White civil rights leader has pretended to be black for years

[Yuwipi Woman]

Or perhaps she's just a narcissist and con artist who, funnily enough, can't manage her relationships in a normal way?

Strange that some people can't bear to bring themselves to do anything except worry and wibble that she had a hard life due to her family and that's what forced her and excuses her being so fucking odd and fraudulently taking on scholarships and jobs?

Perhaps. That was the first option I listed.

 

[Idris2002]

A Jew?

It all seems a bit scattergun.

Ringo Starr used to get a lot of anti-semitic hate mail when the Beatles were big, even though he's not actually Jewish.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Erm.... Surely you mean ethnic identity...you know, based on your ethnicity, culture and experiences? So no...there isn't the inconsistency you are suggesting IMO. Listening to Black music, associating with Black people and issues, plus Blacking up does not make you Black.

Please read the link I put up above regarding the term and meaning of 'transracial'.

May I ask what post that was? Over the weekend I missed about 20 pages.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Are black and white people different enough to notice?
A black mate of mine and gets ribbed for his taste in music not fitting expectations (he's a massive Kate Bush fan), but he seems unruffled by what could be considered an expression of his internal whiteness?

Surely the issue is that others think liking Kate Bush somehow makes someone 'White'. It obviously doesn't. Liking music made by White people doesn't change our ethnicity.

 

[Treacle Toes]

May I ask what post that was? Over the weekend I missed about 20 pages.

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

 

[Lurdan]

It's not an assumption when you're talking about large numbers of people and the various societal influences that lead them to do it. Take any one individual and you need to look at the individual's reasons, but take a class of people and notice a pattern - then you're moving beyond assumptions and towards identifying underlying causes of a social phenomenon.

Maybe. Or maybe one is finding justifications to confirm whatever assumptions one approached the issue with.

My feeling is that in an area, such as this, where meanings and assumptions have material consequences, and where discussion can scarcely take place from a 'neutral' or purely 'objective' standpoint (since we are all, like it or not, implicated in the structures and relations we're discussing) it's unwise to presume. (On the other hand discussion does have to start somewhere of course).

 

[Wilf]

Or perhaps she's just a narcissist and con artist who, funnily enough, can't manage her relationships in a normal way?

Strange that some people can't bear to bring themselves to do anything except worry and wibble that she had a hard life due to her family and that's what forced her and excuses her being so fucking odd and fraudulently taking on scholarships and jobs?

Yeah, I think there's every chance this plays out as kid in a fucked up multiracial family (religious parents, have I read?) with some kind of psychological need to associate with blackness. She could do that, she could join whatever organisations she wanted, get whatever friends she wanted - become an antiracist. It just isn't about that, it's the carefully constructed deception - 'don't break my cover' - the lies, right up to seemingly fabricating hate crimes. Her psychological drama has real consequences (postal workers being interviewed by police) and is going on in America when black people are getting shot. Fucking hell, posting a picture of some bloke and pretending he's your dad, to add to the architecture of your deception, that's twisted!

 

[8ball]

Surely the issue is that others think liking Kate Bush somehow makes someone 'White'. It obviously doesn't.

Yes, that is very silly, but he has experience of friends of all races expecting him to like hip hop.

That was the 'jokey' point anyway - the more relevant point is that we can be a mosaic of races, whereas gender is viewed as polar, and you are expected to rigidly conform to the one that matches your body.

Although if it wasn't for cultural preferences and outlooks I have no idea what it could even mean for someone to be a particular race 'on the inside'.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Yes, that is very silly, but he has experience of friends of all races expecting him to like hip hop.

That was the 'jokey' point anyway - the more relevant point is that we can be a mosaic of races, .

I see it more as a mosaic cultural influences.

 

[8ball]

I see it more as a mosaic cultural influences.

Yeah, but when I say a mosaic of races I just mean that we can be a bit Welsh, a bit Irish, a bit Dutch and a bit West Indian - as in my case.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Yeah, but when I say a mosaic of races I just mean that we can be a bit Welsh, a bit Irish, a bit Dutch and a bit West Indian - as in my case.

