Transracial Woman Under Fire in Spokane

[Crazy Eddie]

Sounds like she may be the Mike Barnacle of the NAACP.

I'm curious why, if the accusations are true about her lies she'll pretty much disappear from the face of Civil Rights activism, why is it that James O'Keefe is still out in the wild fighting the conservative "cause"?

Because conservatives don't care about credibility. Their evaluation of truthfulness is relatively simple:

"I believe A."
"He said A."
"I believe him."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

So your position is that Gabrielle Reece is a bit fat lying liar who lies about the father she lost in an airplane crash when she was 5-years old? To what purpose?

I don't know about Gabrielle Reece's history, so I have no position beyond finding the claim unlikely. She may have just been told a wrong claim by her mother. That possibility is perhaps a little more likely than having an Afro father who passed on absolutely none of his racially-relevant genes.

If it was a black man from Nigeria, I might agree.

Trinidad, however, has a diverse and complicated ethnic mix and it's actually harder to find someone with an indiluted African pedigree than a trans-racial African/spanish or African/White or African/Indian/white background. It's entirely possible that her father was actually one half or one quarter black and with three or four other ethnic contributions on top of it, in which case having a "black" father would only make her maybe 1/8th black on her father's side. Plenty enough for the genetic contribution to get buried.

Fun fact: my son is one quarter Irish but you'd never know it from looking at him.

 

[RavenSky]

So it was with fear yesterday morning that I first encountered the Rachel Dolezal story and the disconcerting fact that most people, no matter what their politics, seem to be raging biological determinists when it comes to understanding race.

Before I go on, let me say that this post is not intended to be a defense of Rachel Dolezal. I don’t know this woman, but from what has been reported about her, she appears to have some honesty, integrity, and emotional problems that extend FAR beyond “misrepresenting” her racial identity. So, I don’t intend to comment here on the rightness or the wrongness of her actions or motivations. What I will comment upon is what public reaction to this story reveals about our beliefs about race and why Dolezal’s lie isn’t the deception we should be worried about.

To be honest, I thought we were all on board with this one. But as this story continues to break, over and over again I see the words “biological” and “genetic” popping up. And I continue to see people (known and unknown to me) talking about the categories “black” and “white” as if they were absolute certainties that anyone with basic command of three of their five senses could discern with utmost accuracy. Perhaps this is the reality of lived experience for most people, but it is far from anything the scientific community has believed for a good while.

http://jnikolbeckham.com/blog/rachel-dolezals-deception-isnt-the-lie-we-should-be-worried-about/

^^^ nailed it

on the other hand, I don't know that I agree with this part:

That does not mean I or anyone else has to like it. I quite literally bristle when I see photos of Ms. Dolezal. I am appalled and angered and offended when I think about someone who has not had to live life in a black body, someone who has not had to endure the daily micro- and macro-aggressions that are the social fabric of a nation that was (fairly recently) forged in the fires of racist domination, trying on “blackness” like a blouse–putting it on and taking it off when she feels like it, because her privilege enables such a performance.

I don't think any of us knows enough about this story to be so 100% certain that Rachel Dolezal has not experienced the casual racism that is all too common. If she has indeed been living her life as a black woman for 37 years, there is a high probability that she has experienced racism.

And I am proud as fuck of the black culture that, unlike Ms. Dolezal, I do not have a choice to take on and off, because my membership in it is written all over my body.

The same could be said about a lot of people who are "black" but can or did "pass white". So does this mean one is black, and allowed to be proud of their black culture, if their skin is dark enough? I can't imagine that is what Nikol Beckham meant, though. Especially as she goes on to say:

But at the same time that I love and celebrate American blackness in all the shapes and forms it takes, part of my black identity is formed by the fight to eradicate the lie that was so central in producing this cultural identity in the first place–the lie of biologically-determined race. I define my blackness in tandem with my anti-racism and both are rooted in the truth of the constructedness of racial identity (and what beautiful constructions they are!). But if biology does not produce black culture, then biology does not legitimize my membership in it. It is a compulsory membership and if I am to believe in the constructed nature of race, because this belief in no small way defines anti-racism, then I must also accept that I cannot police the boundaries of this construct–I cannot deny access to others based solely on their physiological traits…no matter how hard that is.

We cannot hang our hats as activists and purveyors of social justice on ridding the world of reductive, essentialist, and biologically deterministic notions of race, gender, and/or sexuality and then turn around and pick up the VERY SAME ideas we have recognized oppress us when someone wields the social constructions of race and gender and sexuality in ways we do not like.

