NAACP Leader Posed as Black (?)

[Firiel]

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...

:cray-cray:

How do pathological liars garner this kind of blind support? I need to learn that trick...

[2xx1xy1JD]

I think it's useful to unpack some of the issues to look at where the problem lies.

From what I can tell:

It's fine to identify with a struggle to stop oppression against a group that is not yours by birth. Many people have done that, and it's a good thing.

People acknowledge that life is complicated, race is a social construct and we don't always stay in our assigned box. Multiracial families exist. The issue isn't - or shouldn't be - whether she looked Black enough.

The NAACP was founded largely by liberal whites. She could have been honest about her background, telling of how she was distraught to see how her Black siblings were treated, telling about her hopes and fears as a mother of a Black child, and saying how she rejected both the racism and abuse of her parents.

Part of being a good ally, though, is having the ability to identify the privileges that you do have, and choosing to use it for good. I know, for example, that I heard stories of how some groups, like the Danes and Bulgarians, protected their Jewish populations during WWII. The Bulgarians realized that it was impossible to tell their Jewish and non-Jewish citizens apart, and the King of Denmark had even suggested that if the Jewish were forced to wear yellow stars, everyone else should as well. What made this powerful is that it was clear that support for the oppressed group was coming from within groups that were favored.

There can be degrees of privilege even within a family. I heard from a great-aunt about walking in Poland with her sister, and having someone say that a nice Polish girl like her shouldn't be walking with a "dirty Jew", because she had blond hair and blue eyes and her sister was darker. Russell Peters has written about how his mother, who was lighter than him and who shopkeepers often assumed was Italian or Portuguese, didn't always understand the discrimination he felt from those who called him "Paki". My family can easily cross the US border. My FIL gets detained for questioning if he doesn't have his Nexxus pass, because he is brown and was born in Iraq.

The lawsuit against Howard University is a problem. Yes, Howard University admits students from all backgrounds, without discrimination. That said, it's known for being a Black university. It exists because of the exclusion of Blacks from other universities, and it continues to have an important purpose because there is still a need to support Blacks in higher education. Suing an institution founded to give opportunities to Black students and academics, on the basis on racial discrimination because you are white, is not something that a good ally does.

Making up stuff is never okay. Period. Especially if you are describing bad stuff that happened to you or your family. There is real shit that happens to people, and if other people make false complaints or give a false history, it diminishes the credibilty of the real stuff.

[tropaka]

I really shouldn't listen to talk radio. If I hear one more (white) host go on about how people can identify however they want ....Here goes my rant.

Race is a societal construct based on appearance - historically (presently?) preferencing white over brown people. While it's nice that a white woman can change her appearance because, even though her heritage is otherwise, she wants to self identify as black - that's some white privilege right there. A young black teen, walking in a "white" neighourhood, does not have the option of self identifying as caucasion when a police cruiser rolls by or someone crosses the road to avoid him. My son (caucasion) has a lot of friends with different backgrounds, some middle eastern, many Somalian. If they're hanging in a park or on the street, let's just say my son isn't the one who gets carded by the cops.

Of course there are people who may appear to be of a different "race" who can quite rightly identify with a background different than how they look - I know more than a few blue-eyed blonde status Indians and people whose parents were white/black and who appear as one or the other. The difference is these people have familial heritages and generally aren't lying about it as a career/lifestyle.

Central to this story isn't just the switcheroo of "race" - although incredibly strange and thought provoking - it was the deceptions, lies, fake threats. Maybe she believes her own lies at this point but she had the effing balls to put herself out there for the NAACP as a black woman.

[VelociRapture]

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.)

(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.

[FundieFarmer]

Homeschoolers Anonymous just shared this, which reveals some more information about Rachel's upbringing. There is a lot going on here.

Not breaking because I'm sure HA already knows about us and would love the press.

https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpres ... pbringing/

[tropaka]

TMZ outed the alleged victim(s) of the eldest brother

http://www.tmz.com/2015/06/17/rachel-do ... adid=hero1

[tropaka]

okay, I think I'm going to stop with this story - she's saying that there's no proof her parents are really her parents and I feel sorry for her son, who clearly adores her.

http://perezhilton.com/2015-06-16-rache ... YHG-PlVikp

[JillyO]

And just an aside JillyO: as far as I know, transracial actually is a legitimate term. It has been used to refer to children adopted into a family of a different race than they are - for instance, Sandra Bullock's son Louis could technically be considered transracial. I've never heard or seen it used to explain this sort of situation though.

Oh, I know that's what transracial usually means. It has been used a lot in the Rachel Dolezal case to mean something different, though (that's why I used inverted commas). If you're curious, just google "Dolezal transracial."

[ADoyle90815]

All I know is that this story gets more bizzare by the minute. :pink-shock:

[Geechee Girl]

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.)

