Rachel Dolezal, Ethnic Politics and the World of Make Believe
There is something comedic and pathetic about the story of Rachel Dolezal. Ms. Dolezal, 37, is the president of the NAACP local chapter in Spokane, Washington and a part-time Africana Studies professor at Eastern Washington University. It turns out that after claiming for years that she was black – including on applications, posting pictures on a Facebook page of an African-American man she falsely claimed was her father, and insisting that her adopted brother (who is black) was her child – Ms. Dolezal is actually white. Her birth certificate proves it. And her biological parents, Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal, have confirmed it.
“Rachel has wanted to be somebody she’s not. She’s chosen not to just be herself but to represent herself as an African American woman or a biracial person. And that’s simply not true,” Ruthanne Dolezal said. Her mother said Rachel began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007.
This interview shows Dolezal being caught in her lie. It also seems quite likely that her claim that she’s received racially motivated hate letters and pictures was a ruse. (Police are still investigating, but say that whoever placed the mail must have had access to the mailbox, as it was not processed through the regular mail.)
The reason this story is significant is that it so perfectly represents the absurdity of the American Left today. There’s the obsession with racial and ethnic politics, to the point that this very white woman would attempt to start a “new life” in which she airbrushed out of history her real father, invented a black father and began to darken her skin and hair. It wasn’t enough to support a political and cultural cause; she had to pretend she was black. She had to be part of the African-American sisterhood, to the point of re-inventing who she is. That is what gave her validation.
But that’s not all. Ms. Dolezal, in a later interview, was unapologetic about her deception. Indeed, she stillmaintains she’s black, even though she’s white. We don’t really understand, you see, the “definitions of race and ethnicity.” Which, according to Dolezal, don’t have anything to do with race and ethnicity. Or even reality.
In part of her world – the progressive, academic world of the left – words are emptied of objective means. It’s necessary to jettison “logocentrism” and “structuralism.” Everything is determined by “narrative.” You get to make things up as you go along. Barack Obama, who is also a product of the academy, shows the same tendencies. So has Senator Elizabeth Warren, who claimed to be Native American even though she was not. Words are infinitely elastic; they mean only what you say they mean.
Except, of course, they don’t. Words have actual meaning and objective truth exists, even if people like Ms. Dolezal denies it. White really isn’t black. It tells you an awful lot about the times in which we live that this proposition has to be defended. But here we are.
I would argue that people can define themselves however they choose within limits. If a black person wants to pass as a white, what’s the problem? Would anyone object to that nowadays? I would object to a gentile passing himself off as a Jew in order to give legitimacy to his criticism of Israel. And I would object to a white person passing himself off as a black person in order to get preferential admission to a university. People change their religion all the time and they change their nationality. I don’t see anything wrong with someone “changing” their race. Dolezal may in fact be a crazy person or an opportunist, but her self-identification as African-American by itself does not make her crazy or an opportunist.
Actually, she’s extremely creative, thinks out of the box and is remarkably tolerant of ambiguity:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/rachel-dolezal-discrimination-lawsuit-786451
(She probably also climbs stairs two at a time.)
In short, a credit to any organization that is looking for such an advantageous combination of traits.
MARK-WITHIN LIMITS IS THE KEY WORD HERE ,IF SHE STATED WHAT SHE REALLY WAS WHICH WAS ,CAUCASION, IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THEN WENT ON TO STATE THAT SHE WAS COMMITING A SORT OF TRANSFORMATION METAPHYSICALLY OR WHATEVER SHE WANTEED TO CALL IT,I COULD ACCEPT THAT ,AT LEAST SHES HONEST,SHE IS MISREPRESENTING HERSELF HERE AND WHETHER IT WAS JUST OUT OF HER LIVING SOME FANTASY LIFE OR A GOOD WAY TO GET A UNIVERSITY JOB SHE IS A FRAUD.WHATEVER HER INTENTIONS SOONER OR LATER HER LIES WOULD COME BACK TO BITE HER IN THE DERRIERE.SELF IDENTIFY ALL YOU WANT BUT LYING ABOUT YOUR ORIGINS QUESTIONS YOUR MOTIVES EVEN WITH THE ONES YOU ARE SELF IDENTIFYING WITH.