I think, if nothing else, Rachel Dolezal has generated a very interesting discussion about "race"

 

[ApostateAbe]

I don't know about Gabrielle Reece's history, so I have no position beyond finding the claim unlikely. She may have just been told a wrong claim by her mother. That possibility is perhaps a little more likely than having an Afro father who passed on absolutely none of his racially-relevant genes.

If it was a black man from Nigeria, I might agree.

Trinidad, however, has a diverse and complicated ethnic mix and it's actually harder to find someone with an indiluted African pedigree than a trans-racial African/spanish or African/White or African/Indian/white background. It's entirely possible that her father was actually one half or one quarter black and with three or four other ethnic contributions on top of it, in which case having a "black" father would only make her maybe 1/8th black on her father's side. Plenty enough for the genetic contribution to get buried.

Fun fact: my son is one quarter Irish but you'd never know it from looking at him.

Yes, good point.

 

[RavenSky]

I find this interesting too:

"It's kind of a slap in the face to African-Americans because she doesn't know what it's like to be black," said Ezra Dolezal, whose biological mother was white and father half-black. "She's only been African-American when it benefited her. She hasn't been through all the struggles. She's only been African-American the last few years."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/13/us/washington-rachel-dolezal-adopted-brother/index.html

But who is he? He is a 1/4 black man who was adopted and raised by white parents. "The [other] adopted brother wanted to live with Rachel Dolezal "in a multiracial household where black culture is celebrated and I have a connection to the black community," the court papers said." - which indicates to me that the boys were not being raised "black" either. So how does Ezra (who sided with the parents during the custody dispute btw) have any more knowledge of what it is "like to be black" or have any more experience of "all the struggles" than Rachel?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The same could be said about a lot of people who are "black" but can or did "pass white". So does this mean one is black, and allowed to be proud of their black culture, if their skin is dark enough?

Again, the one-drop rule needs to be taken out back and shot. At the moment, there is only one thing that all shades and (and even ethnicities; there are SEVERAL) of black people in America have in common: the fact that they are not white. In recent years the United States has attempted to clarify (preserve?) this definition by specifying that black people cannot be hispanic either.

This sort of confusion will continue as long as the definition of blackness continues to be decided by white people.

I think, if nothing else, Rachel Dolezal has generated a very interesting discussion about "race"

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/mV7m6IIN_tI?t=2m56s[/YOUTUBE]

2:56: Sums up the current situation nicely.

 

[RavenSky]

Walter Francis White led the national staff of the NAACP for nearly a quarter-century, from 1931 to 1955. The child of formerly enslaved people, White looked, well, white. And yet he chose blackness. “I am a Negro,” he wrote in his autobiography A Man Called White. “My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me.”

Mordecai Wyatt Johnson (January 4, 1891 – September 10, 1976) was an American educator and pastor. He served as the first black president of Howard University, from 1926 until 1960. Johnson has been considered one of the three leading African-American preachers of the early 20th-century, along with Vernon Johns and Howard Thurman. Johnson was born in Paris, Tennessee, the son of former slaves Reverend Wyatt J. Johnson and Carolyn Freeman.

 

[TSwizzle]

Good grief, it really does look like people believe black is white, up is down and good is bad. They live in " Bizarro World".

 

[bilby]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans.

The recent African origin of modern humans, or the "out of Africa" theory (OOA), is the most widely accepted model of the geographic origin and early migration of anatomically modern humans. The theory is called the "out-of-Africa" theory in the popular press, and the "recent single-origin hypothesis" (RSOH), "replacement hypothesis", or "recent African origin model" (RAO) by experts in the field. The concept was speculative before it was corroborated in the 1980s by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA, combined with evidence based on physical anthropology of archaic specimens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

The one-drop rule is a sociological and legal principle of racial classification that was historically prominent in the United States asserting that any person with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African ancestry ("one drop" of black blood) is considered to be black.

EVERYONE is black.

</discussion>

 

[RavenSky]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

The one-drop rule is a sociological and legal principle of racial classification that was historically prominent in the United States asserting that any person with even one ancestor of sub-Saharan-African ancestry ("one drop" of black blood) is considered to be black.

EVERYONE is black.

</discussion>

That is basically what Rachel said to the reporter

Best comment I've seen on the issue:

a narrative so nonsensical it would have been rejected from The Onion’s writer’s room.

 

[fromderinside]

Rolling Stone would be a lower baseline.

 

[dismal]

Breaking news: Al Sharpton is a 13-year old Asian woman.

Do we get to decide what age we identify as now too?

If I self identify as a 65 year old can I start collecting social security?

On the other hand identifying as a 23 year old would save a lot on life insurance.

