White civil rights leader has pretended to be black for years

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Interesting Rutita1. I'll need to have a better look when I get back from work.

 

[MochaSoul]

Therefore, I actually find it quite refreshing that a white woman was prepared to speak out and fight for equal rights for black people, whilst perhaps experiencing and recounting the kind of racism that black people often encounter day to day re: institutional and everyday racism.

You can actually do that without lying about your heritage. There have been TV programmes where people have done this. It is useful to get a glimpse of what other people go through for white people. All good there.
But then, why lie about it?
How am I to gauge the experience of someone who merely relates to against my own experience of miserably asking "Mum! Why did I have to be black?" when I was 6 or 7 on finding out the whole class were going to a b'day party and I weren't invited? How am I, as an adult, going to look at that sort of experience someone subjects themselves to as opposed to something inflicted on me and not ponder (if only to myself) "Well done!... and tomorrow if you want you can go back to "woman", instead of "black woman"?"
Do you really think that the two are the same?

Rutita1 mentioned Malcolm X earlier on the thread regarding his negative response to a white student's question about what could she do about racism in America.
His response was steeped on a number of factors but the one that's relevant to this case is to do with something that has happened time and time again in the long fight against racism. Not being at the worst end of what racism means white people can really only fight racism as a cause so they leave the actual human beings supposed to benefit from the cause behind. It's how white people, thinking they'll get on my good books that way, make conversation about how articulate my cardiologist is (even though they'd not think of saying it of a white cardiologist); it's how [insert feminine magazine] decides that to be truly representative it must put figures of note like actresses or models on it's front page, but then lightens their skins; it's how Harriet Beecher Stowe felt allowed to take the biography of Josiah Henson and turn it into Uncle Tom's Cabin in which he was stripped of the strength of character he possessed and turned into a passive Christ like figure. And Ms Dolezal (with all of her learning, with all of the insight that she should have got from her studies) tried to do exactly this complete with mandatory afro and that's why I'm fucking angry.

 

[MochaSoul]

[Edit: Double posted]
I think I read somewhere, that this woman's motivations may have stemmed from some sort of self hating complex = rejecting her white heritage. Would probably explain a lot in relation to why she chose to adopt a 'black' identity.

Omfg ...I can't believe this . Nothing excuses this . Not discrimination , not " feeling someone's pain" . This is nonsense . I can't believe the convoluted hoops people are jumping through on this mendacious idiots behalf .

Few black women get this much sympathy!

 

[Mr Moose]

I've been pretending to be a middle class ginger, I'm really a docker from Tilbury. Bald as a coot, voted UKIP and hate dance music.

Bastard! There's always someone trying to appropriate my slaphead authenticity.

 

[MochaSoul]

That it was just some sort of harmless caricature. It was essentially a racist characture based on a racist American tradition, that historically involved white people aping African Americans.

You mean it's less racist to assume black minority ethnic to mean darker skin, afros, hip hop and talking about race?
The most tragic of the void in Ms Dolezal's performance is in that it's never occurred to her that the greatest struggle before any black person within a white supremacist world is, from the moment one starts being socialised, to keep the person they are intact as they get bombarded with the good the bad and the ugly that stem from a society that deals in stereotypes - regardless of how well she's fooled [perhaps] herself and those around her.

 

[Belushi]

Alicia Walters on the guardian site http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...black-woman-spokane-rachel-dolezal-black-girl

 

[Treacle Toes]

Therefore, I actually find it quite refreshing that a white woman was prepared to speak out and fight for equal rights for black people, whilst perhaps experiencing and recounting the kind of racism that black people often encounter day to day re: institutional and everyday racism.

[Edit: Double posted]
I think I read somewhere, that this woman's motivations may have stemmed from some sort of self hating complex = rejecting her white heritage. Would probably explain a lot in relation to why she chose to adopt a 'black' identity.

I think you should read this...

http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2015/06/transracial-lives-matter-rachel-dolezal.html

 

[butchersapron]

She's giving her explanation to the NAACP today. I think she's going to try and flip it - rather than her being the subject of this she'll try and appear as the object. As the acted upon not the actor. That rather than her exploiting historical forms of historical black defence (even if at bureaucratic and elite level) she was in fact exploited by them and that the US's torturous race relations were being written through her and her actions. I reckon that might stand a good chance with the NAACP liberals who dominate the org - and get them into bat for her. Not suggesting she'll go full John Brown as the sword of history ('Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!') but she's going to appeal to history it i think.

 

[butchersapron]

Anyone know what the Race Traitor/New Abolitionist crowd has been saying to all this?

 

[Wilf]

She's giving her explanation to the NAACP today. I think she's going to try and flip it - rather than her being the subject of this she'll try and appear as the object. As the acted upon not the actor. That rather than her exploiting historical forms of historical black defence (even if at bureaucratic and elite level) she was in fact exploited by them and that the US's torturous race relations were being written through her and her actions. I reckon that might stand a good chance with the NAACP liberals who dominate the org - and get them into bat for her. Not suggesting she'll go full John Brown as the sword of history ('Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!') but she's going to appeal to history it i think.

Good call. The background family issues are becoming a bit clearer, as well as the long term split from here parents, she's supporting someone who has accused her brother of abuse:
http://horizonpost.com/rachel-dolezals-older-brother-accused-of-child-molestation/
I suspect her line today will be largely political, it has to be because that's what she is nominally doing, talking about here role with the naacp and whether it has been compromised. However, it looks like it will ultimately draw on accusations of abuse and racism within her original multi-ethnic family (which might of course be true).

But yes, for the naacp there'll be a search for a narrative around this, that keeps their dignity, personal and political in tact. If she gets investigated for sending hatemail to herself, all bets are off. She's then left having to tell it as a survivor's story and writing a book.