How does Mr. Mandell feel about Mormons adopting themselves into the House of Israel? How does he feel about them doing vicarious baptisms for deceased Jews to allow them to become Mormons in the afterlife?
Why isn’t the left embracing this poster child for “feeling” and “socially-constructed identity?” If gender can be whatever you feel like today, or right now, why not race?
If biology isn’t “settled science.” why is climatology?
The sixties lives. R.D. Laing and others insisted that madness was truth and so called normalcy was really insanity. Psychotics were in touch with higher truths and therefor didn’t need treatment. We’re seeing what happens when a culture endorses madness. This poor woman is not helped by the cultural enablers. It will come to a bad end as it will for Mr. Jenner.
Used to be blacks that whitened themselves, at great expense. Michael Jackson comes to mind.
We live in a time of insanity, of relativity in things moral and material. Where black is white, lies are truth, up is down, combat victories are nullified by the winners, and Hope and Change mean whatever it is you want to change can be hoped for. In this time, and probably for a very long time to come.
In fairness to Dolezal, she may have grown up in a feverish swamp. She left rural Montana to be a student at “Historically black” (i.e.,self-segregating) Howard University in the 1990s, and her parents had previously adopted 4 black boys in MT, where the only black critter normally seen is an Aberdeen Angus.Probably spared no expense in obtaining these cute li’l fellas.
I seem to recall the day, long ago, when “white people” were welcomed by the NAACP as members. In fact, I think I was a member. A very long time ago.
I suspect this woman has emotional problems. According to reporting, beyond what Wehner notes, there are stories she’s apparently told of living in a teepee as a kid and her parents hunting for food.
That only underscores this leap by Wehner, which is asserted but not argued for:
….The reason this story is significant is that it so perfectly represents the absurdity of the American Left today. There’s the obsession with racial and ethnic politics, to the point that this very white woman would attempt to start a “new life” in which she airbrushed out of history her real father, invented a black father and began to darken her skin and hair….
A few things on this:
First, as noted, it’s asserted not argued out, supported, or thought through;
Second, it seems equally or more plausible that rather than locating this altogether outlier faking of racial identity in the hothouse of progressivism, it’s a function of a fraught upbringing married to an emotionally troubled person who also perhaps calculated the benefits coming to her from her misappropriation without needing to suffer its burdens.. But, in any event empty, unproved assertions aren’t so just for the saying of them.
Third, many on the left have been outraged by her misappropration. That complicates what Wehner so blithely asserts.
The entire incident is perplexing and not easily sorted out. For myself, I argue there’s no analogy here to cases of one’s gender at odds with one’s sexuality or with a decision say to change religions. That’s because there is an underlying discrete content to religions and, albeit more amorphous, to the antipodes of masculinity and femininity. There is none to skin colour as such. Skin colour entails nothing necessary. It is what it is.
Where is the outrage on the left to Elizabeth Warren.
Are you saying that Bill Clinton was not the first Black President?
Unfortunately for Mr. Wehner and all of us, the US Supreme Court has come down on the side of Ms. Dolezal, specifically in the Obamacare decision: A penalty is a tax if and when we say it is a tax and is not a tax when we say that it is not. Hence for purposes of upholding Obamacare, the penalty is a tax. For purposes of the Anti-Injunction act the tax is a penalty. So we have the imprimatur of the highest legal authority in America that words do not mean what they mean, only what we want them to mean. By Supreme Court decree, Words have no actual meaning and no objective truth exists, even if people like Mr. Wehner deny it. Mr Wehner has failed utterly to defend his viewpoint of reality. Richard Rorty via Popper, Heiddeger, Nietzche, Marx, Hegel, and/etc. have completely crushed him (and the rest of us who share his perspective). Progressivisms Reigns Supreme!!!!! I would say “God help us all” but that is not allowed.
So lying about your origins, race, family, ethnic background are now admired traits and described as “courageous” in the mind of the left in the US now. What great standards for the children of the left. Rachel is a fraud and a pathetic caricature who should feel extreme shame. No “nuance” validates lying….ever. Imagine taking a college course from this buffon. If Eastern Washington University keeps her on their faculty, it tells us much about the collective character and ethical standards of the university – it will mean it has neither character nor ethics.