NAACP Leader Posed as Black (?)

[Toothfairy]

This whole story is just so weird. I don't know what to say to this. I think if this woman wants to claim black and be black then I see no problem with that. Bruce Jenner changed his sex to a female. The problem is that Rachel lied numerous times about her identity including trying to say a black man was her father. Her parents are weird as well. This whole story is just confusing.

[AnnaSofia]

Apparently, she's involved in a sexual abuse case against her older (biological) brother.

Link unbroken, because it's a news site:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28315 ... lt-charges

The brother wrote a book, published last year, about his back-to-nature-fundie-Pentecostal childhood, called "Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging".

Link unbroken, because it's Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Down-Mountaintop- ... 1609382390

There's also a preview available on Google Books.

[ShepherdontheRock]

Apparently, she's involved in a sexual abuse case against her older (biological) brother.

Link unbroken, because it's a news site:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28315 ... lt-charges

The brother wrote a book, published last year, about his back-to-nature-fundie-Pentecostal childhood, called "Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging".

Link unbroken, because it's Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Down-Mountaintop- ... 1609382390

There's also a preview available on Google Books.

I always thought it was weird that her parents outed her. Guess we know why they did it now. The whole thing was so weird because I just knew there HAD to be more to the story.

[tropaka]

She went on with Matt Laur and claimed "I identify as black" and claimed to have begun believing this when she was 5.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/16/us/washin ... index.html

The head of the NAACP was on and described the situation as hurtful, offensive and an issue of credibility. Sadly it seems to be overshadowing the announcement of the Aug 1 march from Selma to Washington.

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/naacp-anno ... 4830019611

[VelociRapture]

This story just. . . it does not compute. :lol:

I just don't get it. You can't sue your university for discrimination because you're white and then turn around years later and claim you identify as black. It just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I mean, its great that she wants to help advocate for others and is big on human rights. . . but changing your appearance and claiming to be Black when you aren't isn't the best way to do that. In fact, its pretty counterproductive because when you get found out it distracts from what you were attempting to say in the first place.

And just an aside, my Junior year of High School I had to do a project called a Resurrection - you had to do a ten to fifteen minute presentation as a Revolutionary figure in History. I chose Martin Luther King Jr. (because he was fucking awesome; I also got a B+ on the project!). I dyed my hair, cut it short, drew a mustache on my face that looked like his, and taught myself how to sound like I was from Alabama by watching "Forrest Gump" and listening to a woman I babysat for who was from Alabama originally.

I did not however use bronzer or makeup in any way though - at 16 I knew it would be highly offensive and I knew better than this full-grown woman did.

I just. . . I don't get it.

[16strong]

As if all of this wasn't enough, apparently she's an artist and rips off famous works, including J.M.W. Turner. You literally cannot make this woman up. WTF? :evil-eye:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rized.html

[Firiel]

I just don't get it. You can't sue your university for discrimination because you're white and then turn around years later and claim you identify as black. It just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I think that story about identifying as black from the age of five and drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon is just a load of shit. I don't think it happened, just like she didn't live in South Africa and didn't live in a teepee and (IMO) didn't have threatening hate-mail sent to her.

She saw some people waxing poetic about her identifying as black and is using that as a lifeboat to try to escape the shipwreck she created for herself.

And I don't think there is any reason to believe that her parents released this information now because of her brother's trial. Considering none of these people were high-profile news beforehand, I have a hard time understanding how bringing national attention to a last name could help her brother in his court case in any way.

They probably just saw a news story about another hurtful, damaging lie their daughter was telling (the hate mail) and finally got sick of it.

[Firiel]

As if all of this wasn't enough, apparently she's an artist and rips off famous works, including J.M.W. Turner. You literally cannot make this woman up. WTF? :evil-eye:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... rized.html

Yep, the lies are now coming out.

I mean, the same pathology that drove Razing Ruth drives this woman.

It's amazing how far brazen dishonesty can get you in life, but luckily, when you are this over-the-top, you get called on your shit eventually.

[FundieFarmer]

There are so many components to this situation that it's probably one of the biggest messes I've read about in the news for a good long while.

We have: possibly psychologically damaged woman pretending to be African American, who tans herself until she's blue in the face to mask her very European complexion, goes to measurable lengths to color and style her very flaxen blonde hair, essentially appropriates the entire black culture and calls it her own, makes up stories of her childhood, recruits a random man to be her African American father, is involved with a sex abuse case against brother, calls her other brother her son, who sued a university for anti-white discrimination, who later turned her life into a royal mockery of black womanhood, who claimed she was a full-time professor of African American studies but is in fact an adjunct professor, doesn't speak to her parents who later outed her, says she lived in South Africa when she definitely did not, married and then later divorced a black man after which the psychosis-of-sorts appeared to start, claimed she received not one or two but multiple hate threats that she appears to have mailed herself, impersonates true African art (as described by one article), flat out bitches at her students for being too white and/or not understanding the "Black experience", wails about how uncomfortable it is to go to certain movies if African American, need I go on?

