Rachel Dolezal, a noted civil rights activist of self-proclaimed “transracial” heritage, was until recently the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), a part-time professor of African studies and a member of the local police oversight board. She was known as a leading advocate for racial justice and a firebrand activist who had herself filed complaints of racial discrimination.
Recently, she was outed by her parents as a white woman from Idaho who had enjoyed a middle-class childhood of relative comfort. Her African-American adopted brother criticized her for carrying out a sort of “blackface” performance of public deception because she’d darkened her skin and altered the colour and texture of her naturally straight, blond hair. Needless to say, a firestorm of international proportions erupted.
She’s been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike, chastised by everyone, especially members of the African-American community, for racial fraud, racial misrepresentation and racial co-opting.
If there were such a thing as race, perhaps the shock waves generated by the Dolezal story would make sense. Perhaps her genuine accomplishments would deserve to be negated.
But let’s not confuse “race” with ethnicity, as many are doing. The former is a convenient, conventional illusion, the latter a category based on culture.
And just as we should not challenge anyone’s gender identification, we should not challenge people’s right to self-identify with the ethnic group of their choice.
This is not to deny the existence of historical and ongoing persecution and murder of people because of their perceived race. As an identifiable African American, I was racially profiled, stopped and harassed. I was almost killed by a “white” police officer in Chicago in 1969.
Since Grade 10 in my native Washington, DC, I’ve been an anti-racism, black studies, civil rights and black power advocate. That was in 1963, around the time the book Black Like Me was considered essential reading. It told the story of white journalist John Howard Griffin, who chemically darkened his skin and embarked on a six-week Greyhound bus trip through the Deep South in order to experience first-hand what it was like to be a “black.” It wasn’t the first time a white writer would do that, nor would it be the last.
In 1969, white writer and journalist Grace Halsell wrote Soul Sister: The Journal Of A White Woman Who Turned Herself Black And Went to Live And Work In Harlem And Mississippi. The term “soul sister” in her title, like “soul brother,” was by that time considered patronizing and stereotypical at best and pejorative at worst.
What were these writers’ motivations for passing as black? That’s the essential question at the heart of the Dolezal affair.
The media have seized on the story and sensationalized it without an iota of nuance, and the absence of a clear explanation from Dolezal as to why she decided to pass herself off as African American has added to the confusion.
Some of what she’s had to say holds promise for opening a channel for much-needed debate on race. She’s been quoted as saying that all of us are really black because our species originated in Africa. This is scientifically accurate.
Another thing she’s said is that she considers herself black because she was mentored and influenced greatly by an African-American man she thinks of as her father. Her biological father, according to her, was not a “dad” to her. Clearly there is dysfunction in their relationship.
But the claiming of another ethnic and cultural identity as one’s own is far from novel. In fact, it’s done every time immigrants raise their hand to proclaim they are henceforth Canadians, for example.
Adding to the problem for Dolezal is the fact that she’s been inconsistent. Perhaps she’s taken the pulse of the public and decided that the complex issue of racial identity is beyond understanding for most.
Syreeta McFadden, writing in the Guardian, vehemently rejects Dolezal’s claim that she is “transracial,” a term generally used to describe people raised by adoptive parents from a different ethnic group.
Writer Rebecca Carroll accused Dolezal of “racial fraudulence,” stating flatly, “I Am Black. Rachel Dolezal Is Not.” She dislikes Dolezal so much, she gets in the gutter a bit about “the men in her life.”
“Dolezal’s ex-husband is black,” she points out, “and from pieced-together reports, it seems that she has a long history of dating black men. Did they know she was white? Did she use them? Was her decision to pose as a black woman motivated by a warped version of jungle fever?”
Jungle fever?
The argument that one doesn’t have the right to ethnically self-identify is just another illusion. Every time you fill out a form and check off a “race” or ethnicity, you are making a choice of self-identification.
There is just one human species. If the word “race” has any resonance at all, it is when paired with the word “human.”
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