Those are ethnicities with regional and historical cultural influences, not races...they are not different species.

 

[Idris2002]

When this guy was made an honorary chief of the Ojibwa people, he was described in the Irish papers as "of Spanish-American Irish race, Devalera spat in England's face":

Spoiler

 

[Treacle Toes]

When this guy was made an honorary chief of the Ojibwa people, he was described in the Irish papers as "of Spanish-American Irish race, Devalera spat in England's face":

Spoiler

Who did the describing? When was this describing done? What are the implications of that describing?

 

[8ball]

Those are ethnicities with regional and historical cultural influences, not races...they are not different species.

Is this some attempt at making a statement about the nature of race, because it seems like a really weird place to be trying to make such a point.

 

[Idris2002]

Who did the describing? When was this describing done? What are the implications of that describing?

Note to self: non-Irish people generally do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of Irish history.

This happened when Dev was making a fund-raising tour of the USA in his capacity as President of the Executive Council, i.e. the separatist government of Ireland.

Irish World and American Industrial Liberator 25 October 1919

DE VALERA MADE CHIPPEWA CHIEF

3,000 SEE RITE

President of Irish Republic Named ‘Nay Nay Ang Abe’ After Old Indian Leader

Chappewa Indian reservation, Spooner, Wis., Oct. 18 – Eamonn De Valera, president of the Republic of Ireland, is a Chippewa Indian chieftan.

He was adopted today by the old Indian tribe on their reservation in Northern Wisconsin and was named ‘Dressing Feather’ or Nay Nay Ong Abe, after the famous Indian chief of that tribe who secured for the Chippewa their rights to the Wisconsin land under the treaty of 1854.

The ceremony took place in an open field in the reservation in the presence of more than 3,000 Indians and white people and was interpolated by a weird series of Indian dances and speech-making.

Dance to Tom Toms

The recipient of the honors sat in the centre of a semi-circle of clergymen and Indian chieftans. In front five Indians beat continuously on a tom tom drum and at intervals a score of tribesmen dressed in the full regalia of paint and feathers of a great occasion danced around the guests.

Chief Billy Boy, resplendent in a head dress of feathers reaching to his ankles, greeted De Valera in Chippewa. Billy Boy was followed by Joe Kingfisher, the headsman of the tribe.

Kingfisher, who presented the Irish leader with a handsome beaded tobacco pouch and moccasins, expressed a poetic sentiment as he tendered the gifts.

‘I wish I were able to give you the prettiest blossom of the fairest flower on earth, for you come to us as a representative of one oppressed nation to another’.

The ceremony continued and Chief Billy Boy then invested President De Valera with his new name and informed him of his adoption by the Chippewa nation.

Mr De Valera rose and walked to the center of the ring. He accepted the head dress of a Chippewa chieftain with gravity as the tom toms sounded louder and louder. Signifying he wished to speak, the music ceased and the Irishman then began talking in Gaelic.

‘I speak to you in Gaelic,’ he said, reverting to English, ‘because I want to show you that though I am white I am not of the English race. We, like you, are a people who have suffered and I feel for you with a sympathy that comes only from one who can understand as we Irishmen can.

‘You say you are not free. Neither are we free and I sympathise with you because we are making a similar fight. As a boy I read and understood of your slavery and longed to become one of you.’

Mr De Valera then told the red men how Ireland had been oppressed by England for 750 years.

‘I call upon you, the truest of all Americans,’ he said, ‘to help us win our struggle for freedom.’

The Indians listened to his impassioned address with owllike gravity, but when Ira Isham, the tribe interpreter, translated Mr De Valera’s words into Chippewa they cheered him wildly.

Mass Precedes Ceremony

The ceremony was preceded by a memorial mass in the reservation church by Father Phillip Gordon, Chippewa priest, for the Indians who died in France.

