthering her undeserved years of mockery.

She vanished under the tidal wave of every other newsy thing almost two years ago, and her resurfacing has been entirely of her own making. If she wanted to change her name and move on with her life, she could have done that without press releases and a goddamn book deal.
posted by rtha at 12:26 PM on March 4, 2017 [28 favorites]


Especially when her intentions, though deeply flawed and ignorant, were positive at some level, at least from her perspective.

She's a fraud. Her intent is to elicit sympathy by deceiving people and fabricating events.

She's a stupid, damaged person! But she's a person. And with all the out-and-out HATRED that comes from white people, what good does it do to bash this poor lost soul, over and over?

She's not a victim. She's a fraud. The victimization narrative is part of the scam.
posted by dmh at 12:35 PM on March 4, 2017 [13 favorites]


From his Wikipedia page:
Johnny Otis (born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes; December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was an American singer, musician, composer, arranger, bandleader, talent scout, disc jockey, record producer, television show host, artist, author, journalist, minister, and impresario. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He discovered numerous artists early in their careers, before they became famous, including Little Esther, Big Mama Thornton, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard and Etta James. Otis has been called the original "King of Rock and Roll" and the "Godfather of Rhythm and Blues".
I have no fixed opinion in regards to the Rachel Dolezal saga but Johnny Otis has come to mind almost every time her name has come up.

Born the child of Greek immigrants, he always identified as black in late life.

I would not disagree.

And in terms of matters cultural, the word contribution replaces appropriation in his case.

He truly was a great black musican.
posted by y2karl at 12:54 PM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


In her own words (emphases mine):

“This is obviously an issue a lot of people want to say things about,” reflects Dolezal now. “And it needs to be talked about, so it’s kind of helpful to create a punching bag. There’s nobody saying, ‘Well, that’s racist if you say that about Rachel’, or ‘That’s sexist if you say that about Rachel.’ There’s no protected class for me. I’m this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on. And I’m a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It’s like I am the worst of all these worlds.”

She is still self-mythologizing, to a degree that's nearly astonishing: not only does she evince a deliberate choice to invite attention for all the wrong reasons, she praises herself for doing so, disclaims ownership of her White privilege in gruesomely bad faith, and simultaneously expresses both self-pity and a strange kind of dissociation (in the vernacular sense) from her own actions and intentions.

And she goes on to say, again emphasis mine:

She has written a memoir, titled In Full Color, but 30 publishing houses turned her down before she found one willing to print it. “The narrative was that I’d offended both communities in an unforgivable way, so anybody who gave me a dime would be contributing to wrong and oppression and bad things. To a liar and a fraud and a con.”

Does she refer here to the narrative of her book, or to the reaction that a publisher would face in publishing it? I wonder if she herself could say which she meant.

My feeling is that she's a flim-flam artist who found a very productive site of flim-flammery; she continues to exploit painful histories and socio-cultural complexity to further herself. There is nothing as complex or important going on with her deceptions as she insists or implies; she strives to create as much doubt and complexity as possible when discussing herself in order to obscure the simple awfulness and absurdity of the facts here.

She pretended to be Black and built her career, social standing and identity on that lie. She's now doubling down on that, in tacit defiance of the very idea of admitting to it.

Finally:

I felt like I was constantly having to atone for some unknown thing. I was very creative, which was seen as of the devil

Right. Who could possibly know what she would need to atone for??? I know this might be considered in poor taste, but I'm pretty comfortable summing her up by saying "she's just crazy."
posted by clockzero at 1:04 PM on March 4, 2017 [14 favorites]


People who hear book deal and think she's getting some huge windfall are probably wrong. She has a deal with a tiny publisher with limited financial resources; not Random House. I am skeptical that the advance they would be able to pay is enough to have a significant change in her finances.
posted by humanfont at 1:05 PM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


Interesting about Johnny Otis - thanks y2karl. Without contemplating the relative merits of his case with regard to Black identity, it's interesting to consider how differently that might have played out, and been felt, for a person of that generation, as different from today
posted by iotic at 1:11 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't like the talk of mental illness being the reason behind her choices. Plenty of mentally ill and abused people do not do this kind of thing, and it has earmarks of misogyny as well. Not only does it perpetuate the "mentally troubled guy turns monster" narrative we use to excuse white male mass shooters, but the "she's hysterical" narrative used throughout history when women do something out of the ordinary that is bad. I also know men, unaffected by misogyny, don't get to tell those whom are affected about how any claims of misogyny here are baseless. We know misogyny when we see it, and it's definitely present here. I wish it weren't, but it is. Same for the "she needs to be the center of attention" stuff. I am also tired of women having to shoulder burdens they didn't earn. She is one woman, and her mistakes were harmful. Those mistakes impacted some individuals, but she did not set back an entire demographic.

