Passing for black
Years ago, it used to be pretty common for light-skinned blacks to try to “pass” for white. When black people faced a tremendous amount of prejudice it made a certain amount of sense to do so, although I would assume it was not an easy decision.
Fast forward to now, and we have the case of Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, who has a different approach. She’s apparently been falsely claiming to be black.
Well, why not? This opened doors for her that might have been more difficult to budge had she presented herself as a garden-variety white-bread white-privilege type. It’s not unheard of for people to falsely (or sometimes mistakenly) claim a certain status or identity in order to get some special consideration (Elizabeth Warren, are you listening?). There’s everything from fake racial claims to fake illnesses (Munchausen’s syndrome) to fake children’s illnesses (Munchausen’s by proxy) to fake disability claims to fake professional credentials, and on and on and on.
Apparently it’s not so hard to do if a person is sufficiently determined. Dolezal appears to have availed herself of a perm and some makeup or spray tan, and voila:
White people are allowed to join the NAACP (especially in Spokane, Washington, where there aren’t all that many black people to begin with). They are even allowed to hold office in it, and sometimes they do. But deception is a no-no. However, that’s not the worst of Dolezal’s probable deceptions. She appears to be quite the fabricator, and although her level of detail isn’t in the Stephen Glass-ish range, she’s pretty creative and prolific:
To get the whole story, read this article, but here are some excerpts:
Dolezal, a multi-media artist, professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University and former instructor at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene, has reportedly made similar ethnicity claims to local media outlets. In recent years, she has portrayed herself physically, and on social media platforms, as a woman of black African-American heritage.
However, her parents, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, who are both white and live in the Troy/Libby area in Montana, told The Press their daughter is not African-American. They backed up the claim with a copy of their daughter’s birth certificate and photos. The images show a younger, pale, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Dolezal who looks much different than the woman with caramel-colored skin now leading the Spokane NAACP and helping review claims of police misconduct in that city.
“Rachel is very good at using her artistic skills to transform herself,” Ruthanne said in a recent telephone interview…
n a February issue of the Easterner, EWU’s student-run newspaper, Dolezal reportedly told a reporter that the man who raised her with her mother is her stepfather. In January, a photo of Dolezal and a black man appeared on the Spokane NAACP’s Facebook page with the message: “President Dolezal’s father announced today that he will be coming to town for January 19th ribbon-cutting ceremony for the NAACP office … and is expected to speak at the 7 p.m. MLK tribute membership meeting.”
But the man in the photo is not her father. The person in the photo is Albert Wilkerson – a black man who lived in North Idaho and volunteered at the Human Rights Education Institute several years ago when Dolezal was in charge of the organization’s education programs. A similar picture was posted on Dolezal’s personal Facebook page in December, with a comment made from Dolezal’s account on the social media platform: “L-R: Me, my oldest son Izaiah, and my Dad.”
Dolezal’s mother said she has never met Albert Wilkerson and Rachel does not have a stepfather. She said her daughter’s father is Larry Dolezal, a former Lincoln County Commissioner in Montana. Ruthanne and Larry just celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary on Monday, she said.
“Anybody who lives in the town of Troy or Libby knows that Larry is her father,” Ruthanne said.
Wilkerson, who has since moved away from the area, could not be reached for comment.
Dolezal’s birth certificate filed in Lincoln County, Montana in 1977 states that Ruthanne is her mother and Lawrence Albert Dolezal is her father.
Ruthanne also clarified that Izaiah, who Dolezal often says is her son, is actually Dolezal’s adopted brother. Between 1993 and 1995, Ruthanne and Larry adopted four black infants: Ezra, Izaiah, Zachariah and Esther.
The story is pretty Byzantine, but it also involves a great many allegations by Dolezal of hate crimes against her, mainly involving nooses placed on her property and that sort of thing—that for various reasons are now considered to be highly suspect allegations.
Dolezal is, of course, denying that she’s done anything wrong. But she has a funny way of doing so:
KREM 2 asked to address the public sentiment that she misrepresented her race.
