Rachel Dolezal is white woman, who has apparently been posing as a black woman for a number of years and is now the NAACP chapter head for Spokane, WA. I’m sort of on the same page as what’s-his-name* who said something like: Not sure if I should be outraged, creeped out, or laughing my ass off.
Thoughts? I’m guessing she has some sort of mental illness and needs treatment. She may have done some good, but she’s also built her house on a foundation of lies. Better to slink away and let others take up the fight.
*Daytime talk show host
Heard someone on a talk show say that in the same way that Caitin Jenner felt she was a woman all of her life, this woman might feel she was black all these years. I’ve seen very unattractive women believe they were beautiful and male losers think they were god’s gift to women.
When particular jobs, scholarships, and other good things are sometimes handed out preferentially to certain races, this sort of thing is inevitable. Elizabeth Warren, who is white, once claimed to be a minority to take advantage of affirmative action. Dolezal seems to have taken the same idea further for longer.
It’s another reason why we should just treat people of all races the same.
She’s from an unusual family situation, estranged from her parents, who adopted four black children during her childhood. From the public comments I’ve seen, there’s a lot of mutual hostility. It seems pretty clear that she’s always felt like the, well, white sheep of the family and may have gone this route out of motives stemming from rebellion against her parents.
Yeah, I saw that as part of the story, too, and was thinking something similar. She also started making her transformation shortly after divorcing her black husband. Lots of fodder for fucking up her mind a bit, but still, I think she’s more sick than actively fraudulent.
Much like the Lieawatha Warren story. I always wonder about the folks who actually are the minority who DID NOT get the job cause these phonies actually did.
Somewhere out there is a qualified American Indian lawyer who failed to get a job cause of Lieawatha. A couple times actually as she changed schools.
Perhaps also there is a qualified black in Spokane who failed to get the job this lady now in the news has held.
Is just curious to me the group of folks who go on and on about “fairness” seem quite indifferent to the fact people of minority status actually lost a job to those lying pretending to be a minority. Doesn’t seem, well fair…
I think the number of whites posing as black for AA purposes is negligible. There are valid reasons to argue against AA, but white impersonators isn’t one of them.
Took me a while to figure out whom you were talking about… I think she was foolish to claim NA ancestry, but there is no evidence that she used it to get a job. Her resume speaks for itself. I don’t agree with her politics much, but she’s no slacker in the academic accomplishments department-- quite the contrary. Please stop spreading that little bit of ignorance around.
From Snopes
"The legitimacy of Warren’s claims to Native American heritage has certainly been challenged by many critics, and it is true that while Warren was at U. Penn. Law School she put herself on the “Minority Law Teacher” list as Native American) in the faculty directory of the Association of American Law Schools, and that Harvard Law School at one time promoted Warren as a Native American faculty member. "
So lets just say that she was an Indian when it was convenient for her, and dropped it once she got to where she wanted to be. I’ll grant you that.