She should never have pretended to be black, but to not respect her name change seems gratuitous. It's her fucking legal name. People change their names all the time. It's nobody's business why.

I can't be mad at this woman because enough people do that. I am slightly hopeful that she wanted a life without white privilege. I applaud anyone who gives up their higher rung on the hierarchy. It's hard being a woman. It's far more difficult being a black woman. I think if she went through all the work to build her life around blackness, including schooling, family, career field, looks, advocacy, etc, I'm going to assume a huge part of her was sincere. Misguided as fuck, but sincere.

She has a life where her culture and community were black. She continues living her chosen life throughout this adversity, so I am not going to agree with her choice but I'm not going go hate her for it. I am not going to show her less sympathy than I show others who wish for a different life so badly they are willing to do anything to have it.

A good percentage of us pretend to be something we aren't, or briefly opt-in to historically oppressed demographics. Many more of us will make huge fuckups in our youth. I hope most of us redeem ourselves, and balance it out with the good we can do later. It seems she tried. She built her family and job and hobbies around the kind of life she sincerely wanted, and even though it was all a lie it was also a life that carried far more risks she chose to accept willingly. If she's willing to take on all the burdens that come with being a black woman, I don't know if I can consider that to be completely malicious.

The cops who outed her in Spokane suck, and on that note I can say Spokane is a white city with a racism problem and this officer going after her is an example.
posted by JLovebomb at 1:18 PM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


Just because you don't understand the different ways gender and race are socially constructed,

This is a deeply complex issue. I would love to understand more, lots more, but I wouldn't even know where the hell to start looking or how to judge and trust what I found.

So maybe try not being so fucking hard on people, with good intentions, trying to figure this stuff out, hey?
posted by Jimbob at 1:18 PM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


In fact, much of what's wrong here in this whole trashfire is taking up space that doesn't belong to her. Overwriting and talking over the people who are the most silenced.

How is this thread not actively doing the exact same thing?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 1:25 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


I also know men, unaffected by misogyny, don't get to tell those whom are affected about how any claims of misogyny here are baseless.

Was this directed at me? I am a black woman. White women do not hold the exclusive or even the primary experiences of misogyny, nor to the right of to determine what misogyny is, nor do they get to use ~misogyny~ as a shield to prevent themselves from experiencing critique when they're perpetuating violent, white supremacist acts.

Referring to a black woman as a man is also a violent act. FYI.
posted by sea change at 1:34 PM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


She is still self-mythologizing, to a degree that's nearly astonishing

Are you reading the comments here, on twitter and various other online forums about her? Looking at the volume and vehemence it seems like her assessment of where she stands is pretty spot on. Perhaps I'm just not following your argument.
posted by humanfont at 1:38 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


As a white person, I can't honestly say that cultural appropriation strikes a deep chord in me. That doesn't mean it's not a valid issue, but for me, that's not the straw that broke the camel's back. The hoaxed hate crimes were bad enough to discredit real incidents, but where she made me infuriated was this.

I sympathize with Dolezal as a misfit fundie kid with deep-seated psychological problems looking for a place to belong. That resonates with me. But the point where her publicly playing out her psychodramas was completely unacceptable was when she was on a watchdog commission for police misconduct. She outed community whistleblowers who were trying to fight police corruption and excessive force. She actively put people in harm's way and (allegedly) created a hostile environment in a group whose work involves life-and-death matters. That's absolutely no place for anyone to act out their problems.

BLM activist Sandra Bland was entrapped and railroaded into suicide for her activism. We need our whistleblowers and activists badly in order to fight police corruption and prevent officers from getting away with abuse and even murder. These people stick their necks out and we need to protect them, not put our own bullshit before their welfare.

I do believe it's obvious she has a personality disorder (but not necessarily an endogenous illness like schizophrenia) but once you break that social contract of doing harm to others, it's on you to get your ass into therapy and figure your shit out and stop hurting people. People with psychological problems can face their traumas and issues and change. She has chosen not to do that. I don't like all the hideousness (like posting nude pictures) but there's a reason that her doubling-down is pissing people off. She is putting her own personal issues ahead of the welfare of others; that's inexcusable.

Also, I did consider the angle that someone else upthread raised, the possibility that her transrace thing could be misunderstood and wrongly categorized as a mental illness and similar to the TERF response to trans people. However, we don't have thousands of people across the globe claiming that they were born with the wrong skin color, so there goes that theory.

She needs to stop playing out her childhood issues in the public sphere and own the damage that she did. She's not doing that; even if she were to maintain her transrace stance, at least she could own the damage that she did. She could say both issues coexisted, but instead she's continuing to put her personal issues front and center at the expense of African Americans.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 1:42 PM on March 4, 2017 [12 favorites]


we don't have thousands of people across the globe claiming that they were born with the wrong skin color, so there goes that theory.