[ShepherdontheRock]

I think that story about identifying as black from the age of five and drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon is just a load of shit. I don't think it happened, just like she didn't live in South Africa and didn't live in a teepee and (IMO) didn't have threatening hate-mail sent to her.

She saw some people waxing poetic about her identifying as black and is using that as a lifeboat to try to escape the shipwreck she created for herself.

And I don't think there is any reason to believe that her parents released this information now because of her brother's trial. Considering none of these people were high-profile news beforehand, I have a hard time understanding how bringing national attention to a last name could help her brother in his court case in any way.

They probably just saw a news story about another hurtful, damaging lie their daughter was telling (the hate mail) and finally got sick of it.

If they brought her name to national news, it could be an easy way to discredit her, try to make her look like a liar, so it would hurt the court case.

If the only person besides the victim that is corroborating this story becomes very widely known as a pathological liar...very easy way to hurt the prosecution's case.

[tropaka]

somewhere in the mountain of articles on this it was mentioned that reporters/investigators contacted the parents after she's made the claims of threats etc, not that the parents went to reporters.

[Black Aliss]

And now comes the fundie twist to this story, complete with sexual abuse of a young child (possibly one of the adopted siblings?).

A memoir by Rachel's bio brother, Joshua Dolezal, is described as

Raised in northwestern Montana by Pentecostal homesteaders whose twenty-year experiment in subsistence living was closely tied to their faith, Joshua Doležal experienced a childhood marked equally by his parents’ quest for spiritual transcendence and the surrounding Rocky Mountain landscape. Unable to fully embrace the fundamentalism of his parents, he began to search for religious experience elsewhere: in baseball, books, and weightlifting, then later in migrations to Tennessee, Nebraska, and Uruguay. Yet even as he sought to understand his place in the world, he continued to yearn for his mountain home.

and

Joshua wrote that he and Rachel were born at home. He wrote of the time “when my mother dressed my sister and me in homemade corduroy overalls and plaid shirts with elk-antler buttons and the four of us went to church, where the other Jesus People struck up folk tunes on their guitars.”

This news comes out now, as Joshua Dolezal is awaiting trial on charges of sexually abusing a young child several years ago:

The alleged incidents of sexual assault, according to a Clear Creek County affidavit in support of an arrest warrant obtained by the Daily News and reviewed by The Post, occurred at Lawrence and Ruthanne’s house in Colorado “in 2001 or 2002.” The victim, whose name was redacted in the affidavit, “was 6 or 7 years old,” and Joshua Dolezal was “19 years older.”

I didn't quite get the uproar over the original story of a white woman trying to pass as black because it struck me as a particularly victimless crime and clearly the woman is all kinds of effed-up, as is her family of origin. But now it all begins to make sense.

ETA link to wapo story: washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/16/rachel-dolezals-brother-author-joshua-dolezal-faces-trial-for-alleged-sexual-abuse-of-a-black-child/

[RosyDaisy]

This woman has tarnished the reputation and respectability of the NAACP. Fuck you bitch!

[Dovenoir]

More to the story. Did they throw her under the bus to stop her from testifying?

https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpres ... ents-want/

[Firiel]

More to the story. Did they throw her under the bus to stop her from testifying?

https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpres ... ents-want/

Ooooh, interesting! I really respect R.L. Stollar, and if he says they have heard from others that abuse occurred in the Dolezal home, I'm inclined to trust him. I wouldn't have trusted Rachel's assertion of such (for obvious reasons), but I don't really feel I have reason to doubt it now.

I wonder if her desire to identify as black stemmed from a desire to detach herself from her parents and attach herself to her black younger siblings, who she viewed as innocent/pure/victims/whatever.

[tropaka]

Abuse is an excellent reason to ditch parents/abusive siblings - but if she claims she's identified as black since childhood why sue a school for discriminating against you because you're white, or lie about your black father etc. Sounds like everyone's messed up in this situation.

[karen77]

So, more crazy religious people are basically causing their children to go off the rails... Too bad the media can't pick up the similarities between the Duggars and these guys...and see the root of the issue, then write and expose.

[Burris]

BONK!

Read more. Now I'm thoroughly confused. I understand she received recognition for this, but was that really enough reason to "pass as black"?

And what if, in her incredibly mixed ancestry, there are black ancestors? Just how many would she have to be related to before she's black enough.

(I admit to total ignorance about the woman herself, and I'm just positive I will get metal for asking that question - but I really want to know?)

