I can’t wait until miscegenation and cultural appropriation are so widespread that there isn’t a self-identified white person around who doesn’t have a black spouse, a latino parent, a Jewish grandparent, a Muslim daughter-in-law, a few redneck cousins, a Korean son-in-law, grandchildren who speak a dozen languages among them, and an extended family stretching around the world, all of them getting to be exactly who they say they are.
Related thought: one problem with white privilege is that just by itself it doesn’t (anymore) automatically overcome the talent and hard work applied by many who don’t have it. This makes it easy for white people who applied, say, less talent and hard work, to look at non-whites who have surpassed them and feel both resentful and vindicated of the burden of privilege, which is a poor combination.
I don’t see Ms. Dolezal/Diallou as a force for evil. If you “play” (in Little Nemo’s words) a role “on alternate Tuesdays and every other day,” you’re not playing. Her racial confusion may be as bad as ours, but her reaction to it was to identify as the minority and work to better their lot. Now she’s practically a minority of one, and that fact speaks poorly of the rest of us.
A person who makes the false accusations for the self aggrandization and to utilize for her self promotion and desire for a victimhood is indeed a forse for evil that undermines the real issues.
She is obviously mentally ill.
This does not speak poorly of anyone until some fact is know about the origin of this mental illness.
Certainly, identifying as a minority and claiming persecution that wasn’t established by the local authorities (because it always is, if true) sounds a whole lot like the crap spouted by white (self-identified) christians who claim that the war on Christmas prevents them from discriminating against transsexuals in the bathroom with baked goods, or some such. But I don’t see mental illness there: it’s a lot more easily explained by garden-variety, fish-brained bigotry.
That explanation doesn’t seem to apply to Ms. Diallou, and “self-aggrandization” is just another imputed motive thrown out to smear someone we don’t like.
At any rate, black Americans will have come a long way when white people don’t assume it’s crazy to want to be one. That kind of reflects poorly on some of us.
We haven’t avoided the issue. We’ve been explaining it to you in increasingly simple terms.
As I’ve been saying all along, I get your point. I got it the first time you said it. You repeating it hasn’t made it less wrong.
White people have a better situation in America than Black people do. This is a basic fact and you can’t argue it away by comparing rich people to poor people or trying to imply that by acknowledging that reality we’re endorsing it.
Sure, when that happens, then we’ll know we’ve reached the mountaintop. But we aren’t at that mountaintop yet, are we? I mean, we had slavery, then we had Jim Crow, and now we’ve got what we’re in the middle of right now. So there’s an arc there. But we’ve still got a lot of trouble ahead of us.
Anyway, it’s not even that she’s gotta be crazy to pretend to be black. It’s that she apparently made up a bunch of racist incidents that she was the supposed victim of, that never actually happened. The motivation for that sort of thing is murky, but “she’d have to be crazy to make that up” is the most charitable interpretation.
No argument here. Still think the only real solution is when everybody has a personal or familial interest in as many “others” as we can think of. Pretending to be a particular color seems to me a much less destructive delusion than pretending that color makes a difference in the first place.
Yes, if she’s a fabulist, that’s worrying and a flaw in her character, and she definitely should be punished if/when it’s established that she filed a false police report. If the NAACP doesn’t want to employ her, that’s up to them.
The mantle of victimhood can be awfully attractive, and if you personally identify (especially with a family history that steeps you in it) with a group that has an all-too-real history of victimhood, even seductive. But as I said, there are plenty of privileged white christian american males claiming victimhood on grounds at least as (I’m being generous, I think) specious. Unless you’re willing to equate them all with, say, the poor souls who ask surgeons to amputate healthy limbs because they self-identify as disabled, then maybe we should look more closely. People behave badly for all kinds of reasons, sometimes even moral ones, without being crazy.
If a white person pretends to be black in order to work for the NAACP and promote civil rights, and pretends that specific racist incidents happened, I view that as bad, but, well, not as bad as a black person who pretends white privilege is a myth, and that racist incidents don’t happen, in order to curry favor and appearance fees by trying to undermine civil rights.
I view them as equally bad. They are both destructive.
According to the text exchanges posted in this article, Rachel Dolezal claims that someone once paid her a compliment by calling her “Rachel Luther Queen”. You will notice that she mentions this only so she can highlight how victimized she is…how lonely she is in her fight for civil rights, unlike MLK–who had thousands of supporters.
One should stop and consider why she was so “alone”. A successful activist usually has folks standing with her, cheering her on as she speaks truth to power. But Dolezal, the local NAACP president, is all alone in her fight against the Aryan Nation? I’m wondering if maybe the local people of color, who had been battling the AN for years, sensed she was inauthentic and didn’t want anything to do with that shitshow. Or maybe they were there fighting alongside her, but in her crazy-ass mind, they don’t count because they are just background characters in her story.
There’s speculation that Dolezal chose to settle in a backwater like Spokane because she knew she would easily stand out as an imposter in a place like Atlanta, DC, or any other city with a substantial black population. You would think that a person who feels more comfortable around black people than whites would NOT have chosen a place with black population only comprising 2% of the total. If she is trying to get in touch with her long-lost African roots, why choose to live in the whitest place in the world, especially since she had lived in much “blacker” places previously? It seems rather obvious to me she saw Spokane as a perfect opportunity to be a magical black person without actually have to be black (or magical).
Rachel Luther Queen doesn’t care about uplifting black people. She only cares about uplifting herself.
