Transracial Woman Under Fire in Spokane

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, he's a good musician. But the boy is fucked up.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

I would think people with any need for intellectual consistency would think Dolezal is as much Black as Jenner is a Woman, while leaving room for a wide range of disagreement on just how much that is.

What is intellectually consistent about it? They are two separate issues with a number of differences. There are some commonalities and I don't see anything wrong whatsoever with drawing on that, but neither scenario is logically validated or invalidated by the other.

 

[dismal]

I would think people with any need for intellectual consistency would think Dolezal is as much Black as Jenner is a Woman, while leaving room for a wide range of disagreement on just how much that is.

What is intellectually consistent about it? They are two separate issues with a number of differences. There are some commonalities and I don't see anything wrong whatsoever with drawing on that, but neither scenario is logically validated or invalidated by the other.

I don't see any meaningful differences. If Jenner is a woman because she says she is then Dolezal is Black because she says she is. If you want to make it a matter of genes an chromosomes then you make it a matter of genes and chromosomes.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

If Jenner is a woman because she says she is then Dolezal is Black because she says she is.

Jenner is not a woman because she says she is a woman. Jenner is recognized as a woman because our understanding of transgender identities has changed over time based on our study of the subject matter thus far. Those studies do not, as far as I know, reveal a great deal about possible transracial identities, and if there are studies regarding transracial identities, they likely do not reveal a great deal about transgender identities. The medical impacts of her transition are based off of our knowledge of gender specifically, and the extent of the changes come down to biological factors which specifically relate to gender and Jenner as an individual. Those medical practices are not directly relevant to the steps Dolezal took, and the degree to which either party is successful has no bearing on the other party. Caitlyn's hormone levels will not fluctuate on the basis of Rachel's hair treatments or any other measures she has taken.

 

[One]

Reading through this thread has been a jaw dropping experience.

You both seem to miss the most important point about her childhood. She was brought up with black brothers and sisters. She identifies with them. Case closed. Is it a mental problem to identify with those with whom you've been raised?

Identifying with is not the same as LYING. This woman said her father was a black man and that she'd been born in a tepee where she was allowed to play with bows and arrows in a foreign country her family never even resided in. She went so far as to propagate outright falsehoods to give weight to the claim that she is a black woman. It's a travesty.

I have white friends that wear dreads and dress like they are from Jamaica. But they don't go around saying they are actually Jamaican or that they were raised in the islands in a hut by the beach. The same way that I don't claim to be Hispanic just because I have an aunt by marriage that's Puerto Rican/Cuban and I grew up eating Spanish food in Cambridge at her house.

If she wants to identify as black, fine. But she should have said, "I identify as black, but my parents are white." This was a choice for her. It's not a choice for any of us.

That's the difference here.

 

[One]

Racial phenotypes matter, one way or the other. She has a claim that her father is black, but, when there are absolutely no apparent phenotypes to match the claim, then the claim is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. Skin color is genetically inherited, hair color is genetically inherited, eye color is genetically inherited, facial geometry is genetically inherited, but claims of ancestry can change any time on the spot.
....
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.

You know...I read this and your other comments in this thread three times just to make sure that my vision did not simply conjure these words out of thin air. Such was my stupification reading them.

Here are some mixed race current and historical celebrities for you to Google: Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Selena Gomez, Christina Aguilera, Tiger Woods, Dwanye "The Rock" Johnson, Keanu Reeves, Leona Lewis, Nora Jones, Phoebe Cates, Carol Channing, Wentworth Miller, Meagan Markle, Rashida Jones, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Beals, Troian Bellisario, Soledad O'Brien, Michael Fosberg, Vin Diesel, Darnell Martin, Daniel Sunjunta, Vanessa Williams, Lena Horne, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Alexandre Dumas, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, John James Audubon....I can keep going.

You claim that half black people have more of a color blend to their skin. This is not always true.

My heritage from both sides of my family includes African, Irish, Cherokee, Seminole, and Sioux. Society sees me a black woman. My ex-husband is Irish and Norwegian. My youngest son was born with blond hair, blue eyes and extremely fair skin. The nurse at the time said, "If I wasn't standing here, I would not believe it." That's how white he was.

So I spent the first five years of his life being mistaken for his nanny every place I went until he was verbal enough to call me "Mom." My oldest was born with green eyes and dusky skin. He is so often mistaken for being white/Mediterranean or Hispanic that I had to teach him "No Hablo Espanol" and tell him not to get upset when people asked if he was adopted.

And I would get this same b.s. that I can't possibly be their mother. They must be adopted. They have different fathers, I'm lying etc. A lot of these opinions are based in the same assumptions you make here - that your eyesight alone is an accurate judge of a person's cultural and racial heritage. It isn't.