 

[RavenSky]

The parents took to the television news circuit this morning. Whatever her motives, I find their motives highly suspect. There is no explanation for their actions except to hurt her. They maintain that they were not abusive parents, but what they are doing now seems extremely hurtful, and has all the appearances of "payback" for one of the boys choosing to live with Rachel instead of them.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The parents took to the television news circuit this morning. Whatever her motives, I find their motives highly suspect. There is no explanation for their actions except to hurt her. They maintain that they were not abusive parents, but what they are doing now seems extremely hurtful, and has all the appearances of "payback" for one of the boys choosing to live with Rachel instead of them.

The timing of all of this is definitely suspect. There would seemingly have been plenty of time to come out with this. Instead, it has gotten awfully public.

 

[dismal]

The parents took to the television news circuit this morning. Whatever her motives, I find their motives highly suspect. There is no explanation for their actions except to hurt her. They maintain that they were not abusive parents, but what they are doing now seems extremely hurtful, and has all the appearances of "payback" for one of the boys choosing to live with Rachel instead of them.

They told the truth. If that hurts, she should look in the mirror to find the person who is responsible. (hint: it's the one with the kinky hair)

 

[fromderinside]

The parents took to the television news circuit this morning. Whatever her motives, I find their motives highly suspect. There is no explanation for their actions except to hurt her. They maintain that they were not abusive parents, but what they are doing now seems extremely hurtful, and has all the appearances of "payback" for one of the boys choosing to live with Rachel instead of them.

They told the truth. If that hurts, she should look in the mirror to find the person who is responsible. (hint: it's the one with the kinky hair)

Hey. When are we gong to talk about something important like why fast moving trucks don't sink on Alaska's ice roads?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

 

[RavenSky]

They told the truth. If that hurts, she should look in the mirror to find the person who is responsible. (hint: it's the one with the kinky hair)

Hey. When are we gong to talk about something important like why fast moving trucks don't sink on Alaska's ice roads?

I don't think anyone knows who is "telling the truth" yet, nor do I think anyone involved is telling 100% of the truth.

Two of five children maintain that the parents were physically abusive (& one has not yet made a reported statement on anything). The parents and two other children maintain they weren't. Who is "telling the truth"?

Obviously, abusive parents claim they aren't. Also not at all unusual for some children to deny the abuse rather than deny the only parents they have. Is that proof they are lying? No. But something certainly happened to cause Rachel Dolezal to disown her parents, and to cause one of her siblings to do the same.

And while I think it is looking highly unlikely in this case, it is also not all that unusual for children to discover years later, sometimes as adults, that the father on their birth certificates is not really their father. Carol Channing is one example.

It is entirely possible that Rachel Dolezal is knowingly lying. It is also possible she truly believes she is a mix of white, black and NI - maybe she has some information or misinformation that we do not have. Maybe she is mentally ill with a type of body dysmorphia. We simply do not know yet.

But none of those excuse the very public manner in which her parents are destroying her life. That is not, in any way, the mark of loving parents. The mother, in particular, sounds vicious in the interviews.

 

[repoman]

Yeah, that is cold what the parents did. It would have been 20 years ago that this story would have made a blip on the national scene and then disappeared. Now it is has so much staying power with youtube twitter and so on.

But I think it is the way out there lies in addition to being black that show she is truly lying.

 

[dismal]

Hey. When are we gong to talk about something important like why fast moving trucks don't sink on Alaska's ice roads?

I don't think anyone knows who is "telling the truth" yet, nor do I think anyone involved is telling 100% of the truth.

Two of five children maintain that the parents were physically abusive (& one has not yet made a reported statement on anything). The parents and two other children maintain they weren't. Who is "telling the truth"?

Obviously, abusive parents claim they aren't. Also not at all unusual for some children to deny the abuse rather than deny the only parents they have. Is that proof they are lying? No. But something certainly happened to cause Rachel Dolezal to disown her parents, and to cause one of her siblings to do the same.

And while I think it is looking highly unlikely in this case, it is also not all that unusual for children to discover years later, sometimes as adults, that the father on their birth certificates is not really their father. Carol Channing is one example.

It is entirely possible that Rachel Dolezal is knowingly lying. It is also possible she truly believes she is a mix of white, black and NI - maybe she has some information or misinformation that we do not have. Maybe she is mentally ill with a type of body dysmorphia. We simply do not know yet.

But none of those excuse the very public manner in which her parents are destroying her life. That is not, in any way, the mark of loving parents. The mother, in particular, sounds vicious in the interviews.

Huh?

How does her parents being abusive, vicious, whatever make Rachel Dolezal into a black woman?