You raise some interesting points. I'll address the bolded. In the hypothetical situation mentioned, as well as in reality, no one would fault her for being light enough to pass for white. She attracts attention by altering her hair, skin color, dress and speech to be seen and taken for African-American.

There is genuine racial subtext at play here. There are customs and traditions she most likely never received due to her parents. Now if she were a white child adopted by African-American parents, Rachel could be black, but not African-American. Being black in America is so much more than skin color. She wasn't raised to know how to live with the burden of blackness in the States. Here, the struggle is real. It is exhausting.

[zebra #13]

Based on past sociopaths in my life, I have to say the resemblance is uncanny. I've had three, and all were people who loved to lie, with or without gain. And were good at it, in the sense that those hearing them believed. At least at first. Thing is that they're not careful. And they are not consistent. They just like the sound of whatever lie they are in the process of telling, but they don't index them for believability or cross index them for possibility. So, for example *s/he* could claim to be terrified of heights and also claim to be a skydiver. . . .

One of mine liked to make up identities: he was, or had been, a monk, a sniper, a poet, a union organizer, a professional golfer.

I don't think they're fixable, nor do I think it's *caused* by anything. They seem to come that way, and resist to the max any kind of therapy.

Leaving us all to watch the train wreck.

[louisa05]

Based on past sociopaths in my life, I have to say the resemblance is uncanny. I've had three, and all were people who loved to lie, with or without gain. And were good at it, in the sense that those hearing them believed. At least at first. Thing is that they're not careful. And they are not consistent. They just like the sound of whatever lie they are in the process of telling, but they don't index them for believability or cross index them for possibility. So, for example *s/he* could claim to be terrified of heights and also claim to be a skydiver. . . .

One of mine liked to make up identities: he was, or had been, a monk, a sniper, a poet, a union organizer, a professional golfer.

I don't think they're fixable, nor do I think it's *caused* by anything. They seem to come that way, and resist to the max any kind of therapy.

Leaving us all to watch the train wreck.

I have a friend who was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and a sister-in-law who likely has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. As you say, the resemblances are uncanny. Both constantly "try on" identities, rewrite their pasts (with no consistency, as you said), and lie as regularly as they breathe. My guess is that Rachel has a personality disorder. A dysfunctional family of origin can certainly contribute to the development of one and one or both of her parents may have a disorder themselves. The one time my SiL went to a therapist, she spent hours devising what to tell the therapist to get the therapist to respond the way she wanted. She would literally sit and tell us what she planned to tell the therapist and what response she wanted from her. As for BPD (former) friend, when a therapist finally diagnosed her, she abandoned therapy all together.

[2xx1xy1JD]

You raise some interesting points. I'll address the bolded. In the hypothetical situation mentioned, as well as in reality, no one would fault her for being light enough to pass for white. She attracts attention by altering her hair, skin color, dress and speech to be seen and taken for African-American.

There is genuine racial subtext at play here. There are customs and traditions she most likely never received due to her parents. Now if she were a white child adopted by African-American parents, Rachel could be black, but not African-American. Being black in America is so much more than skin color. She wasn't raised to know how to live with the burden of blackness in the States. Here, the struggle is real. It is exhausting.

What do you mean by "if she were a white child adopted by African-American parents, Rachel could be black, but not African-American"? What do you see as the distinction?

[i'll sometimes use African-American to refer to the specifically American black culture, as opposed to Caribbean or anywhere else, but that doesn't seem to be your meaning.]

[VelociRapture]

What do you mean by "if she were a white child adopted by African-American parents, Rachel could be black, but not African-American"? What do you see as the distinction?

[i'll sometimes use African-American to refer to the specifically American black culture, as opposed to Caribbean or anywhere else, but that doesn't seem to be your meaning.]

I think I understand what she meant.

Lets say Rachel was born to Caucasian parents and was adopted into an African American family. It's very likely she would have been raised with traditions and in a culture quite different from the one she would have been raised with had she remained with her birth parents. So, in that sense, she could legitimately claim to be black because she was raised in the culture. She couldn't, however, claim to be African-American because that's a separate race than the one she was born with.

Maybe that makes no sense. I think it has to do with the culture rather than claiming to be a different ethnicity though.

[Toothfairy]

Okay I'm reading more about this story and apparently her parents abused her and her siblings. They used the Pearls. The dad was charged with a crime but charges were dropped. Then she sued Howard for racial discrimination. Ugh this story is just getting crazier

[MatthewDuggar]

I think I understand what she meant.

Lets say Rachel was born to Caucasian parents and was adopted into an African American family. It's very likely she would have been raised with traditions and in a culture quite different from the one she would have been raised with had she remained with her birth parents. So, in that sense, she could legitimately claim to be black because she was raised in the culture. She couldn't, however, claim to be African-American because that's a separate race than the one she was born with.

