White civil rights leader has pretended to be black for years

[Citizen66]

How about 'pretending to be Black'? After all that is all we know she has been doing. Making up terminology like 'transracial' is to begin to build a 'theory/framework' based on lazy/loaded assumptions.

I was referring to the previous attempts to draw comparisons with transsexuals. Again, what word would you have used to articulate that point (I was saying that such a thing doesn't exist AFAIK, to be clear).

 

[Duncan2]

My main question reading that kind of comment is... Identifying with what? What in the blazes do people think being black is defined by? Watching Montel Williams? Having a penchant for running? Dancing like Michael Jackson? Singing the blues? What?

what if she just felt more comfortable among black people?

 

[Athos]

The difference is 'choice'. Choice is a priviledge. Even if she deceived people thinking she was doing it for 'good' reasons she exercised her choice/priviledge.

But some people say some men choose to become women - so that doesn't quite get to the bottom of the difference.

 

[Wilf]

what if she just felt more comfortable among black people?

But she didn't just appropriate a personal black identity, she claimed a black political and public identity.

 

[Athos]

FFS, you know the score here, she's built a career for herself on the back of some staggering deceptions - mini-ongoing deceptions and massive ones in terms of invented relatives. More to the point, she's doing it in a society where black people risk being murdered by the police on a daily basis. Whatever her original motivations, she's played a game with something that shouldn't be a game. This simply isn't the same as the trans discussion, for reasons that should be obvious.

I feel it should be obvious, but I'm not sure I can rationalise it. All the logical arguments have gaps. For instance, your example above could apply to women being killed daily by men.

 

[Athos]

Well for starters there's a wealth of transsexuals that we can listen to and learn from. Is she the only transracial thus far? And we haven't heard her story yet. How she attempts to justify her actions, if it all. She might be a con artist. She might be ill. We can only speculate.

Fair point. It's a bit speculative.

 

[Duncan2]

But she didn't just appropriate a personal black identity, she claimed a black political and public identity.

granted but she also bothered to do some relevant academic study

 

[MochaSoul]

why not

Transracial is a term used in adoption to mean interracial. You're using it to, instead of meaning a disconnect between brain and anatomy (as in trasngender) to mean a disconnect between the [fictitious] race you are born into and the [fictitious] race you identify with.

 

[Athos]

How about 'pretending to be Black'? After all that is all we know she has been doing. Making up terminology like 'transracial' is to begin to build a 'theory/framework' based on lazy/loaded assumptions.

But transexuals have been criticised as 'pretending to be women'.

 

[butchersapron]

granted but she also bothered to do some relevant academic study

Fuck off

 

[Thora]

Transracial is a term used in adoption to mean interracial. You're using it to, instead of meaning a disconnect between brain and anatomy (as in trasngender) to mean a disconnect between the [fictitious] race you are born into and the [fictitious] race you identify with.

Is gender in the brain then?

 

[Treacle Toes]

I was referring to the previous attempts to draw comparisons with transsexuals. Again, what word would you have used to articulate that point (I was saying that such a thing doesn't exist AFAIK, to be clear).

So you want me to make up a word for something that doesn't exist instead of merely describing someone's behaviour?

 

[butchersapron]

But transexuals have been criticised as 'pretending to be women'.

Has she used the word trans in relation to herself? has she, in fact, made any of the arguments about 'feeling black' etc that may serve as a useful comparison with transgender?

Why is so much stuff being invented about this ?

 

[MochaSoul]

Have scientists assigned race to the brain and I missed it Thora ?

 

[Belushi]

How about 'pretending to be Black'? After all that is all we know she has been doing. Making up terminology like 'transracial' is to begin to build a 'theory/framework' based on lazy/loaded assumptions.

This really, she pretended to be a member of a community (the African-American) which she wasn't born and brought up in. This wouldn't be such big news but she then got herself into a leadership position in that community and built a career while claiming a background she doesn't possess. At the very least this is dishonest.

 

[butchersapron]

ffs look at her face the moment that she knew was caught. This is about lying.

 

[Thora]

Have scientists assigned race to the brain and I missed it Thora ?

I asked about gender. You said transgender is a disconnect between brain and anatomy - so is it the brain that is gendered?

 

[MochaSoul]

People are not born into races. It's the society around us that constructed the very idea of race.

 

[butchersapron]

Racecraft is a real material social phenomena - something that is abstract become real. That it exists doesn't mean carpetbaggers don't.

This really is very easy isn't it?

 

[MochaSoul]

I asked about gender. You said transgender is a disconnect between brain and anatomy - so is it the brain that is gendered?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html

 

[Patteran]

Racecraft is a real material social phenomena - something that is abstract become real. That it exists doesn't mean carpetbaggers don't.

This really is very easy isn't it?

Odd word - I looked it up, found a piece on racecraft here in the London Review of Books.

 

[butchersapron]

Did comrade John Brown bother with this sort of nonsense?

 

[Duncan2]

Transracial is a term used in adoption to mean interracial. You're using it to, instead of meaning a disconnect between brain and anatomy (as in trasngender) to mean a disconnect between the [fictitious] race you are born into and the [fictitious] race you identify with.

okay but @Rutita was talking about race as being in part a function of lived experience,I agree with that ,that's why I think its not an easy thing to fake and why I wouldn't think it was something fictitious.

 

[Duncan2]

Fuck off

so she is a charlatan as well?

 

[butchersapron]

Odd word - I looked it up, found a piece on racecraft here in the London Review of Books.

The book is brilliant and there's a really interesting vid here

 

[butchersapron]

Odd word - I looked it up, found a piece on racecraft here in the London Review of Books.

It's great word, the ongoing work of making race - mirrors E.P Thompson's making of the English working class, we were present at our own birth one way or another.

 

[MochaSoul]

okay but @Rutita was talking about race as being in part a function of lived experience,I agree with that ,that's why I think its not an easy thing to fake and why I wouldn't think it was something fictitious.

What Rutita1 has been tirelessly alluding to is that sex stereotypes impact hugely on people's perception of gender which while being a problem for people whose brains match their anatomy poses an even bigger problem to people who have that disconnect who not only go through much confusion in defining themselves but also suffer palpable consequences in wider society when they finally do.

 

[Thora]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html

Is that sex differences, or gender differences?

 

[MochaSoul]

Is that sex differences, or gender differences?

Did you not read the article?

 

[Thimble Queen]

What I'm uncomfortable with is her moving into a position of influence: speaking on behalf of black people because of her own experiences of being black. Which is largely manufactured.

Yep. And in the process preventing actual black women from having their voices heard.