Rachel Dolezal, Thoughts?

Whitey · Post by **Whitey** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 9:40 pm

For those who are unaware of who she is, basically the head of the Spokane NAACP has been claiming she's black, her parents have come out and pointed out she has no black ancestry and is lying. She maintains she is black. In addition to being an NAACP leader, I believe she also lectures on black culture and history, etc.

Just thought this board is getting a little quiet and this lady has been a hot topic elsewhere. Personally I think she's crazy, and even if she's trying to help the black community she's done so by lying. She could have tried to help the black community as an ally rather than claiming to be black. I think what she's done is quite offensive, but it's just how offensive is the question. Does the fact that she's seemingly being trying to help while lying about her background help at all, or is what she did too offensive to look past?

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 9:54 pm

I think she's the white Michael Jackson.

Post by **aels** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 9:58 pm

I have been following the story intently because it is like a beautiful onion of whatthefuckery. So many layers, so much crazy.

My very tired and inarticulate clueless white lady thoughts:

1) Everyone going 'But how is this any different from Caitlyn Jenner being trans!' needs to stop, forever
2) I have seen way too many fucking racists online this week
3) Everyone needs to calm their tits saying 'Oh, she's obviously mentally ill', like, I don't doubt that she could be mentally ill but we need to stop assuming that people doing reckless, stupid, or unkind things are automatically mentally ill because holy unhelpful stigmatisation, Batman
4) I do think it is grossly offensive for someone who experiences privilege to basically put on oppression like it's a costume and then make their career talking about lived experience they haven't actually had. I'd be angry as fuck if I knew a disability activist who claimed to be disabled and went around discussing their personal experiences of disability and then turned out to be completely fucking fine. They'd be diminishing my experiences by claiming to understand them and treating people's actual, real lives as something you can slip over your shoulders like a new coat.
5) If she's done good work for black people then it is surely good work she could have done as a white woman, using her privilege to confront racism in white spaces
6) Like, what does pretending to be black actually achieve for black activism? If she could have done her work equally as effectively as a white woman, then performing blackness seems to be solely about gratifying something in herself
7) Kara Brown said it best: 'girl, WHAT'

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:08 pm

Speaking of Michael Jackson...

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:09 pm

I just googled her. She is a walking offense.

Derived Absurdity · Post by **Derived Absurdity** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:12 pm

I think ' beautiful onion of whatthefuckery' pretty much sums it up

Post by **Islandmur** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:18 pm

this must be one of the weirdest things i've ever read. The lies this woman told, the fake father, the fake son, the black scholarship full ride.

She's a liar.

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:19 pm

aels wrote:6) Like, what does pretending to be black actually achieve for black activism? If she could have done her work equally as effectively as a white woman, then performing blackness seems to be solely about gratifying something in herself

The world is full of people who identify so strongly with less privileged groups that they begin to convince themselves that they in some way belong to that group. Has anyone not met a reggae-listening, dreadlocked white person playing the fucking bongos at a party and realised that in that person's mind they are a bit more black than their entirely white social group? Spend a couple of hours on Tumblr and you'll meet a bunch of Selina Georges who thinks they're Maya Angelou.

Rachel Dolezal has probably just eased on down the road a bit further.

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:21 pm

I managed to quote my own post instead of editing it.

Whitey · Post by **Whitey** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:23 pm

I'm just surprised she's maintaining the lie. When her parents have come out and said she's white, and there are pictures of her looking white as well as a younger woman. How has she not been questioned about this before? How has she risen to the head of her local NAACP chapter without this being looked at?

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:26 pm

She looks like a woman with an overdone tan (she actually looks orange, not black) with a perm. If I wasn't told she was supposed to look black, I would have thought she was a white woman with a tan and a perm. Because that's what she is. How did she fool people? Wtf?

Post by **aels** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:34 pm

Whitey wrote:I'm just surprised she's maintaining the lie. When her parents have come out and said she's white, and there are pictures of her looking white as well as a younger woman. How has she not been questioned about this before? How has she risen to the head of her local NAACP chapter without this being looked at?

Post by **aels** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:36 pm

From what I've heard, people on the peripheries of her life were suspicious but no one really wanted to be *that person* who straight-up asked a black-identifying woman if she was reely reely sure she was black.

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 10:48 pm

Dr_Liszt wrote:She looks like a woman with an overdone tan (she actually looks orange, not black) with a perm. If I wasn't told she was supposed to look black, I would have thought she was a white woman with a tan and a perm. Because that's what she is. How did she fool people? Wtf?

Because orange is the new black.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Sun Jun 14, 2015 11:05 pm

She belongs in prison.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 5:54 am

@aels - that is the best use of that gif I've ever seen.

I agree with all your points, though if she'd indeed been living 24/7 in the guise of a black woman for years, she probably did experience at least some racism as a result; people generally don't check if someone is really black before being racist at them. Although how she received it, in the absence of lifelong internalised racism, would be a whole other issue.

Unvoiced_Apollo · Post by **Unvoiced_Apollo** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 9:05 am

Ptolemy_Banana wrote:
Dr_Liszt wrote:She looks like a woman with an overdone tan (she actually looks orange, not black) with a perm. If I wasn't told she was supposed to look black, I would have thought she was a white woman with a tan and a perm. Because that's what she is. How did she fool people? Wtf?
Because orange is the new black.

Hah!

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Mon Jun 15, 2015 1:44 pm

This woman lies worse than Ada:

1) Claims to be black when she has zero black heritage.

2) Claims her own father really isn't her father but her stepfather.

3) Claims her mother and stepfather used to abuse her when they lived in South Africa. The problem is she never lived in South Africa. Her family lived there after she had already left home for college.

4) Was awarded a scholarship to historically black Howard University based on being a disadvantaged black student.

5) Her claims about being a victim of hate crimes have ben practically dismissed by law enforcement and the U.S. Postal Service which said that the supposed letters she received did not go through the mail and that someone with a key to her mailbox would have needed to place them there.

6) Once told a Hispanic student she could not participate in a class project because she didn't look Hispanic enough. Um, irony overload.

So yeah, public execution or life in prison seem to be the correct alternatives.

Post by **aels** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 3:58 am

IT GOT WORSEBETTER: http://jezebel.com/hooboy-rachel-doleza ... 1711460097

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 4:33 am

I love this: http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2015/06/ ... kness.html

Ptolemy_Banana · Post by **Ptolemy_Banana** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 8:40 pm

http://gifthetv.tumblr.com/post/121676892224

Cinemachinery · Post by **Cinemachinery** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:07 pm

Meh, I've no issue with transethnicity, but lying liar is a lying liar.

Unvoiced_Apollo · Post by **Unvoiced_Apollo** » