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Am I the only one that thinks this girl is batshit? (I'm gonna guess probably not).
I would really like to know what the rest of the forums thinks about this situation, including the exploitation of race relations by Ms Dozier as well as the demonstrably false allegations she's levied against several individuals.
How in the **** did she get elected as an NAACP chapter leader?
Does this mean anyone is allowed to identify as black (much like we're doing with the sexes in our school systems across the country?)
Does this incident highlight a larger problem with deciding between legitimate racial complaints and those who exploit the plight for their own purposes?
Do we have a solid enough lock on her motives to justify the pointedness of the last question?
Was she being exploitative or delusional? Maybe both? Does not the scope of her delusion, whatever that may be, inherently alter the nature of whatever exploitation occurred?
She is batshit, but it might be a derogatory declaration. She might be using the whole black thing as method to practice escapism. Considering it disassociates her from her parents, I think a good guess is she's trying to escape something involving them. Being white reflects an aspect of her past that she does not want to identify with. I think it's interesting to note that she tried to use her 'blackness' to out herself into a position to help other people (NAACP chapter leader).
Since, obviously, the claim is so difficult to pull off, it's naturally resulted in some quite off-the-wall behavior.
The other possibility is we're seeing some rather typical culture appropriation being done in an atypical manner. Remember the Chappelle skit where the blind black guy calls the white kids blasting rap "niggers" and they reply, "Awesome!" Same thing, taken to an extreme (likely indicating psychological problems). In which case, the NAACP position was not born out of empathy, but being used as a method to solidify ones identity, both to ones self and from external query.
Again, I don't wonder if she identifies being black with good memories. She adopted her adopted brother, after all. Which sounds absurd, but I imagine that can only happen if her parents allowed it, which brings up even more questions about the parents.
Her lack of integrity doesn't surprise me. She is apparently suffering from Liberal Guilt Syndrome. Her parents say she has been combative to white folks. I find it typical and funny that the NAACP was clueless. I guess they gave her a pass because of her political leanings. I'm pretty much done with the NAACP racists anyway.
She is batshit, but it might be a derogatory declaration. She might be using the whole black thing as method to practice escapism. Considering it disassociates her from her parents, I think a good guess is she's trying to escape something involving them. Being white reflects an aspect of her past that she does not want to identify with. I think it's interesting to note that she tried to use her 'blackness' to out herself into a position to help other people (NAACP chapter leader).
Since, obviously, the claim is so difficult to pull off, it's naturally resulted in some quite off-the-wall behavior.
The other possibility is we're seeing some rather typical culture appropriation being done in an atypical manner. Remember the Chappelle skit where the blind black guy calls the white kids blasting rap "niggers" and they reply, "Awesome!" Same thing, taken to an extreme (likely indicating psychological problems). In which case, the NAACP position was not born out of empathy, but being used as a method to solidify ones identity, both to ones self and from external query.
Again, I don't wonder if she identifies being black with good memories. She adopted her adopted brother, after all. Which sounds absurd, but I imagine that can only happen if her parents allowed it, which brings up even more questions about the parents.
Basically $5 says this woman had a bad childhood.
What makes me skeptical of the cultural appropriation hypothesis is it sounds way too much like there's rational thought involved.
It's the answer a sane person would give to the question "if you were to do this, what would be your reason?"
I don't think level-headed rationalizations are where we should be looking for answers about her motivations.
Am I the only one that thinks this girl is batshit? (I'm gonna guess probably not).
Absolutely not.
Originally Posted by Snow-i
I would really like to know what the rest of the forums thinks about this situation, including the exploitation of race relations by Ms Dozier as well as the demonstrably false allegations she's levied against several individuals.
Aside from the general curiosity of someone "passing as black" (you don't see that everyday!) ... I'm quite frankly at a loss to explain her actions. There are all kinds of white people who have a cultural affinity with African-Americans and/or other minority groups in America and they don't see the need to pretend to be other than who they are. Which leads me back to your first point above.
Originally Posted by Snow-i
How in the **** did she get elected as an NAACP chapter leader?
That's not surprising at all. The NAACP is open to all regardless of race, creed, or color. Let's not forget the organization itself was founded by 60 people ... only 7 of whom were African-American. The vast majority were white liberals or those of abolitionist lineage.
Originally Posted by Snow-i
Does this mean anyone is allowed to identify as black (much like we're doing with the sexes in our school systems across the country?