“I can understand that. And like I said, it’s more important to me to clarify that to the black community, and with my executive board, than it really is for me to explain it to a community that I quite frankly don’t think understands the definitions of race and ethnicity,” said Dolezal.
Her parent’s explanation for her behavior seems as good as any, at least in the psychological sense:
Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal said their daughter has always identified with the African American culture and had black siblings who were adopted. They said she went to school in Mississippi and was part of a primarily African American community.
The Dolezal’s said Rachel married and later divorced a black man. They said after the divorce in 2004 Rachel began identifying differently. She started claiming to be partially African American and the daughter of bi-racial parents. They said they have noticed her change in physical appearance but do not know how she did so.
“Rachel has wanted to be somebody she’s not. She’s chosen not to just be herself but to represent herself as an African American woman or a biracial person. And that’s simply not true,” said Ruthanne Dolezal.
The Dolezal’s said they do not have a problem with Rachel advocating for a civil rights group for African Americans, rather that she is being deceptive about it.
Rachel’s parents said she distanced herself from them and has not talked to them recently…
Rachel said she does not consider her biological parents her real parents.
That’s the psychological part, which I believe is true. But there’s also a practical part: getting perks (jobs, appointments, attention) that she otherwise wouldn’t have had access to.
Quite a few people have made analogies to the Bruce/Kaitlin Jenner transformation. After all, both are cases of a person feeling and/or thinking that he/she is something he/she is not, or at least was not at birth.
It’s true, for people who look physically as though they could be either white or black, that a racial identity really is to a certain extent a constructed identity, a matter of self-identification. In the biological sense, race is a cluster of traits (such as dark skin) which exist on a continuum within a race with no definite dividing line, and also exist across races—for example, there are Caucasians with far darker skin than many American blacks.
But someone such as Dolezal, who was born to white parents and is genetically white but is clearly trying to give the impression that she is black in more than the “constructed narrative” sense, has apparently been perpetrating a deception. The analogy to Jenner, who is not being deceptive and who acknowledges having been born biologically (and genetically) male, breaks down.
[NOTE: One thing I wonder is how Dolezal thought she could keep this secret forever. Did she think her parents would never speak up? Or did she think they would not be believed if they did?]
Boehner transitioning?
There is more:
She has also told people she was born in a teepee and that she had to hunt her own food with a bow and arrow. She also tells people she came to become passionate about racial justice when she lived in South Africa, a nation she never even visited when her parents lived there as missionaries from 2003-2006. ,
The last straw for her parents were the reports her parents beat her and her siblings with “baboon whips and that she had scars like a slave from it. ..
We should all beware of the Normalcy Bias ….
I am G6loq.
She reminds me a lot of fake veterans, especially the ones who seek an elevated social status based on a fake-military identity. Many of them are just as audacious.
I agree with you that her case is not like the Jenner case in terms of possible fraud and deception. But it is similar in terms of self-determination and the mutability of identity.
As many have pointed out on twitter, if gender is fluid, just a social construct, then why not race?
Heh.
Lizzy,
If we treat it all like religion, then conversion is enough to be ‘born again’.
Eric:
Yes, fake veterans are very common; I wrote about the phenomenon here.
G6loq:
She also said that they beat them with whips to different degrees, depending on their skin color.
I thinks she’s closer to UVA’s fake gang-rape victim, “Jackie”. Rachel likely received some sort of emotional validation by playing the racial victim, it enabled her to become an expert and activist for for her chosen race for which she received admiration and attention. And like Jackie, sounds like she’s somewhat mentally unstable.
Hoo boy – not only does she have issues, but a lifetime subscription and back issues all tidily bound.
I can imagine any number of writers for The Onion throwing up their hands in despair and quitting writing satire.
Finally, the long awaited sequel to Black Like Me – Black Like I.
It’s actually a logistical issue. Trying to find two blacks in Spokane, Washington, that is.
