No, Rachel Dolezal, You're Not "Transracial"

At the core of the bizarre Rachel Dolezal story appears to be a troubled woman who wants attention. For that reason, I think we should soon stop giving it to her. However, her 15 minutes aren’t over yet.

I watched her interview with Matt Lauer and was appalled too many times to count. First and foremost, as regards her position that she is “human” racially, I would like to retort, isn’t that a lovely thought! Tell that to the black person who was just called the n-word or pulled over for driving while black. While we are all, indeed, members of the same human race, the idea that Dolezal can be “racially human,” given that she has been masquerading as a black woman, is incredibly insensitive to actual black people—you know, those people Dolezal supposedly identifies with and advocates for—who, unlike her, will never have the option of shedding their skin and identifying as another race.

In addition, I found her choice of words in answering Lauer’s questions fascinating. She took responsibility for nothing. Instead, she chose to paint herself as a passive agent. Others identified her as biracial or black, and in all instances, she just didn’t correct them; she met an older black man with whom she connected, so he just became her father; she “[doesn’t] avoid the sun” and therefore her skin is darker than it used to be… If Dolezal really cared about her work with the NAACP, she would have owned up to misrepresenting herself and apologized to the people she might have hurt.

Interestingly, Dolezal claimed that she has “identified with the black experience” since she was about five years old, when she would allegedly draw herself with brown skin and black curly hair, as opposed to her pale skin and blonde hair. That explanation sounded contrived to me. What awareness does a five-year-old—especially a white five-year-old—have of the “black experience”? Maybe she was creative; maybe family members told her she was ugly, so she envisioned herself as someone else; or maybe she just made this up.

If, indeed, Rachel Dolezal has self-identified as black since the age of five, why did she assert her whiteness to accuse Howard University of discrimination in her 2002 lawsuit?

Furthermore, if this story is simply about a woman who loves her black family members and is passionate about equality and aligns herself with the African American community, why try so hard to pass as black? The number of hate crimes that Dolezal alleged, with no corresponding evidence presented to police, might suggest that she wanted so much for people to see her as black that she invented a struggle that was not her own, but that is very real to black people.

It seems that Rachel Dolezal was trying to construct her own victimhood. But why? Is this a sign of mental illness? Desperation to validate her invented blackness? A need for attention? Whatever the reason, the reality is that by making false accusations about being the victim of crime, she was trivializing the real experiences of people who have been harassed and threatened due to their skin colour.

But this is the crux of this insane story. Dolezal’s dishonesty is insulting and dismissive. Rather than asserting her position as an ally and trying to fight injustice and inequality, basically, she got a tan, got her hair done, and spoke on behalf of black people.

Being white, black, aboriginal, Asian, etc. is not a choice that an individual makes. Yes, race is a construct, but that doesn’t mean that people construct it for themselves. I heard Dolezal use the word “transracial” in her interview moments after I said to someone, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to start some sort of ‘transracial’ movement.” Am I right? Many people on social media have likened this story to Caitlyn Jenner’s and asked if someone can be transgender, why can’t another person be transracial? Kat Blaque replies brilliantly to this question. Transgender people are being true to themselves and taking a tremendous risk in doing so, whereas Rachel Dolezal was deceiving people and benefited from it.

While she would have the world believe that she represents either blackness or the fluidity of race, in fact, what Rachel Dolezal represents is white privilege. Dolezal has proven that she has the luxury of either claiming or abandoning blackness whenever it feels right to her. How many people of colour have the same option?

It is bad enough that this woman took it upon herself to hijack someone else’s narrative. She did the right thing by resigning. We cannot allow her to resume what she did with the NAACP by writing some new narrative of transracialism that dismisses the reality of living in black skin.