Does this incident highlight a larger problem with deciding between legitimate racial complaints and those who exploit the plight for their own purposes?
Well see that's where things get .... complicated. The fact of the matter is that race as a biological construct does not exist. Whereas race as a social construct in Western society is a fundamental reality. Ms. Dolezal clearly has a cultural affinity with black people which as I've said is fine. The main issue I have with her though is her deception. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with "blackness". Also, while true "blackness" is varied and far from monolithic ... it is nonetheless rooted in a collectively shared culture and experience. Especially in European dominated societies. And at the end of the day the fact that Ms. Dolezal was "identifying" as black or white whenever it suited her (e.g. when she sued historically black Howard University for racial discrimination when she was "identifying" as a white woman) is evidence in and of itself that she just doesn't get it. That's a luxury that actual black people have never had. We are black all day, everyday. Dealing with the good, bad, and ugly that comes with the package. And no amount of spray on tans and black hairstyles is ever going to make her a full fledged team member.
Since the topic is white people portraying themselves as black, I think this excerpt is quite instructive as it involves a white man who did it for "investigative" purposes ...
John Howard Griffin, left in New Orleans in 1959, asked what "adjustments" a white man would have to make if he were black.
John Howard Griffin had embarked on a journey unlike any other. Many black authors had written about the hardship of living in the Jim Crow South. A few white writers had argued for integration. But Griffin, a novelist of extraordinary empathy rooted in his Catholic faith, had devised a daring experiment. To comprehend the lives of black people, he had darkened his skin to become black. As the civil rights movement tested various forms of civil disobedience, Griffin began a human odyssey through the South, from New Orleans to Atlanta.
Fifty years ago this month, Griffin published a slim volume about his travels as a “black man.” He expected it to be “an obscure work of interest primarily to sociologists,” but Black Like Me, which told white Americans what they had long refused to believe, sold ten million copies and became a modern classic.
“Black Like Me disabused the idea that minorities were acting out of paranoia,” says Gerald Early, a black scholar at Washington University and editor of Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity, and the Ambivalence of Assimilation. “There was this idea that black people said certain things about racism, and one rather expected them to say these things. Griffin revealed that what they were saying was true. It took someone from outside coming in to do that. And what he went through gave the book a remarkable sincerity.”
“Black Like Me remains important for several reasons,” says Robert Bonazzi, author of Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me. “It’s a useful historical document about the segregated era, which is still shocking to younger readers. It’s also a truthful journal in which Griffin admits to his own racism, with which white readers can identify and perhaps begin to face their own denial of prejudice. Finally, it’s a well-written literary text that predates the ‘nonfiction novel’ of Mailer, Capote, Tom Wolfe and others.”
Griffin, however, has become the stuff of urban legend, rumored to have died of skin cancer caused by the treatments he used to darken his skin temporarily. Nearly forgotten is the remarkable man who crossed cultures, tested his faith and triumphed over physical setbacks that included blindness and paralysis. “Griffin was one of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered,” the writer Studs Terkel once said. “He was just one of those guys that comes along once or twice in a century and lifts the hearts of the rest of us.”
Across the South in the summer of 1959, drinking fountains, restaurants and lunch counters still carried signs reading, “Whites Only.” Most Americans saw civil rights as a “Southern problem,” but Griffin’s theological studies had convinced him that racism was a human problem. “If a white man became a Negro in the Deep South,” he wrote on the first page of Black Like Me, “what adjustments would he have to make?” Haunted by the idea, Griffin decided to cross the divide. “The only way I could see to bridge the gap between us,” he would write, “was to become a Negro.”
An acquaintance told Griffin the idea was crazy. (“You’ll get yourself killed fooling around down there.”) But his wife, Elizabeth, backed his plan. Soon Griffin was consulting a dermatologist, spending hours under sunlamps and taking a drug that was used to treat vitiligo, a disease that whitened patches of skin. As he grew darker day by day, Griffin used a stain to cover telltale spots, then shaved his head. Finally, his dermatologist shook his hand and said, “Now you go into oblivion.”
Oblivion proved worse than Griffin had imagined. Alone in New Orleans, he turned to a mirror. “In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a stranger—a fierce, bald, very dark Negro—glared at me from the glass,” he would write. “He in no way resembled me. The transformation was total and shocking....I felt the beginnings of a great loneliness.”