(bulk of post omitted for space – it’s just above)
monstro, I respect, and admit I can’t match, your perspective and experience. Your interpretation of Ms. Diallou’s actions, and conclusions about her motives, are certainly couched in a deeper and more intensely-lived understanding than is mine. And that makes it extremely difficult for me to engage with you on this topic, because there is no reason at all for you to accept my good faith in the matter. We both know, there were plenty of white people who worked tirelessly for civil rights without ever quite believing in the equality of black people. But your criticisms seem mostly based on the same (authentic and well-earned) personal resentment that no doubt prompted the article cited. Would you have criticized a black person a few decades ago for trying to pass as white, or choosing a town whose demographics made such an imposture easier?
Rachel’s situation is in no way akin to black people passing as white, bro.
The vast majority of black people who passed as white back in the day did so NOT because they were disillusioned by black culture, but because they wanted to escape oppression. Any adoption of stereotypically white mannerisms (including overt racism) was a matter of life and death, or at least bread and butter. Everyone in the office swaps “nigger” jokes in the breakroom? Well, you need to at least fake-laugh. If you don’t, maybe folks will start noticing all the other ways you don’t fit in, and there will be questions.
Rachel Dolezal affected awful stereotypes of black people for absolutely no reason. There was no reason to her to jump down a colleague’s neck for taking “her” job, but in her twisted mind that’s what a sista would do. There was no reason for her to accuse actual black people of being traitors to their race, but she thinks black folks man the gates like this since this is a narrative widely held by clueless white people. There was no reason for her to lie about her past to be embraced by black people. But she’s too crazy or ignorant to realize that black people have ALWAYS embraced white people who are down and that she could have still been president of the NAACP and intercultural studies professor without having to put on the act (hence, why she’s so perturbed that her white colleague gets to teach a class she feels entitled to teach. How dare this whitey not hide his whiteness? Doesn’t he know that’s not how you play the game?)
I think there is a difference between passing so that you can receive a basic level of dignity from everyone around you and passing so that you get special privileges, power, and/or attention. To me, Rachel is in the latter category. She could have immersed herself in black culture and been active in uplifting the community without lying about her background. But in her mind, this would have made her yet another “do gooder” white. Not special enough. Being a black woman in an almost white town = totally special!!!
(A while back, I expressed my feelings about passing in this thread, by the way. It’s a complicated subject. But Rachel’s craziness and wrongness are pretty clear-cut.)
Yes indeed.
There is no comparison between the passing and the actions of this Dorezal.
Had she just wanted to ‘pass as black’ there was no requirement for her actions that as Monstro are the aping of what the white Left radical idea of a minority experience is.
She could easily have integrated and not engaged in the radical posing, not engaged in the well documented attacks she made even on the actual minorities that did not conform to her mentally ill distorted imagery.
the idea that there is ‘personal resentment’ that is behind the reaction is just snide bullshitting.
It is simply very clear this person was about playing a certain special victimhood and attention seeking role that the minority / blackness was just a vehicle for. It is obvious something in the childhood went wrong for her, but that does not excuse what she did afterwards and a track record of the deceit, the lie, the fraudes.
Couldn’t she have done her civil rights advocacy work without constantly lying? Race relations isn’t the issue, and neither is it to blame for the way she turned out. She’s a scammer and a fraud above all else, and if society was to blame, we’d have legions more of Rachel Dolezals.
The morality of it isn’t, no. The desire to escape oppression is natural and admirable, and perhaps more important, obvious and easy to understand. Without excusing her, I’m not as sure as you that Rachel’s motivations were as simple, or so purely malicious. I am not as sure that “Black in Tacoma” is such a great gig that someone would make her choices based just on a calculation of the perks or specialness involved, and calling her crazy doesn’t really get us anywhere. Whatever combination of personal experiences and pathologies made whiteness intolerable, shedding it must have had costs as well as benefits, and perhaps she felt (incorrectly) that, combined with her unusual family circumstances, she had somehow earned her claimed identity.
What she did was wrong. What she thought was a mess. But I still, perhaps foolishly, feel kind of bad for the bad person, because when I try to imagine her motivation, I come up with repression and pain and confusion rather than evil. Which is easier when one is not the party offended.
In any event, thanks for sharing your point of view.
Well, I’m not saying the chick is evil. I’m saying she’s fucked up in the head. I’m also saying that people who don’t want to have anything to do with her are totally entitled to their feelings, just as she’s entitled to feel like she’s a put-upon black woman. It’s not just the lies that make her a laughingstock. It’s not just the Rachel Luther Queen militancy. It’s ALL of it, plus the fact that it appears to be completely self-serving.
I have sympathy for anyone who has had a shitty childhood, and it sounds like she did. But having a little sympathy for someone does not mean I can’t find their coping mechanisms completely eye-rolly. And The Guardian interview makes it clear that she still not understand why she’s getting eye rolls. Until she has her come to Jesus moment, she’s going to keep alienating herself from everyone. I have some sympathy for the misunderstood alien. But I don’t have sympathy for the misunderstood alien who refuses to take any responsibility.
I think the push back she’s getting is not simply because she’s claiming to be black, but because of all the crazy things she’s done, including all the fake hate crimes.
I can’t see the analogy. Claiming that Jesus insists you hate (fill in the blank) has been going on forever. People reading the Bible claim that their readings prove that (fill in the blank again) is not the same as lying about being personally targeted for hate crimes and everything else she’s done.
The religious nuts are not planting hate mail in their own mail boxes. It ain’t the same.At any rate, black Americans will have come a long way when white people don’t assume it’s crazy to want to be one. That kind of reflects poorly on some of us.
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Again, it’s not that she wants to be black that makes us roll our eyes. It’s that’s she’s fucking nuts in all areas of her life.
This is exactly the same argument that my blatantly racist brother-in-law uses.