There are actually a whole bunch of examples of people from across the world and throughout history, doing and saying that exact thing, in this very thread. It does seem to me that there is a certain type of person that just doesn't fit in their own culture and does everything they can to blend into another one that feels more like home. Sometimes that culture is one where they plausibly fit sure to their appearance, and then it's really easy. Sometimes it's less easy.

I would have no major problem with Diallo doing what she's done if she just got a regular old job. If she was just a cashier or a receptionist or something she'd just be a curiosity, right? It's when you start taking advantage of affirmative action programs, and taking leadership jobs in ethnic organizations, that it becomes a problem.
posted by potrzebie at 2:10 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


The claims of hate crime hoaxes and ethics violations seem to have originated from the same investigators hired by the sherrif who appears to have wanted to destroy her. Also worth noting that the ethics complaints were also made against two other activists on the police ombudsmen board. These claims have never been presented in court and appear to be largely attributed to anonymous individuals.
posted by humanfont at 2:55 PM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


It does seem to me that there is a certain type of person that just doesn't fit in their own culture and does everything they can to blend into another one that feels more like home. Sometimes that culture is one where they plausibly fit sure to their appearance, and then it's really easy. Sometimes it's less easy.

This seems to conflate phenotypical difference with both social race and culture, which is just a massive empirical confusion. What you're suggesting here would be a complete misrepresentation of what Rachel Dolezal did.
posted by clockzero at 3:11 PM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


humanfont - assuming that's true, wow
posted by iotic at 3:21 PM on March 4, 2017


This seems to conflate phenotypical difference with both social race and culture

What conflation? By my reading, humans aren't polymorphic beyond blood types and sexual dimorphism.
posted by rhizome at 3:25 PM on March 4, 2017


What conflation? By my reading, humans aren't polymorphic beyond blood types and sexual dimorphism.

I'm honestly not sure what was unclear about what I said.
posted by clockzero at 3:36 PM on March 4, 2017


Humanfont, the Spokane police did investigate the KKK purportedly mailing hate literature to Dolezal, but key evidence came from the postal department in that case. The TV station KXLY then reported on past hate crimes reported by Dolezal. The information is in this story.
posted by epj at 3:37 PM on March 4, 2017 [5 favorites]


There's a point at which, without questioning the fact that someone should be taken to task for a wrongdoing and without denigrating continued interest and pain felt by those affected by that person's acts, it is fair to ask whether that person has been punished enough.
posted by mobunited at 4:07 PM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


According to reports on hate mail, she was found out because there were no bar codes or postal stamps on the letters and apparently the sender would've had to be a postal worker who had a key to her PO box. It's possible, but not likely. Also, there were multiple occasions where she announced whistleblowers names in meetings. I'm not sure this can just be fabricated and a frame. It doesn't sound like she just slipped and did it once, but multiple times.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 4:07 PM on March 4, 2017 [3 favorites]


This reminds me: I was almost killed by neo-Nazis about 24 years ago. I'm a writer. One of those neo-Nazis eventually repented, claimed to have switched sides, and then also became a writer who got arts grant money to write a fictionalized version of her experiences. This put me through the fucking roof, because this person was probably complicit in events that led to me needing my face rebuilt by a fucking plastic surgeon. When she popped up to complain in a writers' group that the CBC had "stolen" her story for a TV movie, I must admit I invited her to fuck off. Because no matter how bad you feel, there's something vulgar about using your repentance, contrition or pain as a vehicle to profit from doing some fucked up things. I suspect something similar applies here. Yet I also understand people need money, work and life's basics. I don't know.
posted by mobunited at 4:13 PM on March 4, 2017 [31 favorites]


it is fair to ask whether that person has been punished enough.

I'm not sure anyone here is asking for her head so much as just an apology. At least for me, that would help. But her insistence that she's completely right and utterly blameless for causing credibility problems in the activist community and not listening to her so-called community is pretty baffling and exasperating. Why wouldn't you listen to the community that you profess to help? Wouldn't you try to come to some terms with them by hearing them out and maybe meet them halfway?
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 4:20 PM on March 4, 2017 [10 favorites]


With Otis, I'm not finding much evidence that Johnny Otis ever flat-out denied being white, but rather, that he jokingly referred to being essentially black because he was totally in all ways a part of the black community.

Jokingly ?
''I was around 13 when the ugly head of racism really reared up… I was told very diplomatically at school by a counselor that I should associate more with whites. After that I left and never came back to school. I never felt white. I wouldn’t leave black culture to go to heaven. It’s richer, more rewarding and fulfilling for me.''

