Melissa Harris-Perry on Rachel Dolezal: ‘It Is Possible That She Might Actually Be Black?’

Mediaite ^ | 6/13/15 | Josh Feldman

[markomalley]

If you’ve been following the Rachel Dolezal story online, you may have seen the word “transracial” being thrown around and people saying choosing to be black is like Caitlyn Jenner choosing to be female. It’s unclear how much of it’s sincere and how much is just straight-up trolling, but MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry entertained the notion on her show today with kind of a huge question.

“Is it possible that she might actually be black?”

While not wanting to make the transgender comparison, Harris-Perry questioned whether one can be “cisblack and transblack,” and whether there’s a way to describe “the achievement of blackness despite one’s parentage.”

Alyson Hobbs, who literally wrote the book on “racial passing,” said there’s “certainly a chance that she identifies as a black woman and there could be authenticity to that.”

Watch the video below, via MSNBC:

(video at link)

[mrsmith]

She can’t be negro,
but ANYBODY can be black.

[central_va]

I am half Italian can I stretch that into latin American or Hispanic?

[bjorn14]

HeHe. There was Church’s down the street from my college and this brother would come in about same time I was there. One day he said to me. “You must be the biggest white boy chicken eaten m’fer I ever did see” I just laughed. It was cheap and relatively tasty.

[mjp]

people with a victim mentality sometimes use a positive hallucination hypnotic trance to imagine things that are not there or real or have fantasies

[pepsionice]

Within a year....some Hollywood idiot will make this into a movie. It’s a can’t-lose scenario.

[dfwgator]

Didn’t we all come from “Out of Africa”?

[TigersEye]

Question to Harris-Perry: “Is it possible that you might actually have a brain?”

Odds are better that Dolezal is black.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

As long as Adam Sandler plays the Black chick...I’m good.

[central_va]

LMN has to buying the movie right’s to this. This needs to go into production today. Who will play the whigger?

[5th MEB]

If I self identify as an obscenely rich person who just happened to be born poor does that mean somebody has to give me lots of money?

[5th MEB]

Or what they are contaminated with.

[5th MEB]

In the same boat you are, but I prefer the SUPREMES.
Dianna Ross just sends me.

[5th MEB]

Wasn’t she? All my boys and girls are!
They just think I am a food and treat machine.

[Chode]

tooo damn funny... and true

[COBOL2Java]

Look at that nose, she is black. From now on I judge a person by the size of their nostrils and not by the content of their character.

"Whit ye daein ya dobber?!"

[scrabblehack]

Come to think of it, MHP looks a little fair-skinned too.

[Shimmer1]

You have my permission!

[DAC21]

“Within a year....some Hollywood idiot will make this into a movie. It’s a can’t-lose scenario”

And Rachel will be portrayed as a heroic figure.

[DAC21]

Not a week goes by that Melissa Harris-Perry doesn’t confirm that the Peter Principal is alive and well.

[MirrorField]

CIS is an academic construct to describe a person who identifies with the sex they were born with, in other words, normal. If it helps, you can think of it as 'Comfortable In Skin'

Nnope. Thanks for playing.

"Cis" is a latin preposition and means "on this side of". It's widely used in scientific terminology (eg. "cislunar space" meaning "on this side of moon" ie. "inside lunar orbit", etc.). Yes, "cisgender" basically means identifying into gender one is born into, but the preposition is far more generic.