These children are mixed race twins born to the same parents - Alison Spooner and Dean Durrant. If you saw these children, you wouldn't even think these kids were related:





Here is another set of twins, Lucy and Maria Alymer. I keep posting twins because you seem to have this idea that racial characteristics can't be so drastically different among mixed kids. Well, here are some that share the same womb:

 

[One]

The meaningful political question is being ignored in this thread. Whether this particular women is "bonkers" is irrelevant to whether her claim to a black racial identity should be respected.

No, it should not be respected because she's lying. My children are actually mixed race. This woman is not. If my boys want to identify as one or the other, that's their right. But this woman comes from white parents only and duped everybody with a massive conjob. I worked as a reporter in the South and with the NAACP. My office used to get bomb threats. I had white people calling me "uppity negra gal" behind my back and I shrugged all that off.

So I'm offended that it appears that this woman made up a story about harassment with nooses when there's a lot of us that actually dealt with and are still dealing with this type of shit for real.

She says she was raised with some black siblings. Okay, I'll bite. My stepmother is white - Irish. All three remaining siblings I have on my father's side all looked white as children the same way my children do. In fact, they all self-identified as white also. Does that mean I get to go around living like a white woman? No, society doesn't give me a free pass like that. Based on looks alone, I am considered black. And no amount of skin bleach and straightening of my hair is going to give me that free pass the same way her tanning beds, weave braids and lies did.

I doubt she even thought about what kind of impact this situation is even having on her kid whatsoever. Did her son ever see his actual grandparents or did she tell him that they adopted her? Did she tell him that black man in the photo was grandpa? Think on that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Not only is she bonkers, she is a proven liar and a charlatan. It's help she needs, not respect.

They aren't so much "lies" as "differently true". If she identifies as Black then calling herself Black or taking actions to be perceived as Black aren't lies they are truths to her.

It is very slippery slope to argue the transracial, the transgendered, trans-whatever's-next must always go about telling everyone they used to be a man or they used to be white and if not they are a liar and a fraud. Sure we know Caitlynn Jenner used to be man because She was on a reality show back when She was a he.

But if Bob Jones a mechanic from Skokie wants to identify as Roberta Jones and work for the feminist movement in Spokane, must he go about telling everyone he used to be a man or be labeled a liar and a fraud?

That's the reason why "transgender male/female" is a thing: because where you come from says something about you as much as where you have arrived.

More importantly, when you decide to become a public official and an activist who speaks openly on behalf of many others, using your public position to affect change, you're speaking on your own authority and your own credibility. If you have been hiding/lying/bullshitting some of the most basic facts about yourself to create a false persona, expect your credibility to vanish when this comes to light.

Claiming special insight on a complex issue requires you to back up that insight with relevant experience or expertise. If your experience is bullshit, what does that say about your insight?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

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

I do not think this has anything to do with whites supposedly controlling "the definition of blackness". Those who insist of one drop rule these days tend to be black nationalists who like it because it increases the black political power.

Derec, NOBODY gives a damn what black nationalists think. They have no meaningful presence in legislature, they don't even have a coherent political platform, let alone an identifiable party that has ever won an election anywhere. They are not the ones who pushed for the new definitions on the U.S. census reports that clearly differentiate "Black" from "white" and "hispanic" despite the fact that a HUGE number of black people in America could conceivably fall into ALL THREE CATEGORIES. The Congressional Black Caucus actually pushed for a "check all that apply" option on Federal forms. They were ignored completely.

I think "this sort of confusion" will continue as long as race continues to give people legal (for example affirmative action) and social (racist jokes against whites only one deemed socially acceptable for example) benefits.

Which, again, wouldn't explain why the Federal government refuses to recognize the existence of bi-racial citizens. As far as the census is concerned, bi-racial children are black. Not black and caucasian, not black and hispanic. We have a system that explicitly tells black people that in THIS country, "black" is their only meaningful racial identity.

It's not "black nationalists" making those decisions. Unless, of course, you believe the Federal Government is secretly being RUN be a conspiracy of black nationalists, in which case you're just fucking insane.

Leave it to Derec to turn every situation into a topsy-turvy big bad minority is so horrible to the white-male-majority

My position is the classic liberal one - that people should be treated the same with no regard as to their race. The modern so-called liberals don't like that and perpetuate racism with all the race-based double standards they support.