One of the more interesting incidences of ‘passing’ was the life of Clarence King a 19th century geographer and explorer who did a lot of the first mapping of the Sierra Nevadas and was a wealthy friend of John Hay and Henry Adams and all the while he was living another life as a black man with a black wife and family that no one in his other life new anything about. As with this woman King didn’t really look black but especially at this time no one could imagine why a white man would pretend to be black so he was accepted as black. After his death a few of his close friends found out about his other life and John Hay supported his widow for the rest of her life.
A pretty good book about Clarence King is ‘Passing Strange’ that really sheds light on this bizarre life he led.
As Sgt. Mom said, our society is going to put The Onion out of business.
A few years ago I read Diane West’s “The Death of the Grown-Up”. I recall it being a good book although I don’t remember much about it. The subject matter, however, becomes more and more relevant every day.
We had the summer of sharks,
We had the summer of Gary Condit,
We’re having a summer of transitions …
What could possibly go wrong?
If Elizabeth Warren can be Cherokee why can’t Dolezal be black? She’s just a very light black.
“Rachel said she does not consider her biological parents her real parents.”
And this quote, for me, pretty much sums up this poor woman’s mental state.
Ray wrote:
If Elizabeth Warren can be Cherokee why can’t Dolezal be black?
Good question. We all know that ethnic, racial and even sexual identity is “socially constructed.” Dolezal simply constructed her own black identity. Though why one would choose to do this is a mystery, given the atrocious racism so prevalent among Americans and the institutionalized racial oppression that is just as bad today as it was in the 1920s Jim Crow south.
Given the way that white people are demonized today, I’m surprised we aren’t seeing more of this, especially among young people who are marinating in anti-white propaganda.
Honestly, when your entire reason for existence is based on blather, what difference does is make? How about if the race/position were reversed? A black as a Grand Dragon in the Klan, who cares?
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Roman,
Clayton Bigsby (mixed with some Kyle Broflovski).
Found at Ace:
See, “complexities” that we’re just too dim to grasp.
Plus, we’re all African anyway. Well, you gotta give her an “A” for chutzpah!
Whatever floats her boat, I will continue to use my SPF 50+ to obtain exactly the opposite effect…
Is this actually illegal, though? Clearly she has “issues”, but at what point does it become an actual fraud?
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The Left aggregates the bottom 20% of the human filth, then the rest of the moderates declare them as our intellectual and social superiors and masters. Typical.
As I endlessly say: CANNOT Possibly Make This S*** Up!! But, they do.
_____________________________
Mr. Orwell: It’s here, Dude.
Here she is, the good stuff @8:30.
Have a nice puke.
Anna:
Well, I suppose it would be the NAACP that would have the cause of action against her, and they seem disinclined to get into it.
The next phase involves getting children to reject their parents by adopting a different sexual, gender, and religious identity. Forced conversion by the Demoncrat sword.
I guess all this coming out makes her a doubleplus ungood race traitor both ways.
Whew!
vanderleun Says:
June 12th, 2015 at 9:33 pm
I guess all this coming out makes her a doubleplus ungood race traitor both ways.
Careful you might have to endure the accusation of being a transnegrophobe.
Can’t have that!
What I find interesting in her case is the fact that she has a history of claiming racist attacks against her over the years and no one seemed to have discovered this earlier while investigating those claims.
It just goes to show that her claims were taken at face value.
When she was black her lies were believed; now that she is white – she is liar!
It probably also got her a job being a female black studies prof. She’s just another Senator Lieawatha using fake Injun ancestry to get ahead in academia, except Dolezal’s not faking red, but faking black.
Also note how the NAACP had been conned, but are blowing off Dolezal’s deception. Funny that.
I point everyone back to Lou Reed’s late-70s song “I Wanna Be Black.” Such a wish has long been a not-so or semi-suppressed facet of a certain brand of hipster.
