The story of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who has passed herself off as Black and became the NAACP Spokane, Washington president continues to get more and more ridiculous, sad, complicated, and infuriating. To try and understand what the climate is like in that part of the country we talked to an actual Black woman who grew up in Spokane. What follows is a heated and fascinating discussion with Alicia Walters, the author of “I became a black woman in Spokane. But, Rachel Dolezal, I was a black girl first” which appeared in the Guardian.
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Betty Cracker
Gah! Comment got deleted, so I’ll repeat myself: The more facts that come out about this case, the clearer it becomes that Dolezal is mentally ill.
xenos
@Betty Cracker: there is a lot of disturbing stuff coming out about her birth family. Not excusing, just explaining. A bit like a reverse Michael Jackson, although more capable of being a loving parent and useful member of society.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
This could be. This makes everything more a private family matter and less a news story.
rikyrah
She has been on the long con for awhile. As she steps back into her White Privilege, watch her cash -out back to Whiteness.
Mike in NC
TLC will sign her for a reality TV show.
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
I’m not so sure about that. I think that for whatever reason she’s convinced herself that she’s really black, despite the evidence that she, like her parents, is white. Also, I’m not sure what the step is between
“Pretend to be black” and “$$$$!”
Pogonip
@Amir Khalid: Me either. Looks to me like she convinced herself she’s black in exactly the same way Bruce Jenner convinced himself he’s female. Admittedly in the Jenner case the next step is indeed $$$.
Kylroy
@rikyrah: Cash out with who? I don’t see the pool of ready wingnut cash that materializes whenever some backwoods idiot says something homophobic streaming towards a white woman who somehow convinced herself she was black.
Geeno
I actually feel kind of sorry for her, and at least she was trying to do good with NAACP.
ruemara
I dunno. Getting cred as an Africana studies lecturer, being able to say who is or is not authentically black. It’s not wingnut welfare, but it has been occupying spaces for black people and profiting from it.
@Geeno: stop that. Stop. I know what you mean, but that’s not what’s been going on.
Suzanne
I have no opinion on this case. First of all, the actions of one person who may have mental problems doesn’t really say anything about the movement. I also don’t know if she’s been hypocritical about it, and used white privilege when it suited her, which would piss me off. From everything I read, which is not a whole lot, it appears that she’s been a good ally, which makes me inclined to be somewhat sympathetic. Lying is bad, hypocrisy is worse. I don’t know where she falls on this spectrum yet.
Mark
I don’t understand all of the furor about this person. I have actually been to Spokane, and she might actually be the closest thing to a black person there. Do a GIS for Gonzaga basketball; it is whiter than BYU. Who has been hurt by this person?
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@ruemara:
It sounded as though rikyrah thinks there might be some profit in this story going forward, so that’s what people are doubting. I guess maybe there might be a Fox News opportunity, but it really sounds like this woman needs some pretty serious mental health assistance.
The sad part is that, as the NAACP pointed out, she didn’t have to pretend to be black to work for them. She made that choice to live a lie. I don’t know what motivated her, but I’ve heard other stories of con artists who started to believe their own cons so strongly that they had mental breakdowns. “Drake’s Fortune” is a nonfiction book about one guy who did that.
Pogonip
@Mike in NC: They probably will!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, too, I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying, “You’d have to be CRAZY to want to be Black!” It’s the stuff like claiming in Facebook posts that her adopted brothers were her biological children that sets my “nutso” alarm off.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip:
Here’s an interesting article on that topic. It’s in Slate, but worth reading despite that if you’re open to the possibility that the parallels you’re drawing between Jenner and Dolezal may not be as exact as you think.
shawn
@Suzanne: “First of all, the actions of one person who may have mental problems doesn’t really say anything about the movement.”
you must be new here
shawn
@Betty Cracker: dang it, quit linking articles i can’t read at work :P
WereBear
I heard that too. Upon listening to the podcast, she sued Howard University for not treating her right… because she was white?
This is some tangled web.
kc
@Betty Cracker:
Her parents seem like dreadful people.
Suzanne
I think that, for some people, the line between looking like a member of a race and an expression of style/personal identity is not so clear.
Example: I have two cousins who are sisters, both of whom are white (actually whiter than me, because I’m part Italian). The both have a lot of friends of all races, but one of them has long been into hip-hop subculture and follows its beauty standards and styles. She dyes her hair dark and tans, and as a result, she looks much darker than Rachel Dolezal. However, she definitely identifies as white, and has never lied about her race. She is very interested in beauty and fashion, and her style icons are more Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Lupita Nyong’o. Her husband is black, and they have two gorgeous little girls. Having lived amongst and with black people for so long, she of course has developed empathy for them and the BS that they have to deal with daily, and I know that when she is out with her family, some people have assumed that she is black or at least biracial, not that she cares. Among white people, she looks like a white girl with a dark tan. Among black people, she looks like a light-skinned black or biracial girl.
But I can see how, for some people, if they live like that long enough, they literally don’t see that they aren’t a member of that race. As soon as they see that some segments of society ID them as black, they feel that they are living that life and dealing with that prejudice. I’m not saying that that is okay, but I also can see how that happens. Almost like empathy taken to an extreme.
scav
The Jenner / Dozale comparison pretty much falls down as Caitlyn isn’t pretending she never grew up as Bruce. I can understand not feeling at home in one’s birth culture or body, but being upfront about the situation and changing what can be changed isn’t quite the same as pretending your actual life didn’t exist. Lot of people using this event to push their agenda on multiple fronts.
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: You found something worth reading in Slate? Now, that’s impressive!
And I couldn’t get into it. Pfft. If I remember I’ll try again later.