Which in practice is just an attempt to avoid dealing with the consequences of the fact that this has NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE in America's history. The very real consequences of slavery and Jim Crow are still being felt generations later; you don't get to claim "the damage is done, let's just move on" while the wounds are still open. Even less so if it was merely the LEGACY of racism and not the continued practice in the absence of official government sanction; if white supremacism ceased to exist as a social meme and an institution at the same time it ceased to be the law of the land. Neither of those things happened; there are places in this country where white supremacy is still the agreedupon paradigm in which the community operates and violently resents any attempt to set the scales equal.

The only way to "set everyone equal" in a post-racial society is to eliminate race as a social construct. You're not black, you're not white, you're not hispanic; you have no racial heritage, no ethnic background, no traditions, no stories, no identity whatsoever beyond what you personally experienced from your first conscious memories up to now. THAT is not something you're ever going to be able to force on an entire country; those identities are forged in blood and sacrifice and the shared histories of the families and cultures that created them. You might as well waltz into Chicago and order everyone to stop liking pizza.

What WILL eventually happen is the Bullworth Scenario. "Everyone just keeps fucking everyone else until we're all the same color." Give it another six or seven generations, nobody will remember whether your ancestors were slaves or slavers because you'll have bloodlines from BOTH sides of the divide. Take the entire genome of this country and put it through the blender of a giant decades-long interracial orgy until nobody can tell what "Black" or "white" even mean.

The only thing standing in the way of that is the one-drop rule: "If you have a little black, then you're ALL black." That rule exists for a very simple reason to delay the interval when "white" is no longer the majority demographic and the "traditional America" is a thing of the past. As it stands, America will reach that point by at least 2045; if the racial categories are no longer considered mutually exclusive, it'll happen a hell of a lot sooner. If you give people the option top identify as more than one race, "multi-racial" becomes a category of its own that dwarfs "white and nothing else" within a generation or less. Making people pick one -- and making bi-racial people pick "black" -- buys whiteness a reprieve from its inevitable retirement at the top of the pyramid that is America's Traditional Power Structure.

 

[dismal]

If Jenner is a woman because she says she is then Dolezal is Black because she says she is.

Jenner is not a woman because she says she is a woman. Jenner is recognized as a woman because our understanding of transgender identities has changed over time based on our study of the subject matter thus far. Those studies do not, as far as I know, reveal a great deal about possible transracial identities, and if there are studies regarding transracial identities, they likely do not reveal a great deal about transgender identities. The medical impacts of her transition are based off of our knowledge of gender specifically, and the extent of the changes come down to biological factors which specifically relate to gender and Jenner as an individual. Those medical practices are not directly relevant to the steps Dolezal took, and the degree to which either party is successful has no bearing on the other party. Caitlyn's hormone levels will not fluctuate on the basis of Rachel's hair treatments or any other measures she has taken.

What a croc of bullshit. Jenner isn't a woman because some study says she is. Jenner is a woman because Jenner says she is. You can't grant "studies" of "biological factors" some sort of definitive power over this. Attempting to reduce it to "biological factors" is just another, almost certainly less well grounded, strain of insisting a woman have two X chromosomes.

 

[thebeave]

She is most definitely not black:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3126774/Investigation-Rachel-Dolezal-s-roots-reveals-no-black-relatives-dating-1671-ancestors-came-Europe-no-bloodlines-linking-slaves-Africa.html

Rachel Dolezal has no genealogical claim whatsoever that she is black, going back through the last four centuries, an investigation by Daily Mail Online has revealed.

The woman who sparked a national debate on race has no black relatives dating back to 1671; in fact her family were entirely white including some who were Mormons.

Archives show that Rachel’s ancestors came to the US from Europe and have no bloodlines linking them to slaves or Africa.

Even a great grandmother who has almost identical features to Rachel was identified as white in two census documents.

 

[untermensche]

If Bruce Jenner can claim to be a woman she can claim to be black.

Who exactly has this woman harmed?

 

[dismal]

They aren't so much "lies" as "differently true". If she identifies as Black then calling herself Black or taking actions to be perceived as Black aren't lies they are truths to her.

It is very slippery slope to argue the transracial, the transgendered, trans-whatever's-next must always go about telling everyone they used to be a man or they used to be white and if not they are a liar and a fraud. Sure we know Caitlynn Jenner used to be man because She was on a reality show back when She was a he.

But if Bob Jones a mechanic from Skokie wants to identify as Roberta Jones and work for the feminist movement in Spokane, must he go about telling everyone he used to be a man or be labeled a liar and a fraud?

That's the reason why "transgender male/female" is a thing: because where you come from says something about you as much as where you have arrived.