Johnny Otis
Jokingly seems a tad imadequate description of his feelings on the matter. But then again, none of us can read minds, no ?
posted by y2karl at 4:24 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Some of this discussion is starting to chase its tail; this is one of those topics you need to be comfortable with the fact that not everyone will agree with you and you can't argue them into it; if you've made your point, you can move on and not suck all the air out of the thread or drive it into meaningless roundabouts of semantics or of "This!" "No, this!"
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:18 PM on March 4, 2017 [4 favorites]


Mod note: Also, the Nine Ridiculous Things People Need to Stop Saying About Rachel Dolezal TwoStride posted is not only a good summary of counterpoints to common hot-takes, but a great summary of the thread we already had on Dolezal the first time around so we don't need to rehash all of that. If you have new thoughts, go ahead, but if you have the same old thoughts, you can go reread the original thread.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:22 PM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


LEMME CATCH YOU calling this woman anything but the Darth Becky

How about “oxygen thief”? It works on several levels...
posted by acb at 6:01 PM on March 4, 2017 [2 favorites]


The Guardian article is already a pretty good example of interviewing difficult subject matter. I wish more people who in the process of RTFA would have noted this line:

Last year Rogers Brubaker, a professor of sociology at the University of California drew similar parallels in his book, Trans: Gender and Race In An Age Of Unsettled Identities

And there are already some articles online (e.g. The Atlantic) that discuss the professor's work in this research area. In terms of what's new and productive that's kind of the direction that mainstream discussions could go and really benefit from. It's more work (because reading and actual difficult theory material) but seems better alternative than the endless ideological tit for tat that's starting to get really transparent and stressing everybody out.
posted by polymodus at 6:17 PM on March 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


Dolezal reminds me of Laura Albert, who pretended to be a queer/trans street kid with AIDs for attention and material gain.

So glad you said this; I thought of that very same thing. After watching the "Author" film, my heart went out for Albert (I believe her claims) but initially I really hated her and found her exploitation to be unforgivable. Albert at least was trying to explain her behavior, but it didn't seem to be a full atonement, yet I felt like I understood why she chose to hide behind a persona. Perhaps as an audience member I was manipulated, I don't know.

To tack onto what others have said, a person who's guilty of exploiting others for their own gain (regardless if it's strictly monetary or to meet deep-seated emotional needs) really needs to see their behavior insightfully, and I'm not sure that people who are chronic liars can do that. They will always be obfuscating their means and motives, hence people's inability to trust their words and sincerity and thus forgive them.

One can be sympathetic to the damage done to somebody and still draw a line about them damaging others, like Annika Cicada said about sympathy & accountability. I'm not sure that a habitual liar (such as Dolezal's 'teepee' claim) who always casts themselves as a victim is capable of owning their bad behavior. They will always twist the narrative to put themselves as the innocent one and you can never know when they're just snowing you to avoid the consequences.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 8:32 PM on March 4, 2017 [6 favorites]


I'd like to request the creation of an FPP where we can discuss the non-intersection of gender constructs as a transitivity vs. racial constructs as a transitivity, which is not contaminated by arguing about the ethicality or sanity of Dolezal.

That is to say, I'm genuinely curious to hear whether people consider there to be any ethically permissible approach or category for racial transition, but I fear this room is a little too impassioned for that conversation.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 8:36 PM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


Sorry, that genetic test doesn't make you Native American

I'm actually reading Kim TallBear's book right now. It's weird to see this thread going into blood quantum territory. A large percentage of white Americans have some nonwhite ancestry mixed in there. Many, many people have a Black or Native ancestor in their lineage somewhere. Setting aside the problems of genetic markers for ethnic groups, for her to discover some distant African ancestry would only place her in the company of probably millions of other white people, possibly including me. Beyond that, it reinforces this idea of race as a fixed biological thing that can be scientifically proven, when the issue here is an entirely social one.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:51 PM on March 4, 2017 [8 favorites]


I suppose it is a bit pedestrian to take issue with this, but according to the linked article: "[N]o one will hire her, not even to stack supermarket shelves." That strikes me as perhaps a lie. I'm not saying that she should necessarily take that level of job, but the idea that the the local Rosauers or Fred Meyer manager is not going to bring her on because of this....I don't buy it.

Spokane is smaller than Seattle, but there are still a quarter of a million people or so living in and around the city. I'm pretty sure she could land a job that would help her put food on the table until she gets her act together to move somewhere that will accept her reverse minstrelsy show.