President De Valera and his party, consisting of J.P. Finnerty of St. Paul, Sean Nunan, secretary to Mr De Valera, and Fathers Phillip Gordon, P.J. O’Mahony, John Harrington,

Peter Rice and Floren Gerhardt, left the reservation for the Twin Cities tonight, where he will speak Sunday and Monday on the Irish bond issue soon to be floated in this country. He journeyed to the Indian reservation from Milwaukee Friday night. At every station on the way through Wisconsin delegations were waiting for him at the depot.

At Spooner, Wis., his party left the train and was met by a dozen automobiles, which carried them over forty miles of wild country to the Chippewa reservation on the edge of Lake Court Oreilles.

 

[Idris2002]

Being serious for a second, I'm not sure what point, if any, the Dev story establishes, and if it has any relevance to this case at all (I was just pissing about, basically).

 

[Treacle Toes]

Is this some attempt at making a statement about the nature of race, because it seems like a really weird place to be trying to make such a point.

It's not an attempt, it's clear and it's not out of place. It has been made repeatedly on this thread.

I am not a different race to my parents for example...however I am a different ethnicity/ethnic mix to both of them, even if I am of them.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Being serious for a second, I'm not sure what point, if any, the Dev story establishes, and if it has any relevance to this case at all (I was just pissing about, basically).

So you are pissing about on a serious thread. That's nice. I asked the questions I did because I wanted to see if you understood the implications of using such loaded historical descriptions as 'right and proper' or the only way to see and give meaning.

 

[Idris2002]

So you are pissing about on a serious thread. That's nice. I asked the questions I did because I wanted to see if you understood the implications of using such loaded historical descriptions as 'right and proper' or the only way to see and give meaning.

Well, two of my younger colleagues happened upon a "books for a dollar" stall once and found that one of the books was Sean O'Faolain's The Irish. They exchanged a dollar for it, in order to give it to me. . . and only then did they discover - to their horror and consternation - that it referred to 'the Irish race' on the opening page. I explained that in Ireland you still hear (and heard even more in O'Faolain's time) the use of 'race' as a synonym for ethnicity or nationality, as was generally the case in the anglophone world before the rise of scientific racism in the mid-nineteenth century.

 

[Belushi]

A Jew?

It all seems a bit scattergun.

First rule of conspiracy club, it's always the Jew in the end.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Well, two of my younger colleagues happened upon a "books for a dollar" stall once and found that one of the books was Sean O'Faolain's The Irish. They exchanged a dollar for it, in order to give it to me. . . and only then did they discover - to their horror and consternation - that it referred to 'the Irish race' on the opening page. I explained that in Ireland you still hear (and heard even more in O'Faolain's time) the use of 'race' as a synonym for ethnicity or nationality, as was generally the case in the anglophone world before the rise of scientific racism in the mid-nineteenth century.

That others continue to perpetuate that loaded 'perspective' is the detail here. For me it isn't as simple as using the word as a synonym. It has associations beyond that.

 

[Pickman's model]

First rule of conspiracy club, it's always the Jew in the end.

but a white jew or a black jew? or in the case of jews is hue irrelevant?

 

[8ball]

I explained that in Ireland you still hear (and heard even more in O'Faolain's time) the use of 'race' as a synonym for ethnicity or nationality...

This is still generally the case, isn't it? We seem to have been using the term in broadly that way for getting on 30 pages, with the occasional (also common) usage that references genetic heritage.

I'm a bit flummoxed as to how it's suddenly become confusing now.

 

[Pickman's model]

This is still generally the case, isn't it? We seem to have been using the term in broadly that way for getting on 30 pages, with the occasional (also common) usage that references genetic heritage.

I'm a bit flummoxed as to how it's suddenly become confusing now.

this is urban. what was initially clear becomes, after 10, 20, 30 pages a matter of great debate and confusion.

 

[Treacle Toes]

Why Comparing Rachel Dolezal To Caitlyn Jenner Is Detrimental To Both Trans And Racial Progress

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/rachel-dolezal-caitlyn-jenner_n_7569160.html?1434138166

The idea that Dolezal's choice to publicly identify as a black woman --- one who occupied positions of power in spaces specifically designated for members of a marginalized group --- is the same as being a trans woman, simply doesn't add up.