Stepping outside, Griffin began his “personal nightmare.” Whites avoided or scorned him. Applying for menial jobs, he met the ritual rudeness of Jim Crow. “We don’t want you people,” a foreman told him. “Don’t you understand that?” Threatened by strangers, followed by thugs, he heard again and again the racial slur for which he had been slapped as a boy. That word, he wrote, “leaps out with electric clarity. You always hear it, and always it stings.”
Carrying just $200 in traveler’s checks, Griffin took a bus to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where a recent lynching had spread fear through the alleys and streets. Griffin holed up in a rented room and wrote of his overwhelming sense of alienation: “Hell could be no more lonely or hopeless.” He sought respite at a white friend’s home before resuming his experiment—“zigzagging,” he would call it, between two worlds. Sometimes passing whites offered him rides; he did not feel he could refuse. Astonished, he soon found many of them simply wanted to pepper him with questions about “Negro” sex life or make lurid boasts from “the swamps of their fantasy lives.” Griffin patiently disputed their stereotypes and noted their amazement that this Negro could “talk intelligently!” Yet nothing gnawed at Griffin so much as “the hate stare,” venomous glares that left him “sick at heart before such unmasked hatred.”
He roamed the South from Alabama to Atlanta, often staying with black families who took him in. He glimpsed black rage and self-loathing, as when a fellow bus passenger told him: “I hate us.” Whites repeatedly insisted blacks were “happy.” A few whites treated him with decency, including one who apologized for “the bad manners of my people.” After a month, Griffin could stand no more. “A little thing”—a near-fight when blacks refused to give up their seats to white women on a bus—sent Griffin scurrying into a “colored” restroom, where he scrubbed his fading skin until he could “pass” for white. He then took refuge in a monastery.
Before Griffin could publish reports on his experiment in Sepia magazine, which had helped bankroll his travels, word leaked out. In interviews with Time and CBS, he explained what he’d been up to without trying to insult Southern whites. He was subjected to what he called “a dirty bath” of hatred. Returning to his Texas hometown, he was hanged in effigy; his parents received threats on his life. Any day now, Griffin heard, a mob would come to castrate him. He sent his wife and children to Mexico, and his parents sold their property and went into exile too. Griffin remained behind to pack his studio, wondering, “Is tonight the night the shotgun blasts through the window?” He soon followed his family to Mexico, where he turned his Sepia articles into Black Like Me.
In October 1961, Black Like Me was published, to wide acclaim. The New York Times hailed it as an “essential document of contemporary American life.” Newsweek called it “piercing and memorable.” Its success—translated into 14 languages, made into a movie, included in high-school curriculums—turned Griffin into a white spokesman for black America, a role he found awkward.
“When Griffin was invited to troubled cities, he said exactly the same thing local black people had been saying,” notes Nell Irvin Painter, a black historian and the author of The History of White People. “But the powers that were could not hear the black people. Black speakers in America had little credibility until ‘yesterday.’ Some CNN correspondents who are black now get to comment on America, but that’s a very recent phenomenon.”
As the civil rights movement accelerated, Griffin gave more than a thousand lectures and befriended black spokesmen ranging from Dick Gregory to Martin Luther King Jr. Notorious throughout the South, he was trailed by cops and targeted by Ku Klux Klansmen, who brutally beat him one night on a dark road in 1964, leaving him for dead. By the late 1960s, however, the civil rights movement and rioting in Northern cities highlighted the national scale of racial injustice and overshadowed Griffin’s experiment in the South.Black Like Me, said activist Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), “is an excellent book—for whites.” Griffin agreed; he eventually curtailed his lecturing on the book, finding it “absurd for a white man to presume to speak for black people when they have superlative voices of their own.”
The key takeaway here besides Mr. Griffin being a true American hero .... is that he lasted a MONTH as a black man in the Jim Crow south. He had the good sense to know that he only got a glimpse of what it was like to be black in America during that era. I fear Ms. Dolezal's understanding in that regard is rather lacking.
OAW, I agree with the notion that the only problem with the situation is her deception and allegations against others (founded upon those deceptions).
He parents were the ones that outed her, so obviously there is something going on there that we're not seeing. What I find more odd though, is that her adopted brother (who is black) seemed to side with the parents, at least in the media coverage I've seen so far.
OAW, I agree with the notion that the only problem with the situation is her deception and allegations against others (founded upon those deceptions).
He parents were the ones that outed her, so obviously there is something going on there that we're not seeing. What I find more odd though, is that her adopted brother (who is black) seemed to side with the parents, at least in the media coverage I've seen so far.
I'm not so sure her parents "outed" her. It's my understanding that a reporter had already started questioning her about her background after she claimed a black man was her father. When she was asked point blank if she was African-American she ducked the question, stood there for a moment all wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights, and then hightailed it away from the interview. See for yourself right here ....
Eventually a news outlet tracked down her parents and when asked they simply told the truth. They are clearly estranged for some reason as both sides have acknowledged. But it's not like her parents just decided to throw her under the bus one day on their own volition. It's an odd situation to say the least.
I'm not so sure her parents "outed" her. It's my understanding that a reporter had already started questioning her about her background after she claimed a black man was her father. When she was asked point blank if she was African-American she ducked the question, stood there for a moment all wide-eyed like a deer caught in the headlights, and then hightailed it away from the interview. See for yourself right here ....
Eventually a news outlet tracked down her parents and when asked they simply told the truth. They are clearly estranged for some reason as both sides have acknowledged. But it's not like her parents just decided to throw her under the bus one day on their own volition. It's an odd situation to say the least.
It's also interesting how in that interview above and in the recent interview with Matt Lauer she continues to not directly answer question on if she is "African-American" and instead states that she "identifies as black". It's an example of her trying to be too clever by half IMO. Technically speaking, the terms "African-American" and "Black" are not the same thing. There is overlap to be sure and depending upon the context they are sometimes used interchangeably. I do it myself sometimes. But the reality is that "African-Americans" are but one particular group in America ... whereas "black" people are found all over the world. She doesn't seem to be trying to employ a certain degree of nuance to the discussion by elaborating upon the commonalities and differences ... but rather it seems like she's engaging in continued obfuscation because she knows the general public will interpret her use of "black" as synonymous with "African-American". And thereby she can technically claim she's not lying and hang her hat on never claiming "African-American" biological heritage.
The criticism of the recent "Exodus: Gods & Kings" movie with an all-white cast of leading characters playing Ancient Egyptians while every single black actor being relegated to non-speaking background role as servant, etc. was legitimate. On a historical and quite frankly common sensical basis. I refused to go see it in theaters for that very reason. That being said, the irony of this speaks volumes ....
Originally Posted by Rachel Dolezal
So a lot of people might go to that film. Hopefully nobody goes to that film you know we need to boycott that film from my perspective because it's a miseducation. It's misrepresentation and it's highly offensive to the people that actually umm you know were living during that time and also to people today. It's robbing and shredding ancestry and history. But if people go to that without knowing and again with the typical public education system then they're going to probably think that's how it happened. Because yes Greeks did invade Egypt at some point so it must have been during that time right? And all the darker-skinned people must be villains that's pretty natural because we accept that under the white supremacy tradition. And the lighter-skinned folks rule and are upper-class. And it's just ... it's really disturbing that this is still something perpetrated. And so a movie like that is sheer propaganda.
Now that there is blood in the water the media is digging up all kinds of dirt. Stick a fork in her cause this woman is DONE!
Head of the Spokane NAACP Rachel Dolezal has been the center of a firestorm over the last week after her parents revealed that the activist had been faking her race. Though Dolezal purported to be of African-American descent, she is white and was born to white parents. As a result of the scandal, Dolezal stepped down from her role as president of the Spokane, Washington division of the NAACP. This morning, Dolezal said she “identifies as black” and has lived the black experience.
Dolezal attended Howard University, a historically black school, and received an MFA from there in 2002. She once sued the school for discrimination, saying her artwork was removed from a show in favor of artwork made by black students.
Now a painting of Dolezal’s is coming under fire after a Twitter user noticed its similarities to one of the most famous works of art about the horrors of slavery.
Dolezal's The Shape of Our Kind, an acrylic on panel piece is part of a trilogy of paintings, and it features a ship sailing through rough seas into a red and orange sunset. It bears a striking resemblance to Joseph Mallord William Turner’s The Slave Ship, painted in 1840.
According to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the painting is “one of Turner’s most celebrated works.” It features a slave ship whose captain had thrown slaves overboard to receive insurance money for their deaths. “Turner captures the horror of the event and terrifying grandeur of nature through hot, churning color and light that merge sea and sky,” the museum says.
The criticism of the recent "Exodus: Gods & Kings" movie with an all-white cast of leading characters playing Ancient Egyptians while every single black actor being relegated to non-speaking background role as servant, etc. was legitimate. On a historical and quite frankly common sensical basis. I refused to go see it in theaters for that very reason. That being said, the irony of this speaks volumes ....