I kind of wish she would move from from town to town a la Dr. David Banner/Bill Bixby taking odd jobs and trying to sort out her condition. We'd need someone to be her Jack McGee, pursuing her across the country in order to blow her cover. I think a few of us on MeFi would be up for the job. That lonely ending theme music still haunts me.
posted by Cassford at 12:16 AM on March 5, 2017 [5 favorites]


Not reverse minstrelsy but just plain minstrelsy: minstrels were white men impersonating black men speaking, singing and dancing.
Reverse minstrelsy is a bit Bamboozled.
posted by y2karl at 12:41 AM on March 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


for her to discover some distant African ancestry would only place her in the company of probably millions of other white people

Yeah, I think this is worth mentioning. Human genetics is very not my field, but according to a 23AndMe study (cw: very briefly mentions historical racialized sexual violence), there are apparently a small number of white people (~3.5% of the American population, mostly southerners) who appear to have more than 1% African admixture. But the amount those white people have is still tiny, almost all corresponding to less than 2%, or something like one ancestor of African descent in the last 5-10 generations. (By comparison, IIRC, they found that the average Black American had 25% European ancestry, and almost no self-identified Black Americans in that sample had less than 10% African admixture.) So even if you assume that Dolezal really did have some 1-2% African admixture, and if you also assumed a world where race was just some simple function of ancestry (which it obviously isn't, as others have said more eloquently), it would still be totally bizarre for her to stake a claim to a Black identity based on that.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:39 AM on March 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


Culture and current knowledge matter a lot here. It is one thing to say that you had a black or Native ancestor back in the 1700s - I'm sure a large number of white Americans do. It's different if you have a more immediate connection. Like, I am white, but I have Chinese ancestry. But not only that, I've met my great-grandmother, we used to go visit her and she would make us Cantonese food and tell us about Old Shanghai. I see that as incredibly different than having any kind of percentage of non-European heritage. I still don't call myself Chinese though . . .

Anyway, none of that really matters in this case, as Dolezal has not even claimed to have a long lost Native American princess in her ancestry (to use the trope).
posted by chainsofreedom at 6:16 AM on March 5, 2017 [6 favorites]


There's a point at which, without questioning the fact that someone should be taken to task for a wrongdoing and without denigrating continued interest and pain felt by those affected by that person's acts, it is fair to ask whether that person has been punished enough.

A fair question. In light of her continued attention-seeking grandstanding with no shred of a hint that she's learned a single lesson, the answer is categorically 'no'.
posted by Dysk at 7:02 AM on March 5, 2017 [4 favorites]


The attacks on her as some kind of attention whore are ugly and I wish they would stop here. Too often women face this accusation when in the midst of some kind of Internet hatefest it needs to stop.

She was the center of a huge national news story that has completely upended her life. She has a right to talk about it and try to defend herself. Just as you have the right go on some minor Internet forum and argue with strangers over it.
posted by humanfont at 8:29 AM on March 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


But doesn't it sound like you're saying she had no agency in causing that "upending"?? She was never a passive participant in her own story. That too is misogynistic, from my point of view. She is not someone who only had things done *to* her, she did things to others. And is unapologetic about it. And for all her supposed understanding of what it's like to be Black, and belief in "helping" the cause, she is absolutely and resolutely against accepting her own decisions as potentially faulty or negatively impactful.

Someone with her white background who refuses to listen to the Black people who would critique her choices is no different from the average white feminist without a clue who gets all defensive when called out about their affirmative ignorance.
posted by RedEmma at 8:57 AM on March 5, 2017 [12 favorites]


That is to say, I'm genuinely curious to hear whether people consider there to be any ethically permissible approach or category for racial transition, but I fear this room is a little too impassioned for that conversation.

Why Rachel Dolezal Can Never Be Black

The answer is "no."
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:11 AM on March 5, 2017 [7 favorites]


She knew enough about black people to pass as one for years-- she must have known how much they'd hate the imposture.

This being said, I don't know whether it matters that it was extremely unlikely that she'd be found out.

One more possible case of a white person passing-- the mother in _The Color of Water_. Would someone who's read the book care to say whether she said she was black, or just insisted that she wasn't white?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 10:16 AM on March 5, 2017


But doesn't it sound like you're saying she had no agency in causing that "upending"?? She was never a passive participant

A reporter showed up and confronted her over her birth parents after being tipped off by a private investigator for a bit of sensationalist tv news. The story went national. As far as I can tell she has been trying to explain herself ever since. It seems that the only denial of agency would be claims that she is crazy or that she is a grandstanding attention seeker who should just shut up.
posted by humanfont at 1:39 PM on March 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


tipped off by a private investigator for a bit of sensationalist tv news. The story went national.

Indeed were it not for that, Dolezal may have gone to her grave with her secret intact. There is certainly a history of male race appropriators (I am not condoning what they have done) but I have never seen the level of vitriol aimed at them as has been directed at her.