 

[MochaSoul]

However, I think this is the kind of perspective we need to read/take into account before letting anyone make up, coopt/appropriate the terminology or meaning of transracial...



http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2015/06/transracial-lives-matter-rachel-dolezal.html

That is the best article about it that I have read so far.
The Guardian one that Belushi posted earlier is very good too but this tops.

Mediaite has an interview with Sky where she says she doesn't give a shit about what white people think and it was a matter to be discussed with the black community. The journalist (not being a black woman) failed to ask her what she thought would be the reaction of black women to her deception. Media fail (again - not that much is to be expected from Sky) as far as black women are concerned.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Feel sorry for her son in all this. Poor sod.

 

[Pickman's model]

Feel sorry for her son in all this. Poor sod.

i feel sorry for all the people who she's lied to, who have been placed in an invidious position.

 

[Idris2002]

I read a comment somewhere else that was like, "you just know she was someone's token black friend, and that person is now shitting themselves".

 

[MochaSoul]

I read a comment somewhere else that was like, "you just know she was someone's token black friend, and that person is now shitting themselves".

LOL I'll remember that next time I hear that old fig leaf.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

i feel sorry for all the people who she's lied to, who have been placed in an invidious position.

If they acted in good faith, it shouldn't be so invidious. They're victims of a con, and no doubt feel a bit silly as victims of cons do, but she was the conner, not them.

 

[Idris2002]

LOL I'll remember that next time I hear that old fig leaf.

I can hardly Adam and Eve it.

 

[Wilf]

Meeting postponed to allow 'further discussions with the regional and national leadership'
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/rachel-dolezal-naacp-postpones-meeting

 

[butchersapron]

Meeting postponed to allow 'further discussions with the regional and national leadership'
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/rachel-dolezal-naacp-postpones-meeting

That sounds like the centre may have decided to cut her off and the local is in dispute.

 

[MochaSoul]

If they acted in good faith, it shouldn't be so invidious. They're victims of a con, and no doubt feel a bit silly as victims of cons do, but she was the conner, not them.

This is where I appreciate the link Rutita1 gaves us earlier:

Ultimately this is where I land with Ms. Dolezal. I don’t care what she has done for “the community”. I’m enraged at those of you (and I’m looking directly at you NAACP for not firing this woman) who are asking me to be “grateful” to a White woman who has “done lots of work for the black community”. This language is a line transracial adoptees have learned to obliterate and resist against years ago. We are constantly told we should be grateful we didn’t grow up in a orphanage or become a prostitute, because our own families weren’t good enough. Our Black or Brown or Third World mothers weren’t good enough. This discourse of gratefulness is part of white supremacist thinking, it is a kind of linguistic violence that asks us to silence our own experiences, to erase ourselves. It asks me to let a White person tell me how I should act, what I should feel, how I should behave and ultimately, what Blackness is. Another white woman telling me what diasporic Blackness is, what Black womanhood is? I think not.

edit to add: The NAACP is still going to have to face black people and black women in particular.

 

[Wilf]

That sounds like the centre may have decided to cut her off and the local is in dispute.

That would be my guess, certainly the first bit. Haven't looked at their actual constitution, but a quick search suggested local chapters have a degree of autonomy. Messy.

 

[Idris2002]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This is where I appreciate the link Rutita1 gaves us earlier:



edit to add: The NAACP is still going to have to face black people and black women in particular.

Yeah, they seem a bit muddled in not firing her. Presumably she lied directly to them at some point or other - should be ample grounds for dismissal.

 

[MochaSoul]

They are muddled because they are in a quandary at the moment. Fire her and face the white supremacist media or not fire her and face the black community's music.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

They are muddled because they are in a quandary at the moment. Fire her and face the white supremacist media or not fire her and face the black community's music.

Isn't the way out of that quandary to be sure to fire her because she lied. Not because of her race, but because of her mendacity.

 

[MochaSoul]

One would have thought so but they haven't done it yet... a whole weekend and they haven't found her application forms? They may well have taken her word for it and not by anything in writing.

 

[Wilf]

Yeah, they seem a bit muddled in not firing her. Presumably she lied directly to them at some point or other - should be ample grounds for dismissal.

I saw a clip of her talking about black hair and there was a practised vagueness, never quite using either 'they' or 'we'. But yes, there are enough direct and documented lies for her to be sacked. The other side is she will have had repeated conversations with members of the local committee. How she represented herself and her backstory to them will important. No way she can carry on in the post and the local v national stand off gives her a chance to resign - 'to spare the organisation, who she still supports, people she loves and regards as family' type thing.

I think what she's done is horrible and politically damaging - massively offensive. However it does look like it emerged out of deeply fucked up family situation. As said, really horrible for her son.

Edit: that sounded a bit apologist I suppose. Ultimately she has agency in this and she's a con artist.

 

[Pickman's model]

They are muddled because they are in a quandary at the moment. Fire her and face the white supremacist media or not fire her and face the black community's music.

the only solution: promote her out of harm's way

 

[butchersapron]

Not often i'll quote Richard Seymour approvingly, but this little snippet from him is a worth a think about (italics mine):

She is alleged to have excluded a Hispanic student from class activities on the grounds that he appeared 'too white'. And reportedly, she even invented racist attacks on her person in order to sustain the decoy. Even allowing for some embellished and sensationalist reporting, and allowing that many complexities are being omitted, it seems fair enough to say that her whole strategy for being 'black' depended upon investing in, and to a degree reinforcing and policing, the colour line.

 

[Pickman's model]

One would have thought so but they haven't done it yet... a whole weekend and they haven't found her application forms? They may well have taken her word for it and not by anything in writing.

but how long would they retain application forms? five years? seven?