[Burris]

...but this feels like a slap in the face. As much as she thinks she understands the struggle, she can choose not to subject herself to driving while Black, shopping while Black, or a plethora of ills associated with being in our minority group. I can't be here for her racial cosplay, even though her hair game was on point. :evil-eye:

I don't know the woman or the situation, and my understanding of black-white-relations in the US is middling at best - but I have to ask this: Let us assume everyone who knows her, including her odd parents, recognizes she's a black woman with white enough skin to "pass"; how is it her fault that she can pass (and thereby escape the DWB phenomenon for example)?

I think this is such an oddity: I'm well familiar with ethnic conflict - and those who want to escape it are willing to give false names and hide symbols of their faith tradition for a chance to GTFO.

This one is doing the exact opposite. Sure, this could be a case of "black when fitting in; white when convenient' but unless she puts a sign in her car window that says, "Black; passing for White" (and I'm not even being facetious) then how could she attract the kinds of crap visually black people have to endure every day?

ETA: I KNOW I'M PROBABLY MISSING SOME BIG RACIAL SUBTEXT; riding over it out of pure ignorance. Please, just explain how I'm wrong when I fuck up - because an honest error it what it will be. (I don't like being wrong, but wrong-and-corrected is a good way to learn.)

[JillyO]

BONK!

Read more. Now I'm thoroughly confused. I understand she received recognition for this, but was that really enough reason to "pass as black"?

And what if, in her incredibly mixed ancestry, there are black ancestors? Just how many would she have to be related to before she's black enough.

(I admit to total ignorance about the woman herself, and I'm just positive I will get metal for asking that question - but I really want to know?)

I have issues with this, too. I'm sorry if everything I'm going to say comes out as rambling; I'm finding it very hard to articulate my thoughts on this issue.

Disclaimer: I think it's pretty obvious that Rachel Dolezal has some mental issues, and it seems that these stem from her very fucked-up, fundie upbringing (to the utter surprise of exactly no one, on this board at least). I certainly don't want to defend some of the things she did, like sending herself hate mail, the whole noose business, claming some random black man is her father, etc. Like I said, she definitely has some problems.

However, I am finding some of the discourse on this topic very disconcerting. I have read many articles, comments, posts about the (alleged) grave difference between being transgender and "transracial" that have made the claim that gender is a social construct, which is why it being transgender is fine, whereas there is no such thing as being "transracial". What the fuck people; race is as much a social construct as gender. Of course there are very real consequences to being black in America (and in many other countries), and far be it from me to diminish the experiences black people make every day. But it does beg the question of who gets to identify as black. Everyone with a drop of African blood? Does that sound familiar to anyone? Or everyone who possesses enough physical attributes to be perceived as black by strangers on the street? Does that mean any white-passing person does not get to identify as African American? The actor Jesse Williams, for example, could easily pass as white if he tried (imho) - does that somehow disqualify him from being black?

Personally, I think that people should be able to identify as what they choose to identify as. If Rachel Dolezal identifies as black, for whatever reason, then good grief, that is her right, in my opinion. Who am I to tell her that what she feels is wrong? To me, that seems no different than telling a transgender person that they really aren't the gender they feel they are, but the one that matches their sex.

Now I understand that this poses some difficult questions, affirmative action is just one that immediately comes to mind. And I'm not going to claim I have the answer to these questions. But the same was (and in some areas continues to be) true for transgender people. That does not mean we get to deny them their identities.

My apologies for rambling.

[FundieFarmer]

More to the story. Did they throw her under the bus to stop her from testifying?

https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpres ... ents-want/

If true, this gives us another national-level case that shows the cracks in the fundamentalist movements. It also shows the damage that is done by that upbringing, and blows holes in the theories held by these crazies that their families are safe and wholesome. It also offers an explanation for (but does not excuse) Dolezal's actions.

[Firiel]

I don't know the woman or the situation, and my understanding of black-white-relations in the US is middling at best - but I have to ask this: Let us assume everyone who knows her, including her odd parents, recognizes she's a black woman with white enough skin to "pass"; how is it her fault that she can pass (and thereby escape the DWB phenomenon for example)?

I think this is such an oddity: I'm well familiar with ethnic conflict - and those who want to escape it are willing to give false names and hide symbols of their faith tradition for a chance to GTFO.

This one is doing the exact opposite. Sure, this could be a case of "black when fitting in; white when convenient' but unless she puts a sign in her car window that says, "Black; passing for White" (and I'm not even being facetious) then how could she attract the kinds of crap visually black people have to endure every day?