It must be blissful and so empowering to be part of the Nouveau Puritans™ who will never let a person forget they're only goddamned human. Moral superiority must be really fucking addictive because there is a surfeit of it everywhere nowadays. I'd love it if she could be left alone if for no other reason than she's got small children to care for.
posted by Klaxon Aoooogah at 2:47 PM on March 5, 2017 [4 favorites]


It must be blissful and so empowering to be part of the Nouveau Puritans™ who will never let a person forget they're only goddamned human.

Oh, come on. You don't see what she did and her dogged doubling down as maybe a bit extreme? Most goddamned humans get through entire lives without engaging in her level of deception. in this thread, there have been plenty of testimonies from Black people (and links to others) explaining why they feel damaged by her actions. I'm sure others don"t, but it's not like we need 100% consensus to say the situation is really weird and messed up.

And, as others have noted, the reason people are still talking about it is that she"s giving interviews and writing books and pushing a narrative that people who are hurt by her actions disagree with. It's not like she"s living quietly in obscurity and people are hounding her, although that's part of her narrative she'd like accepted as stated.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:11 PM on March 5, 2017 [8 favorites]


I think I'm going to start calling myself a Nouveau Puritan. What a great self-deprecating phrase lol. I don't really believe I'm morally superior but the thought of branding myself as a Nouveau Puritan just to annoy people who don't like my "virtue signalling" (is that still the right perjorative term?) is worth it hahahaha.
posted by Annika Cicada at 3:15 PM on March 5, 2017 [8 favorites]


You guys are right. Anyone with criticism of or objections to her behavior, including her lack of apology or acknowledgement of any pain or damage her actions have caused, is a puritanical persecutor. Any of us of mixed race background, or who are African American, can't have legitimate objections to appropriation of our histories and lives, because hey, race is a social construct and is therefore infinitely malleable.
posted by rtha at 3:17 PM on March 5, 2017 [13 favorites]


There is certainly a history of male race appropriators

That particular male race appropriator was around a century earlier, though - I mean, blackface was still a popular element of musical theater at that time. I don't think the public reactions they got would really be comparable. Also, he was only exposed following his death, and even then, from the Wikipedia page: 'The consequences of the revelation were dramatic. Publishers immediately ceased producing his books under the name "Grey Owl". In some cases his books were withdrawn from publication.' So I don't think it's a very informative comparison to draw. I don't feel good that Dolezal is struggling, but I also don't think it's a reflection of misogyny that a lot of people are still mad at her -- I mean the pull quote alone is a literal non-pology.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:20 PM on March 5, 2017 [4 favorites]


She sent herself fake hate packages and it's wrong to call her "attention seeking" because the claim may have been falsely made to discredit other white women?

Her pretendership is wildly offensive to a lot of people.
Whatever her twisted intentions may have been she was a liar and an infiltrator.

She went to some pretty extreme lengths to try to find out what black people say when there are no white people around.
posted by yonega at 3:30 PM on March 5, 2017 [6 favorites]


Also on the topic of "respecting her naming decisions"..

The only function using her new name accomplishes is to troll black people.
So if you want to disrespect millions of black people to respect one white person...
As an American black person with an African name (I also resent having to write as an X with a Y) I feel like she's ... I don't even know, I can't even think of any non-hyperbolic way to say hijacking my heritage with her mockery.
posted by yonega at 3:45 PM on March 5, 2017 [10 favorites]


Last comment:
Furthermore, if this were Rick Dolezal...

I can't even go down that road, it only leads to madness.
posted by yonega at 3:48 PM on March 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


From the Guardian article (as quoted earlier by others in this thread):
Dolezal might still have been leading that life today. But in spring 2015, the Spokane police chief wearied of his troublesome ombudsman chair, and hired a private investigator to dig around for dirt. The PI knocked on Larry and Ruthanne’s door in Montana. All it took was a few words and old family photographs, and the chief was rid of his irritant at a stroke. The press were tipped off, the “Rachel Dolezal race faker” story broke, and within days Dolezal’s whole life lay in ruins.
This is a particularly satisfying narrative for Rachel, as it nicely casts her, once again, as a victim (this time of the police). The problem is that is seems not to be true; the PI and the reporters who broke the story want you to know that the Spokane police had nothing to do with this.
posted by math at 5:30 PM on March 5, 2017 [6 favorites]


I've been watching two black friends argue heatedly about her. One, a black man married to a white woman, argues about the fluidity of racial identification and expresses a lot of sympathy for her personal struggles. The other, a black woman, has no use for her whatsoever and sees her as a con artist, especially since Dolezal sued a university, citing discrimination because she was white.

I lean toward the second argument.

As white woman who worked in a program designed to increase the percentage of people of color working in my industry, I can see see the temptation of sort of, not quite identifying, but feeling as if you're at least maybe a part, on the periphery, of another community. But that's completely different from claiming to be black and then claiming an African name.

It's a particularly ugly thing to do since you don't ever pay a price for your color.