More importantly, when you decide to become a public official and an activist who speaks openly on behalf of many others, using your public position to affect change, you're speaking on your own authority and your own credibility. If you have been hiding/lying/bullshitting some of the most basic facts about yourself to create a false persona, expect your credibility to vanish when this comes to light.

Claiming special insight on a complex issue requires you to back up that insight with relevant experience or expertise. If your experience is bullshit, what does that say about your insight?

So for a transgendered person to not be a liar do they have to disclose they used to be a different gender to everyone they meet?

 

[TSwizzle]

Not only is she bonkers, she is a proven liar and a charlatan. It's help she needs, not respect.

They aren't so much "lies" as "differently true". If she identifies as Black then calling herself Black or taking actions to be perceived as Black aren't lies they are truths to her.

From Seinfeld; "Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie if you believe it"

 

[AthenaAwakened]

I became a black woman in Spokane. But, Rachel Dolezal, I was a black girl first

by
Alicia Walters

Dolezal’s specious claims to black ancestry and faux black identity could not have been sustained and she would not have been able to pass if black womanhood were seen and understood as more than skin – or weave – deep. Wearing black womanhood was apparently even enough for Dolezal’s “fellow” black leaders in Spokane, Washington, who turned a blind eye to what the wider world now recognizes as her all-but laughable claims of racial identity, whether out of fear of rocking the boat or plain Northwestern niceness. Her charade could have only been maintained in a town (and within a society) with simplistic, stereotypical conceptions of blackness – that blackness is a shade on the range on olive to dark chocolate, a set of idioms delivered in a cadence from which American English derives its slang, and any number of bodily characteristics or mannerisms familiar across the globe, among others. And yet, while black Americans have long embraced a diverse array of lineages as kin, simply looking the part and faking the rest doesn’t cut it.

 

[Derec]

From Seinfeld; "Jerry, just remember. It's not a lie if you believe it"

Speaking of Seinfeld ...

 

[dismal]

She is most definitely not black:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3126774/Investigation-Rachel-Dolezal-s-roots-reveals-no-black-relatives-dating-1671-ancestors-came-Europe-no-bloodlines-linking-slaves-Africa.html

Rachel Dolezal has no genealogical claim whatsoever that she is black, going back through the last four centuries, an investigation by Daily Mail Online has revealed.

The woman who sparked a national debate on race has no black relatives dating back to 1671; in fact her family were entirely white including some who were Mormons.

Archives show that Rachel’s ancestors came to the US from Europe and have no bloodlines linking them to slaves or Africa.

Even a great grandmother who has almost identical features to Rachel was identified as white in two census documents.

Well, sure if you define "Black" by having Black ancestors and stuff. But if it's based on what you feel inside none of this is necessarily relevant.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Racial phenotypes matter, one way or the other. She has a claim that her father is black, but, when there are absolutely no apparent phenotypes to match the claim, then the claim is unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. Skin color is genetically inherited, hair color is genetically inherited, eye color is genetically inherited, facial geometry is genetically inherited, but claims of ancestry can change any time on the spot.
....
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.

You know...I read this and your other comments in this thread three times just to make sure that my vision did not simply conjure these words out of thin air. Such was my stupification reading them.

Here are some mixed race current and historical celebrities for you to Google: Halle Berry, Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Selena Gomez, Christina Aguilera, Tiger Woods, Dwanye "The Rock" Johnson, Keanu Reeves, Leona Lewis, Nora Jones, Phoebe Cates, Carol Channing, Wentworth Miller, Meagan Markle, Rashida Jones, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Beals, Troian Bellisario, Soledad O'Brien, Michael Fosberg, Vin Diesel, Darnell Martin, Daniel Sunjunta, Vanessa Williams, Lena Horne, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Alexandre Dumas, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, John James Audubon....I can keep going.

You claim that half black people have more of a color blend to their skin. This is not always true.

My heritage from both sides of my family includes African, Irish, Cherokee, Seminole, and Sioux. Society sees me a black woman. My ex-husband is Irish and Norwegian. My youngest son was born with blond hair, blue eyes and extremely fair skin. The nurse at the time said, "If I wasn't standing here, I would not believe it." That's how white he was.

So I spent the first five years of his life being mistaken for his nanny every place I went until he was verbal enough to call me "Mom." My oldest was born with green eyes and dusky skin. He is so often mistaken for being white/Mediterranean or Hispanic that I had to teach him "No Hablo Espanol" and tell him not to get upset when people asked if he was adopted.

And I would get this same b.s. that I can't possibly be their mother. They must be adopted. They have different fathers, I'm lying etc. A lot of these opinions are based in the same assumptions you make here - that your eyesight alone is an accurate judge of a person's cultural and racial heritage. It isn't.

