Posted on 06/16/2015 6:02:20 AM PDT by shortstop
The boobs are fake, too.
I’m talking about Rachel Dolezal, the recently fired Spokane NAACP president who told everybody she was black.
As part of the national discussion about presenting ourselves as who we want to be, as opposed to who our DNA says we are, it’s worth noting that she dyes her hair and has had implants.
And somehow we’ve got to navigate the social minefield of to what degree the world allows our physical and cultural identity to be of our own determination, and to what degree social norms can fence us in.
How much is personal expression and comfort, and how much is dishonest charade?
Rachel Dolezal is probably a bad example.
By pretending to be black, she opened doors of power and money for herself – she got jobs and she became a prominent person. When we lie for financial benefit and personal gain, that’s not self-determination, that’s fraud.
So she could be a crook.
She could also be a nut.
There may be some aspect of personal instability that caused her to completely reform herself, with her identification as black being as much about running away from something as running toward something else. Seeing her parents sit on their Montana couch and tear down the charade of her life makes you wonder about her upbringing and family relations. There aren’t many parents who would seek out reporters in order to humiliate their child and destroy a life she has made for herself, no matter how much they disapproved of that life.
Another problem with Rachel Dolezal is that there is an arrogance to her action. By filling the role she filled, she kept someone else from filling it. By presuming as a white woman to speak for Spokane’s African-Americans, she denied Spokane’s African-Americans an authentic and actual voice. In speaking for oppressed blacks, she oppressed them herself, by putting her voice and face where theirs belonged, by presuming that she was better at being black than a real black person would be.
So Rachel Dolezal might be a bad example.
But she does raise a point: Who are we, really?
And to what degree can we embrace a culture or identity we weren’t born into?
Generally, I think we are very free to migrate culturally across the society.
I have a cousin and a sister, for example, each pushed away from their rural New York upbringing by the bad economy, who have lived now for decades in the South. They both have completely embraced the culture of their respective new states. One speaks like a North Carolinian, and the other speaks like an Alabaman. Their affect, colloquialisms, food and values are all of their new home – and are a repudiation of the place and culture in which they were raised.
They are very much identical to their southern neighbors, and they have been free to make that transition of culture and identification.
Is race different?
And is race only different when the labels involved are “black” and “white?”
Iron Eyes Cody, an iconic Native American actor for decades, was 100 percent Italian. I know a woman who presents herself as Native American, but who is herself of completely European heritage.
In fact, I don’t think it’s uncommon for white people to claim a Native American ancestor. I was myself crushed to get the results of a genetic test and learn that my own family’s stories of Native American heritage were false.
Beyond race, people adopt cultural expressions all the time. There are bikers and goths, hippies and thugs. People see a way of living, they feel comfortable with or drawn to that way of living, and they embrace it – dressing, speaking and living in a new way as they do so.
Are they all posers and fakes, or are they simply engaged in the pursuit of happiness as they define it?
When a Jew becomes a Catholic, or vice versa, we don’t question that new affiliation, do we?
Is falling in love with a culture or identity you weren’t born with wrong?
Clearly not.
Is embracing that culture or identity wrong? Can you claim it for your own?
That’s where it gets dicey.
Especially across the black and white divide, and particularly when it comes to the grievances of a people.
For example, when Rachel Dolezal presented herself as black, and as a spokeswoman for wronged black people, she assumed for herself the litany of wrongs done to black people. She de facto presented herself as the daughter of slavery and a victim of Jim Crow, and as someone who had faced whatever disadvantages a black person in America might face.
She didn’t just claim an identity, she claimed a victimhood. She rode somebody else’s pony. What others had endured at great cost, she claimed freely for herself.
That’s troubling.
It’s akin to someone claiming to be a Holocaust survivor when he’s not.
You can feel sorrow for the Holocaust. You can study it and its survivors. You can respect them and their experience, and advocate for their interests and the lessons their experiences teach.
But when you falsely claim to be one, you’re not an admirer, you’re a liar.
Which gets us back to Rachel Dolezal.
Any person can clearly admire and feel drawn to the various cultures that are black America. A person of any race can embrace the history and the struggle and wrap themselves in the culture. Like most cultures, it will typically embrace back and welcome the newcomer. Blackness – like whiteness or any other identifier – is pretty flexible and fluid, and means different things to different people.
And it is clear that the people of Spokane – black and white – consciously or unconsciously played along with Rachel Dolezal. She is obviously a white woman wearing a friz wig – every TV and newspaper picture of her shows that. If she was pretending she was black, she wasn’t the only one – an entire city pretended along with her.
And that was all right. And it's probably all right most of the time.
So be who you want to be.
But don’t lie.
Especially if your lie gets you a paycheck and social prominence.
My Brother!
As a Potato-American since my earliest memories, I have often pondered the persecutions that the various members of our Nightshade family have endured through the generations. No compensation can ever repay us for what our ancestors suffered; but that doesn’t mean that a start can’t be made through reparation.
Very glad to know that you are down with the sacred Solanaceae struggle!
-JT (with fist bump).
Were the American kids available for adoption somehow defective?
Children are children and they all need a family and love regardless of their country of origin.
What a classless question.....
The weird thing is, the woman apparently has a lot of native talent. She’s apparently copied a painting by a Master in terms of impression, if not accurately (she certainly did it better than I could ever do!) and done some other lovely paintings as well.
I’m wondering what kind of mental issues led to all of this - Why would an obviously talented woman make a mess of her life in this way?
If she truly painted the works in the link below, I think it’s very sad that she felt the necessity to validate herself further by pretending to be something other than what she is. If these paintings are actually the work of her hands, what she is in herself is entirely Enough. (DID she paint the pictures of the boy and the old man? or is that more faking?):
-JT
I have decided that I will go black as I am a good Blues player on guitar. I must be black.
Buckheat was my favorite little Rascal charactor too.
I am black.
Finally, I can get that cushy government job.
Buckwheat.
But you don't look as good to others if you adopt an American kid though.
Listen up, I don’t base my parenting on how I “look” to others.
We were past 40 with biological children when we began the adoption process, which would have made us poor candidates for “American” kid adoption anyway. I was raised in foster care and had a bio dad that just stayed in the picture just enough to keep me from being adopted. We were not going to deal with that kind of situation. We also know families that adopted “American” kids only to have some libtardian judge give the children back to their loser egg or sperm donors. Not doing that either.
China provided a sure thing, no bio parent would ever come looking, we were not too old and our status as parents of bio children was seen as a good thing.
Your opinion of my children or their country of birth is worthless to me. Our family is truly rainbow...our Asian kids, my niece adopted a black child via foster care, my nephew is engaged to an Hispanic girl. I love that.
How many children have you adopted or fostered?
You are entitled to your bigoted opinion, just refrain from speaking to me about it in the future.
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