She's got real problems.
posted by etaoin at 5:46 PM on March 5, 2017 [2 favorites]


Mod note: humanfont, you've made your position really clear, and you're starting to dig in unproductively and get snippy; take a break from this thread, everyone understands your defenses of Dolezal, and you've made them very thoroughly and as one of the highest-volume commenters in the thread.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 6:08 PM on March 5, 2017 [3 favorites]


I mean, if painting KKK sligans on your house and reporting them while speaking publicly about the terrible attacks you ensure isn't literally attention-seeking, I don't know what is. Everything about her conduct suggests she continues to seek attention and public validation of her identity, and that those two things are fairly tightly intertwined. She's publishing a goddamn book and putting out press statements for Pete's sake!

And please don't put words in my mouth. I did not call her a whore, and nor would I use that word about anyone.
posted by Dysk at 6:15 PM on March 5, 2017 [7 favorites]


I don't want to use the name she hates, but also don't want to use a name that's upsetting people here in this thread. How do people feel about NAD? Using initials is technically correct while still not repeating the words people are hurt by.
posted by corb at 8:03 PM on March 5, 2017


"The woman formerly known as Rachel Dolezal"?
posted by adrienneleigh at 11:14 PM on March 5, 2017


The PI and the reporters who broke the story want you to know that the Spokane police had nothing to do with this.

But they don't want you to know who did hire them to investigate her. Doesn't seem all that reassuring.
posted by iotic at 1:48 AM on March 6, 2017


Mod note: A couple deleted. Iotic, time to give this thread a rest, and if you come back later, skip berating people for not having precisely the same view you do, and avoid dominating the discussion
posted by taz (staff) at 5:10 AM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


Referencing Iotic's comment earlier, it's not at all clear who hired the PI to investigate (the woman formerly known as) Dolezal. The two newspaper reporters, however, were following up on her claims of hate crimes (the threatening letters, the noose left on her porch, etc), found that this was a pattern with her, and decided to look a little bit deeper. To quote from a link above,
During his investigation of Dolezal, [private investigator] Pulver learned there were others looking into her background, including The [Coeur d'Alene] Press. He contacted The Press and other members of the media to compare notes, but did not provide investigative information to this newspaper.
It was the reporters, not the PI, who knocked on her parents' door.

There are many fascinating details about this story, but one aspect is that, clearly, she was truly the architect of her own destruction. Had she not continued to make up false claims of hate crimes, the reporters would not have had any reason to dig into her backstory.

"Who did this horrible thing to me?" she says, but she needs to finish with, "It was me. I am the one who did this."
posted by math at 6:17 AM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yeah, a lot of the broader issues that could be otherwise potentially, theoretically raised by her story are well-undermined by her general pattern of histrionic, deceitful, and self-aggrandizing behavior. It *might* be one thing if she had just decided to live a normal life as whatever or whomever. However, she just had to constantly push those boundaries: she had to be a community leader, she had to be an educator (who inappropriately browbeats her students and colleagues), she had to be the victim of fictional hate crimes. It's as if she secretly wanted to be exposed: her lies had been, on some level, gnawing at her.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:25 AM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


One especially troubling aspect of the saga that I didn't pick up until this article is the reason this came to light. The Spokane police chief, who didn't like being questioned by a black woman (how dare she) hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on her, and succeeded in discrediting his critic. I'd like to see more attention paid to how the police chief runs his department as well.
posted by slmorri at 8:10 AM on March 4 [32 favorites +] [!]


***FLASH FORWARD***

This is a particularly satisfying narrative for Rachel, as it nicely casts her, once again, as a victim (this time of the police). The problem is that is seems not to be true; the PI and the reporters who broke the story want you to know that the Spokane police had nothing to do with this.
posted by math at 7:30 PM on March 5 [3 favorites +] [!]


Well crap. I guess I fell for her "maligning the police department"/"she's the victim" narrative. Don't mind me, carry on!
posted by slmorri at 9:49 AM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I would guess many people commenting have not read any of Luvvie Ajayi's cathartic articles about Rachel Dolezal, especially the latest one wherein we finally get an answer to the question "Did anyone in Spokane who's ever seen more than two Black people ever look at her and actually believe she's Black?" The answer: "NOPE." Basically, there was the tacit acknowledgement amongst her actual Black colleagues that there was something up, but nobody was about to make a stink about it.