R.L. Stoller, the community coordinator at Homeschoolers Anonymous, claims to have sources who knew the Dolezal family. These sources paint a picture of the Dolezals as adherents to a fundamentalist theory of child-rearing that puts an emphasis on adoption—the Dolezals adopted four children—and basically advises beating children into submission, following the rules established by the infamous Christian child-rearing manual To Train Up a Child.
This aligns with some of what we already know about Dolezal's family: Her adopted brother, Izaiah Dolezal, sued for emancipation at age 16;
Joshua Dolezal describes his father's rages and his mother nearly bleeding to death after a miscarriage, relying on faith-healing instead of modern medicine. He claims he and his sister were born at home without the assistance of a physician or midwife, and listed "Jesus Christ" as the witness on their birth certificates.
If your parents are psycho into adoption, and just plain psycho on top of it, I can see imagining you were adopted as being a go-to disassociative fantasy.
There's a difference between living as if you're black and lying to enhance your status. The second is what undermines the first as a legitimate undertaking.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
Maybe she's suffering from transethnic dysmorphia.
It takes a special kind of spite to take a shot at two vulnerable people and an entire segment of the population just to make a vague political statement of protest.
It takes a special kind of spite to take a shot at two vulnerable people and an entire segment of the population just to make a vague political statement of protest.
It takes a special type of sour puss to not find some humor in that.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
I don't find Chongo to be especially mean-spirited or vile. The Progressive Left isn't the only group allowed to poke fun at the more "irregular" aspects of society. AFAIK, he's never consciously gone out of his way to harm anyone.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
I don't know, but it's a topic that was pretty hot even before she came out. She isn't a member of the forum and will never read it, either. So I still see no real damage done. You have to admit this is all some pretty silly/funky shit, if you stop to think about it for a moment.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
As much as I support Jenner, it's weird enough I don't think we should expect acceptance is just going to pop-in out of nowhere.
I'm ok with people being uncomfortable with it (For as progressive as I may be with the homosexuals, my trans knowledge and comfort is lacking), but I'm not ok with people making light of difficult situations just to score political points about the subject. This is just a watered down version of "Can I marry my cat?"
I'm ok with people being uncomfortable with it (For as progressive as I may be with the homosexuals, my trans knowledge and comfort is lacking), but I'm not ok with people making light of difficult situations just to score political points about the subject. This is just a watered down version of "Can I marry my cat?"
I can see the manner in which the Jenner situation came about could provide the illusion the situation is less difficult than it appears.
Jenner went so far as to publicly state this.
Despite whatever knowledge you think you lack, I'm sure you know transitioning is a big, umm... drag.
I'd ask Chongo how much thought he's put into non-superstar athlete/reality TV celebrities transitioning, but I wouldn't blame him if he'd rather avoid the seemingly inevitable dogpile.
No, I want to know why people who applaud what Jenner is doing are bagging on Dolezal and the transabled.
There are lots of reasons Jenner is being applauded, but it's probably more useful to look at why he's not being vilified.
By all rights, Jenner believes he's a woman. Whatever negative thing one might want to say about the situation, that Jenner is faking this can't be in the top thousand.
On the other hand, by all rights, Dolezal was faking it. She's pretending to believe she's black, and has been fully willing to drop the ruse when it suits her. If she, like Jenner has now, had passed a point of no return, then the conversation would be different... though it's unusual enough people would still probably bag on it to some extent.
Who's bagging on the transabled? They should stop.
No, I want to know why people who applaud what Jenner is doing are bagging on Dolezal and the transabled.
Because Jenner didn't lie to and deceive everyone they knew for years, while working at a prominent NPO under the guise of someone she wasn't.
"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character." - M.L.King Jr
Because Jenner didn't lie to and deceive everyone they knew for years, while working at a prominent NPO under the guise of someone she wasn't.
You could replace Dolezal in your statement with some random trans person who is trying to pass, and their behavior would be acceptable. Same with a closeted homosexual. They lied and deceived everyone they knew for years under the guise of someone they weren't.
Isn't it Dolezal's seeming intent which is calling her morals into question?
As I said above, if she wasn't so slimy about it I think the discussion would be different.
To be clear, the terms "lying" and "deceit" can imply slimy, and to do so was pretty obviously your intent, but with semantics being what it is, I felt it couldn't hurt to explicitly drill down.
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