Maybe that makes no sense. I think it has to do with the culture rather than claiming to be a different ethnicity though.

To me, it's more "I'm white and was raised by african-american parents." I've never heard a black person that was raised by Caucasian parents say that they are now officially "white"...?!?

[VelociRapture]

To me, it's more "I'm white and was raised by african-american parents." I've never heard a black person that was raised by Caucasian parents say that they are now officially "white"...?!?

Maybe they would state it in a different way? Like saying that they identify as Italian, Irish, or German? And maybe the hypothetical white kid adopted into a family of another ethnicity would say they identify as Chinese, Nigerian, or Peruvian?

I'm not sure. I'm really attempting to understand this whole story. There are so many details and conflicting stories though.

[FundieFarmer]

Okay I'm reading more about this story and apparently her parents abused her and her siblings. They used the Pearls. The dad was charged with a crime but charges were dropped. Then she sued Howard for racial discrimination. Ugh this story is just getting crazier

Yeah, Homeschoolers Anonymous has some information about it. I think I shared upthread, but I could've just dreamed that.

This situation just keeps getting screwier.

[Geechee Girl]

I think I understand what she meant.

Lets say Rachel was born to Caucasian parents and was adopted into an African American family. It's very likely she would have been raised with traditions and in a culture quite different from the one she would have been raised with had she remained with her birth parents. So, in that sense, she could legitimately claim to be black because she was raised in the culture. She couldn't, however, claim to be African-American because that's a separate race than the one she was born with.

Maybe that makes no sense. I think it has to do with the culture rather than claiming to be a different ethnicity though.

Thank you, VelociRapture, that's what I meant. I known and worked with transracial adoptees who were in fact raised in the culture of the parents. In the case of the Dolezal family, I suspect the adopted black children were acculturated white. Of course they aren't Caucasian by race, but Anglo-American in culture. It was a very common occurrence for the Asian children of white adoptive parents to be acculturated white as well. Transracial adoption can shortchange the children if the parents are not diligent in exposing and rooting the children into their respective culture. Race and ethnicity are separate, but continue to be conflated in America.

[Burris]

I think I understand the answers people have given to my past questions - good, thorough answers, but not enough to answer my frank confusion.

I have read what I assume would be a fairly accurate biography of her on (the totally accurate, all the time) Wikipedia. I just wanted one concise thing to grasp so I went there.

First of all, there's this matter of her parents: They lived in a leather tend, hunted for food, moved to South Africa, and at various times adopted a total of four black children (three African-American; one Haitian). So basically this woman grew up with parents who discount certain claims she has made about her own youth but who themselves basically tried to, for lack of a better term, become black....or native...or something.

But this woman, born in Montana in 1977 to these exceptionally fucked up parents, went on to create award-winning African-themed art in 1996 and later earned what I assume is a legitimate BA.

The MA in Fine Arts she earned from Howard - the controversy doesn't seem to be in her admission, but in the assumption by the Howard University admissions team that this woman was black based on her theses and artistic creations. From the telling I read, they never asked her race before awarding her a full scholarship on the assumption she was black. It was when they discovered she was not herself black that they...questioned awarding her the scholarship, which I assume was given in some portion based on merit rather than on race?

I understand why an underprivileged group should get first access to scholarships. (Actually all for that.)

Then, "Her thesis at Howard was a series of paintings presented from the perspective of a black man, and sparked a controversy after Dean Tritobia Benjamin, a specialist on black women in the arts, questioned whether Dolezal was qualified to tell this type of story as a white woman."

This actually makes me curious as to whether black women - older black women in particular - experience the DWB phenomenon as often as young black men. If a black woman painted pictures from the perspective of a black man, regardless of content, but let's say at a traffic stop specifically, how many orders of magnitude more accurate would those depictions be than if a white man did it? A Hispanic woman?

If Rachel Dolezal did indeed falsify information about her race to join and eventually play a key role in an organizations such as the NAACP, then yeah, they should fire her...but on what specific grounds? Did she falsify her name? Her birth date? Her educational credentials? Her 1996 contest win? The fact she had four black adopted siblings?

Did this woman commit an actionable crime, or at least a termination-level offense at work, by falsifying data about her race?

I'm not defending falsifying a resume and I'm definitely not claiming its right for an oppressive ethnic group to coopt the story of an oppressed one - or an individual in the privileged former to do that to the latter. In fact, when that sort of mix up occurs, https://www.google.ca/search?q=digging+ ... +jasenovac this could happen.

Was she hired by the NAACP for her educational credentials, or was she hired because - as Howard wrongly assumed when awarding her a full scholarship - they thought she was black? Or both? On what balance?