I think it is also worth noting that along with the harm she did to the community by faking abuse by the KKK, she would apparently complain about not getting positions and opportunities that she felt she deserved because she wasn't white. And dragged a Black woman for being married to a White guy and that "brought down the community" or some BS like that.
posted by Anonymous at 1:23 PM on March 6, 2017


also as others have noted this whole thread is a great reminder that Metafilter is mostly white people
posted by Anonymous at 1:37 PM on March 6, 2017


I would guess many people commenting have not read any of Luvvie Ajayi'

Her work was the fourth and fifth comments here. Is she prominent?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 8:34 PM on March 6, 2017


Depends on your definition of prominent, and what audience you use to measure that. She's an author (Mallory Ortberg and Shonda Rhimes both apparently love her book, and Rhimes is adapting a TV series from it). She's got a super-popular blog and a lot of twitter followers. She's got an audience.
posted by rtha at 9:13 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


Her work was the fourth and fifth comments here. Is she prominent?

Yeah--I was happy she was linked early in, my comment referred to the fact it seemed very few people actually clicked the link. And what rtha said.

--

Another point: the Rachel Dolezal before Rachel Dolezal was Linda Taylor, the con-artist who passed herself off as Black and formed the basis of Reagan's "welfare queen" mythology. A White woman who pretended to be Black in order to facilitate scamming the system has been used by decades of Republicans as a tool to discredit social welfare programs and slur the entirety of Black America. Taylor almost certainly suffered from some form of mental illness. But I can't find myself with much empathy for her given the amount of damage she did. Save for the Internet and the reporters who found her family, Dolezal's story could've become the central crux of the "Black people fake hate crimes" narrative rather than an example of the White privilege inherent in White-to-POC race-passing.
posted by Anonymous at 5:16 AM on March 7, 2017


She's an author--ahem, she is a New York Times bestselling author who's a very large presence on social media and has been invited to the White House to speak at the Council on Women and Girls Forum... So yes, if you follow women's and especially Black media at all, she's prominent.
posted by TwoStride at 7:07 AM on March 7, 2017 [6 favorites]


Dolezal's story could've become the central crux of the "Black people fake hate crimes" narrative rather than an example of the White privilege inherent in White-to-POC race-passing.

I think this is really important to emphasize - when white people attempt to con whatever systems they're in (it is notable that Dolezal began by suing for discrimination against her because she was white, then shifted to pretending to be black) to get undeserved credibility and advantage, the people who overwhelmingly suffer are the people being used as cover by the white people, not white people in general. This specific white person may suffer somewhat, but also not to the extent that innocent other people suffer.

White people who engage in this kind of fraud actively and materially damage the people they are using to perpetuate their frauds. I'm really uncomfortable about the extent to which other white people focus on excusing one white person based on presumed suffering while ignoring the damage these white people do to innocent people when they defraud communities.
posted by Deoridhe at 1:56 PM on March 7, 2017 [13 favorites]


I would be flabbergasted if anyone could read the links slater and schroedinger provided and end up with a take on Dolezal afterwards of anything other than "Fuck this person forever."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:40 PM on March 8, 2017 [5 favorites]


A thought on responding to the idea that this lady has "suffered enough": In what way(s) has she been accountable to Black people in her community and this country?

To recap what happened, she:

- Deceived a whole community by pretended to be Black
- Served in as community leader, possibly denying opportunities for others to work in leadership capacities
- Fabricated threats that were ostensibly by the KKK
- Has not apologized for her actions
- Continues to insist that she hasn't really done anything wrong
- Is publishing a book trying to excuse/justify her actions

White people have done much violence to Black people and other communities of color. Her suffering...well, in my mind it just doesn't compare. I can't fault someone for feeling empathy for her, as a human being who seems to suffered abused and is currently reaping the bitter fruits of her deception. With that stated, though, please remember she has not been accountable to the people she hurt, whose history and culture she was appropriating. She has work to do.
posted by Excommunicated Cardinal at 5:18 PM on March 8, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is response to a comment by xyzzy above and not meant to be an analogy to the Dolezal story. I wonder if the NPR story you heard was the State of Re:Union Piece on Pike County Ohio (prev).
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:11 PM on March 19, 2017


(Sorry, this should be the previously link, trying to do a multi-link comment on mobile while my hand was half asleep was a mistake)

Anyways, if anyone wants to to talk about race and identity being a fluid, culturally defined construct I'd implore them to find a better example than Dolezal, such as the Pike Co Ohio story.
posted by midmarch snowman at 12:20 PM on March 19, 2017


She just can't stop:

"“Caitlyn Jenner’s story came out almost simultaneously with mine in 2015, so there was kind of this comparison,” said Rachel Dolezal, drawing a parallel between what she calls “race fluidity” and transgender discrimination. Dolezal stopped by the Salon studio recently to discuss her life since being “outed” as a white woman who had been living as black.

“What’s not similar is the stigma right now. There was stigma in the past for sure, and that still perpetuates . . . but there’s more stigma for race fluidity than gender fluidity right now, and I don’t think anybody would deny that,” said Dolezal."
posted by rtha at 9:27 AM on April 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


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