ETA: I KNOW I'M PROBABLY MISSING SOME BIG RACIAL SUBTEXT; riding over it out of pure ignorance. Please, just explain how I'm wrong when I fuck up - because an honest error it what it will be. (I don't like being wrong, but wrong-and-corrected is a good way to learn.)

...but she's NOT a black woman with white enough skin to "pass." She's a white woman raised in a white household who has never had to face the institutional racism that black people run up against their whole lives.

Here's the thing. It's not that she tanned and got a perm. It's not that she has made herself kind of look black successfully enough that people assume she's black. It's that she's co-opted the very real social struggle that black people have to face. She tells stories about her father fleeing from the Deep South after her grandfather had an altercation with a cop. She gives speeches about "the struggles of our people" in which she talks about her response to problems she has never had to face. She has consistently spoken to the "black experience" as if she has lived it. Well, for maybe 10 years she has because it appears she has "passed" as black pretty successfully, but she wasn't raised with it, she wasn't limited by it. She chose it when she realized it would benefit her. She built a platform for social and political gain on her faked experiences as a minority.

[Firiel]

I have issues with this, too. I'm sorry if everything I'm going to say comes out as rambling; I'm finding it very hard to articulate my thoughts on this issue.

Disclaimer: I think it's pretty obvious that Rachel Dolezal has some mental issues, and it seems that these stem from her very fucked-up, fundie upbringing (to the utter surprise of exactly no one, on this board at least). I certainly don't want to defend some of the things she did, like sending herself hate mail, the whole noose business, claming some random black man is her father, etc. Like I said, she definitely has some problems.

However, I am finding some of the discourse on this topic very disconcerting. I have read many articles, comments, posts about the (alleged) grave difference between being transgender and "transracial" that have made the claim that gender is a social construct, which is why it being transgender is fine, whereas there is no such thing as being "transracial". What the fuck people; race is as much a social construct as gender. Of course there are very real consequences to being black in America (and in many other countries), and far be it from me to diminish the experiences black people make every day. But it does beg the question of who gets to identify as black. Everyone with a drop of African blood? Does that sound familiar to anyone? Or everyone who possesses enough physical attributes to be perceived as black by strangers on the street? Does that mean any white-passing person does not get to identify as African American? The actor Jesse Williams, for example, could easily pass as white if he tried (imho) - does that somehow disqualify him from being black?

Personally, I think that people should be able to identify as what they choose to identify as. If Rachel Dolezal identifies as black, for whatever reason, then good grief, that is her right, in my opinion. Who am I to tell her that what she feels is wrong? To me, that seems no different than telling a transgender person that they really aren't the gender they feel they are, but the one that matches their sex.

Now I understand that this poses some difficult questions, affirmative action is just one that immediately comes to mind. And I'm not going to claim I have the answer to these questions. But the same was (and in some areas continues to be) true for transgender people. That does not mean we get to deny them their identities.

My apologies for rambling.

Okay, but she also lies, invents fake stories about her family to further her "advocate clout," plagiarizes artwork, sues her historically black college for discriminating against her because she is white, and potentially fakes hate crimes.

How anyone can look at her resume of deceit and think she's being honest when she says she identifies as black because "she's black on the inside" and not because she's an opportunistic, mentally ill pathological liar is beyond me.

:think:

[JillyO]

Okay, but she also lies, invents fake stories about her family to further her "advocate clout," plagiarizes artwork, sues her historically black college for discriminating against her because she is white, and potentially fakes hate crimes.

How anyone can look at her resume of deceit and think she's being honest when she says she identifies as black because "she's black on the inside" and not because she's an opportunistic, mentally ill pathological liar is beyond me.

:think:

Like I said, I think Dolezal is clearly mentally ill and I do not want to excuse the deceitful things she's done (some of which you've named) at all. I think she needs help. Actual, professional help.

My remarks were on the bigger picture, because I have found some of the responses to this scandal scandalous in and of themselves - not because they condemned what Dolezal has done, but because it seems to be a pretty widespread conception that race is not just as much a social construct as gender. That has shocked me to no end.

[louisa05]

Okay, but she also lies, invents fake stories about her family to further her "advocate clout," plagiarizes artwork, sues her historically black college for discriminating against her because she is white, and potentially fakes hate crimes.

How anyone can look at her resume of deceit and think she's being honest when she says she identifies as black because "she's black on the inside" and not because she's an opportunistic, mentally ill pathological liar is beyond me.

:think:

But she is the exact person we need to lead us out of the abyss of racism in America...or so I'm being told elsewhere on the internet. Her potential for great leadership is being compared to the leaders of the early LGBT movement at Stonewall. Rachel is the savior of America. Any attempt to point out that she is a lying liar who has spent a decade or more lying about her entire life is compared to psychology dismissing homosexuality as a disorder in previous times.

I can't even...