As we are told race is a social construct, why should someone be forced to maintain the race they were assigned at birth when they self-identify with another race?
Precisely because race is a SOCIAL construct, not a personal one. You an self-identify as pre-columbian tribal wood elf, but SOCIETY is pretty sure you're just a "white person."
Not that the social construct ITSELF actually makes a lot of sense and is, in a lot of ways, arbitrary and meaningless. All that means is we need to change the way SOCIETY views racial classifications if we want those classifications to even begin to make sense.
The problem is the ridiculous and sexist "one drop" rule which was used in the past by white supremacist to reject mixed-race people and is used today by black supremacist to deny the white heritage of mixed-race people.
It has nothing to do with "black supremacists." They don't control the dialog in that issue, never really did, and arguably never will. The sad fact of the matter is the "one drop rule" is an artifact of white supremacism that was never actually phased out with the end of Jim Crow and no new definition has evolved to replace it; it is, in fact, a white supremacist meme that has been internalized by black people at their own expense.
Also problematic is that belonging to certain minority groups can give one legal and other benefits. For example, Elzabeth "Fauxachontas" Warren...
I'm just going to use my imagination and pretend that you would have bothered to bring this up -- or even thought about doing so -- if it didn't give you a chance to cast a prominent female politician in a bad light.
Still, what Dolezal has done is more important than what race she is to the NAACP, regional President Gerald Hankerson said. He called the NAACP a civil rights organization first that includes "leaders from all different ethnicities," adding that it "doesn't do a genealogy search on what a person's ethnicity is when they" take a top position.
As to Dolezal specifically, Hankerson said, "We represent all civil rights issues, regardless of a person's ethnicity. And the quality of the work that she has done to elevate the issues of civil rights in that region is what we applaud."
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/washington-spokane-naacp-rachel-dolezal-identity/
So who is having a problem with her self-identifying as black?
Not the NAACP, obviously, because doing so would be politically incorrect for some reason.
OTOH, I don't know how many white people would be able to retain a leadership position in, say, the Jewish Defense League if it came to light that they were not, in fact, Jewish.
Let's just come out and say it here: minority organizations exist to offset social and political disadvantages experienced by minorities by virtue of their smaller numbers. One would need to be an actual member of that community in order to be a LEADER of that community.
In Dolezai's case, this is basically "Dancing with Wolves." Only with black people.
Dancing With Colored People?