These children are mixed race twins born to the same parents - Alison Spooner and Dean Durrant. If you saw these children, you wouldn't even think these kids were related:

Here is another set of twins, Lucy and Maria Alymer. I keep posting twins because you seem to have this idea that racial characteristics can't be so drastically different among mixed kids. Well, here are some that share the same womb:

I believe you. Don't let that statement escape you. I believe you. Read this statement again:

"That possibility is perhaps a little more likely than having an Afro father who passed on absolutely none of his racially-relevant genes."

I want you to be absolutely clear that this is what I did NOT say:

"Having an Afro father is IMPOSSIBLE."

I have been abundantly clear on the intermediacy of possibilities. I said, "Not impossible, but unlikely."

You gave a long list of mixed race celebrities, as though I believed mixed race people do not exist. I do believe that mixed race people exist, so perhaps you should explain why you presented it. What is it evidence for? It would be relevant evidence against my relevant position if most of them had no intermediacy of skin color, whose skin color perfectly matches only one of their parents. I don't follow celebrities so closely, and my rough guess is that there is one such person out of that long list. There could even be two or three. Certainly not most.

There is a bad habit of thought: "If the correlation is not perfect, then it is the same as random scatter." Ideologues think this way. They think that any rebuttal to a correlation is to point out the outliers. Please don't think this way! Correlations are relevant even if they have outliers. Genetic patterns matter. You posted twins. When we are discussing twins and genetics, please lets be clear on the two fundamental types of twins: (1) dizygotic twins and (2) monozygotic twins. Dizygotic twins share as much of their genomes with each other as any typical sibling pair: 50%. But, monozygotic twins share with each other approximately 100% of their genomes. A litter of puppies or a litter of kittens is typical of the patterns of dizygotic twins. Some of the puppies take the fur color of their mother and others from their father. For abundantly polygenic trait, they will tend to take a mix. Skin color is polygenic. That means mixed-race offspring will tend to have a blend of skin color of their parents.

Not always. If you flip a coin ten times, then, most of the time, you will have a mixture of heads and tails. Not always. About 1 in 512 times, you will have either nothing but heads or nothing but tails out of those ten flips.

But, if that happens, then I have every right to at least suspect that you are using a double-headed or a double-tailed coin.

Maybe this is getting too personal, but I do not mean to offend. If people suspect that you are not the biological mother of your true biological child, it probably should NOT be taken as a social problem that must be fixed. Do not take offense at reasonable intermediate probability judgments. Do not demand that people think unreasonably. That would be no solution! If I play the lottery only twice and I win the lottery both times, then people will suspect I cheated. Should I blame them? I would blame them if they concluded ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY that I cheated. This may be a useful distinction: wrong versus unreasonable. Not all wrong beliefs are unreasonable.

 

[prideandfall]

I became a black woman in Spokane. But, Rachel Dolezal, I was a black girl first

by
Alicia Walters

Dolezal’s specious claims to black ancestry and faux black identity could not have been sustained and she would not have been able to pass if black womanhood were seen and understood as more than skin – or weave – deep. Wearing black womanhood was apparently even enough for Dolezal’s “fellow” black leaders in Spokane, Washington, who turned a blind eye to what the wider world now recognizes as her all-but laughable claims of racial identity, whether out of fear of rocking the boat or plain Northwestern niceness. Her charade could have only been maintained in a town (and within a society) with simplistic, stereotypical conceptions of blackness – that blackness is a shade on the range on olive to dark chocolate, a set of idioms delivered in a cadence from which American English derives its slang, and any number of bodily characteristics or mannerisms familiar across the globe, among others. And yet, while black Americans have long embraced a diverse array of lineages as kin, simply looking the part and faking the rest doesn’t cut it.

so, wait... is the point to this that it's shallow and inaccurate stereotyping to use observable and definable traits and characteristics which describe a thing to identify said thing?
because if you were trying to describe the process by which one could identify a black person, "a shade on the range on olive to dark chocolate, a set of idioms delivered in a cadence from which American English derives its slang, and any number of bodily characteristics or mannerisms familiar across the globe, among others" sounds pretty much like a reasonable set of qualifiers.

sorry, that just really threw me off - the tone of the op-ed and your posting history clearly indicate "this is bad", but it sounds to me like a generic and sterile listing of accurately defined traits. just trying to make sure i understand this.

 

[dismal]

If Bruce Jenner can claim to be a woman she can claim to be black.

Who exactly has this woman harmed?

As far as I am concerned you can claim to be a ham sandwich. The question here is whether that makes you one. In the eyes of the law, society, etc.