What Dolezal did is culturally appropriative, and suggesting otherwise disrupts actual discussions about transgender identity and issues. (It's also worth noting that a white woman's decade-long deception has effectively hijacked the conversation about race, during a week where the nation was focusing on police brutality in McKinney, Texas.)

As Darnell L. Moore of Mic eloquently put it, "In attempting to pass as black, Dolezal falsely represented her identity. Trans people don't lie about their gender identities — they express their gender according to categories that reflect who they are."

Racial divisions may ultimately be a construct, Moore notes, but "skin color is hereditary." And it's skin color that primarily determines racial privilege, and the way others in the world interact with your racial identity.

Transracial identity is a concept that allows white people to indulge in blackness as a commodity, without having to actually engage with every facet of what being black entails -- discrimination, marginalization, oppression, and so on. It plays into racial stereotypes, and perpetuates the false idea that it is possible to "feel" a race. As a white woman, Dolezal retains her privilege; she can take out the box braids and strip off the self-tanner and navigate the world without the stigma tied to actually being black. Her connection to racial oppression is something she has complete control over, a costume she can put on -- and take off -- as she pleases.

 

[Wilf]

this is urban. what was initially clear becomes, after 10, 20, 30 pages a matter of great debate and confusion.

It's like getting a nice pint and finding it's cloudy half way through.

 

[ViolentPanda]

A Jew?

It all seems a bit scattergun.

TBF her perm does look a bit Jewfro, so thick neo-fascist anti-Semite wankshafts might jump to that conclusion.

 

[Idris2002]

"These people aren't just racists, they're goddamn geneaologists. The average Chicagoan isn't only capable of determining your ethnicity, they have your entire fucking family tree DOWN. I know that it's really rooted in neighborhoods, back when everybody came to Chicago and settled with folks who were similar to them, but boy has it spread.

Once, on the southside, I heard someone scream at a dude for being a "quarter-kike chalupa nigger". Now, there's a lot going on there; that person just ripped on another human being for having hispanic parentage, a Jewish grandparent, and somehow they were also insinuating that the person was black. Then I got a look at the individual he was yelling at, and by God, I think he may have been right.

Chicagoans will never mistake a Puerto Rican for a Mexican person, or a Korean for a Vietnamese person. They have all of the differences down, and they have a reason why they believe all of them are worthless. That's some in-depth hate. Also, if you're Polish, Italian, Irish, or Jewish, those Bear-loving assholes can tell what part of the old country or world your people came from. I was once informed at a street fair that I needed to take my limestone-chalk County Clare ass home before it got kicked, which my granddad confirmed.

I learned something that day. I've also been informed that California Armenians are different from Chicago Armenians in that Chicago Armenians can take a knife to the gut better... and neither of them can hold a candle to those goddamn Lithuanians, who are supposedly un-killable. All of that hate has to be exhausting, and even in some of the more reasonable people from the Windy City, it can stick. I've got a well-to-do, Bible-loving family member who's still never seen The Godfather, because fuck Sicilians, that's why."

http://gawker.com/5948686/the-most-racist-city-in-america-chicago

 

[8ball]

TBF her perm does look a bit Jewfro, so thick neo-fascist anti-Semite wankshafts might jump to that conclusion.

That's my new word learned for the day...

edit: returning the favour, when my hair is grown out, a mate of mine from back home in Wales refers to my hair as a Boyo-fro

 

[Celyn]

... but the skin lightening products (some of which were using clever techniques to try to sell them to men, since they are apparently generally considered more a women's product) caught me off guard, what with the way they were lumped in with the breakfast cereals and Amul ghee etc.
It was very up-front, which I didn't expect.

I find it hard to believe that people use skin-lightening products. Not in the sense that I disbelieve you, obviously, just more of a WTF?, and a horror that this still happens.