Steve Martin in The Jerk: “I was born a poor black child.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAvQp-Uk5I
Lou Reed — I Wanna Be Black Lyrics
I want to be black
Have natural rhythm
Shoot twenty feet of jism, too
And fuck up the Jews
I want to be black
I want to be a Panther
Have a girlfriend named Samantha
And have a stable of foxy whores
Oh oh oh I want to be black
I don’t want to be a fucked up, middle class,
College student anymore
I just want to have a stable of foxy little whores
Yeah, yeah I want to be black
I want to be black
I want to be like Martin Luther King
And get myself shot in spring
And lead a whole generation too
And fuck up the Jews
I want to be black, I want to be like Malcolm X
And cast a hex over President Kennedy’s tomb
And have a big prick, too
miklos000rosza:
And please don’t forget Loudon Wainwright.
From the – Seinfeld covered almost everything – department, this video relates to that at least a little bit – “So we’re just a couple of white people?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGIgnscRz6Q
Appropriating a culture. Thought crime. But in Obamaca, certain criminals are more equal than other criminals.
The black, female, royalist, bureacratist, elitist privilege. Check yo privilege, aristocrats.
Strikes me, and apparently no one else, that she was raised by white guilt parents out there in rural Montana. The parents adopted 4 black kids with whom she was apparently raised, and later did “missionary work” in South Africa.
Being white in a small herd of adopted black siblings, competing for parental love and attention, does not sound like a healthy start. The blacks were presumably adopted (i.e., sought), with the implication they were better since the parents deliberately chose them.
So perhaps in some symbolic ways she concluded that Black Is Better. And has (logically, in her view) chosen to live as a Black. Probably voted for our “First Black President”, Clinton, who, last I checked, was white too.
To finish up: I blame Dolezal’s parents. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
Frog:
Well, her parents don’t seem to have been suffused with so much white guilt themselves that they weren’t about to tell the truth about her.
I think something of what you say is true, however, although I don’t automatically blame the parents, because I don’t know what they actually told her about race and worth, etc.. Sounds as though they are very religious, and that was their motive at least in part. Also, having seen photos of the family, I noticed that Rachel (now 37 years old) was very significantly older than her adopted siblings. Her Wiki page states that they were adopted when she was a teenager. I would estimate she might have been around 15 or 16 from some of the articles I’ve read (this article, for example, has a photo of Rachel at her wedding, and of some of the adopted brothers, who are very much younger). If that is correct, that would mean she was almost grown up before they came into the family.
Neo-
I think the Dolezal parents merit a closer look. 2010 census says there are 2600 people in Libby, MT, of which 0.1% are black. That equals two persons, perhaps her sibs, the other two having moved.
There is something odd for a “religious” couple to bring adopted young black kids into a small, rural town in Montana. Small towns are small towns, with small town culture. The kids had to be imported from a goodly distance away. Adoption of four was no small task. From Chicago? From where?
Why not Indian infants off a rez? Why not white kids? Why blacks? How did these adoptees turn out?
The Dolezals were making a statement with the adoptions, IMO: We are holier than thou, you people of Libby, and we have these black kids as proof. There is something Bergdahleque about the parents. That Rachel married a black suggests how her thinking and choice(s) were shaped by her parents.
The whole thing makes me uncomfortable….lotsa victims.
I despise frauds, but I just pity poor Rachel. She is a trout who was morphed into a flounder.
The parents are not the strongest influence on the current generations.
As for missionary work, it is better than the vast majority of ways white people get rid of their guilt.
It is always better to do something productive than to use your NAACP title to coerce other people to pay an extortion fee, so that it looks to everyone that good is being done.
The only reason people are comparing this to Bruce Jenner is the timing — there are no actual similarities. Even if you consider both to have some kind of illness,they are different illnesses.
Whatever is the matter with her, I’m pretty sure, is what makes people claim to be Holocaust survivors or military veterans. They don’t htink they will ever get caught because that is part of their pathology. They’re not con artists. They have more in common with someone with Munchausen Syndrome by PRoxy (“How did she think she could get away with poisoning her own child??”) than with con artists. In a weird way, they don’t think they are lying, so they can’t think they will get caught — and if they do get caught, like this woman, they think what they say to explain themselves will satisfy eveyrone.
That’s normally called being a malignant narcissist, like Hussein.