There's the serious allegation she lied about being the victim of hate crimes. If the witless idiots who actually commit hate crimes of the sort she described actually thought, as apparently Howard University once did and the NAACP seems to have done, that Dolezal was ethnically black, it's absolutely conceivable they did send her hate mail and may have defaced her property or left threatening tokens for her to find (such as the noose I keep reading about). If she faked hate crimes against herself, that's gross even by my disgustingly low standards and I'm positive it's an actual, factual crime - a thing illegal, that violates actual existing laws.

Did she break the law?

If not, what precisely is the nature of her...moral...transgression? .' And to what extent? Did she ride the assumptions of others, or did she state, "I AM BLACK"?

It really shouldn't be down to 'she faked her race.' I get, on a basic level, that people shouldn't abuse their privilege by profiting by the lack of privilege in others. If this doesn't come to an educational deficiency or a lie about hate crimes, though - if it actually does come down to 'she's not black'...I don't even know where to go from there but down.

I'm not defending her. I...really want to know what precisely she did.

[louisa05]

I think the NAACP has a vested interest in maintaining the integrity of their organization and Dolezal has been proved to be a serial liar. Not just about her race--and no one made any assumptions, she claimed to be black. She lied about her upbringing, about who her parents were, about her other familial relationships and there is quite a lot of evidence that she lied about numerous "hate crimes" over the years. According to one source, she even organized vigils for herself in response to the alleged hate crimes.

There have been some stories about her behaviors that, in retrospect, are very inappropriate as well. She once did not allow a Latino student to speak in her classroom about Hispanic issues claiming she didn't look Hispanic enough. Link:

http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2 ... ic-enough/

She attempted to stop an author from speaking about race issues at the university she was teaching at because he was white. Link:

http://www.ibtimes.com/rachel-dolezal-d ... no-1971921

Some of her paintings appear to be plagiarized. Link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/1 ... 86972.html

She has no credibility. It is as simple as that. And if the NAACP and the university she has been teaching at wish to maintain their own institutional integrity and credibility, it follows that neither can continue to employ her.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Thank you, VelociRapture, that's what I meant. I known and worked with transracial adoptees who were in fact raised in the culture of the parents. In the case of the Dolezal family, I suspect the adopted black children were acculturated white. Of course they aren't Caucasian by race, but Anglo-American in culture. It was a very common occurrence for the Asian children of white adoptive parents to be acculturated white as well. Transracial adoption can shortchange the children if the parents are not diligent in exposing and rooting the children into their respective culture. Race and ethnicity are separate, but continue to be conflated in America.

Thanks for the explanation.

Is it common in the United States to use black when referring to culture, and African-American when speaking about race?

I tend to do the opposite, largely because I'm not in the United States and African-American refers to, well, Americans, and most black Canadians aren't from an African-American background. In terms of culture/ethnicity, I'd say Jamaican-Canadian, Somali-Canadian, etc. (to give an example of 2 large communities here that share a skin tone but are otherwise vastly different).

I've never really learned about the preferred American terminology, or realized that there was a distinction.

[older than allosaurs]

Is it common in the United States to use black when referring to culture, and African-American when speaking about race?


I tend to do the opposite, largely because I'm not in the United States and African-American refers to, well, Americans, and most black Canadians aren't from an African-American background. In terms of culture/ethnicity, I'd say Jamaican-Canadian, Somali-Canadian, etc. (to give an example of 2 large communities here that share a skin tone but are otherwise vastly different).


I've never really learned about the preferred American terminology, or realized that there was a distinction.

My kids, who are African-American, do talk about black culture and African-American ethnicity and heritage. But neither they nor I would say that someone who identifies with black culture is therefore black, regardless of actual ethnicity. Raising them and identifying with their challenges and opportunities has not made me black. In fact it has made me less likely to use black slang or play around with cultural signifiers. Being raised by me certainly has not made them white.

[eri]

I saw this on the news tonight (local even though I am no where near where she lives). It's so interesting. What is the world is motivating her to pretend she's another race? They showed an interview where a reporter thew her a curve ball and showed her a picture of her white parents and she literally took off from the interview.

You can get perm rods small enough to create an afro effect.

I am not sure it is possible to get tight curl perms smaller than that (for, say, type 4c hair) but the perm she went with is the trendy black woman hair you mainly see on commercials. Previously, she has worn her hair in yellow braids (not dreads).

I wonder if she would dare rock an un-relaxed, non-anglo-influenced 'do. [emoji57]

[eri]

Race and gender ARE social constructs. But there is a difference between a person who was born black and someone who changed their appearance to pass for black in adulthood. Don't pretend to understand and speak for the struggles of a group if you can't experience them yourself.

Dolezal's nastiness arises from her pathological misrepresentation of herself and from harming the black community by reducing black culture to a matter of identity and fashion statements.