I thought Scav brought up an interesting point, below, and I’ll ponder it, but I think the Jenner and Dolezal cases both come down to how far you can, or should, go to try to change a reality you don’t like. Which is a hugely interesting question.
Betty
I worked with a woman who did this. She had been married to a Black man, and her children clearly reflected their father’s heritage. That seemed to have something to do with it, but it was bizarre when we found out she was Italian-American. She was olive-skinned and didn’t look Black. She claimed to be Creole- sounded exotic, I guess.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip: It is a hugely interesting question. Shorter Slate article: while the science isn’t 100% in, gender appears to be rooted in the brain and genetics in a way that race is not.
Pink Snapdragon
@kc: Help me out here. What about her parents causes you to describe them as “dreadful people?”
Starfish
@Pogonip: There is no “there” there in the Slate article or in what @scav is saying.
Basically, Slate is trying to say that since there is an epigenetic basis for gay men, there must be one for transgender people, we just have not studied it scientifically yet. Note that though there is an epigenetic basis for gay men, female sexuality is way more complicated, and I have not heard of any studies they have found as an epigenetic basis for lesbians.
What @scav is saying about Jenner not lying and Dolezal lying depends on the very unique aspect of Jenner’s situation which is actively transitioning in the public light. It is rude to ask most transgender people about their pre-transition selves so we have removed the need to lie by making it against common etiquette to ask.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: The Slate piece was pretty upfront about the science being incomplete. Do you think the article is off base in saying that the possibility that transgender people are “born that way” is an important distinction between someone like Jenner and someone like Dolezal?
scav
@Starfish: You’re assuming that most transgendered persons invent and maintain a “fake” prior life based on their non-birth gender identity. That’s seems different from it merely not being the first thing they bring up in any and all conversations. And, far from basing it on Jenner, it’s derived more from knowing someone who transitioned, so, no, not all second hand media-spotllight-based and a bit more there-ish than you posit.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: The implications of accepting the “born that way” argument are terrifying.
There are sex based differences in babies and small children, but there is not necessarily strong gender identity no matter what people in stores would like to sell you. (They can sell you twice as much stuff if they create a girl version and a boy version of every product if you have a girl child and a boy child.)
There is some form of gender identity that develops in preschool eventually (kids will divide themselves up into boy groups and girl groups for play), but some kids are slower at picking this up and some kids are messing around with gender roles for a lot longer.
Labelling kids as transgender early and blocking puberty or allowing early gender transition leads to the sterilization of a whole class of people, and that leaves me very very nervous.
This argument clearly does not apply to Bruce Jenner who has six biological children; but it is hard to accept “born this way” argument and reject early transition.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: You’ve clearly thought through the implications more extensively than I have. And I agree they could take an extremely frightening turn. But is a genetic basis true or not? We don’t know yet, but it could be an important factor, no?
PS: Jenner has SIX kids? Daaaamn!
MaryRC
@Amir Khalid: I agree – I don’t see a dollar benefit here. She clearly didn’t embezzle funds from the NAACP or we would have known of it by now. And she’s not like the Scott Thompsons of the academic or business or scientific world who pad their résumés with fake qualifications. She does have a college degree and could probably get a job similar to the one she has now, under her own identity — even in the NAACP if I understand correctly. She’s not in it for the money.
There’s a long long list of people who have assumed a false identity that happened to be that of a victim — Holocaust survivors, child-abuse survivors, sufferers from mental illness. Usually there’s a book deal involved, but sometimes it must just be a craving for attention and sympathy. She has adopted the persona of someone who could claim to be oppressed and has actually reported incidents when she was racially harassed. So there’s some need there that’s being filled.
Someone who has always interested me is Archie Belaney, an Englishman who moved to Canada in the early 1900’s and transformed himself into an Ojibwa author, lecturer and conservationist called Grey Owl. He became famous in Canada and his secret wasn”t revealed until after his death. I wonder what he would have done if it had been. It seemed to be a very popular habit among white guys of a certain generation to pretend that they were native American/Canadian.
Pogonip
Upon consideration, I wonder if we’re not all barking up the wrong tree here. Instead of pondering when you’re officially male, female, white, or black, perhaps we should be pondering what we can do to change or escape a society in which an increasing number of people seem to find their reality unbearable.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip: Or to create a society in which it doesn’t even fucking matter at all. Which amounts to the same thing, I guess…
Pogonip
@Betty Cracker: Well, no, if people wish to have kids their sex definitely matters as to whether they end up pitchers or catchers! As far as race, if current trends continue I anticipate that in 50 years the U. S. will look much like Brazil: a small number of white people, a small number of black people, and a whole big passel of brown people.
Betty Cracker
@Pogonip: Sex will always matter in a binary universe like ours, but sexuality is a continuum, and I can imagine a more just universe in which no one particularly gives a shit where little Snotleigh falls on that continuum.
lou
The thing is, her identifying as black comes from a place of white privilege. Were Gabourney Sidibe raised with white brothers in a quintessential white place like Greenwich, Conn., she couldn’t identify as white. Society wouldn’t let her.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Starfish:
Did you ever read “As Nature Made Him”? It’s even more poignant now that David (raised as Brenda) has committed suicide, but there does seem to be something to the theory that some part of one’s inner sense of self and one’s gender is inborn to some extent. It’s less binary than most people want to admit, but even people who were born intersexed usually lean towards one or the other from a young age.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: a book deal.
Paul in KY
@lou: She was also lucky enough to be able to pass as light-skinned Black person, just due to her physical appearance. Ms. Sidibe would not have that ability, although other Black people would be able to.
Edit: Just as you would have to be ‘lucky’ enough to have been born tall, if you wanted to pass yourself off as an NBA player, being 4’8″ would not allow you to do that.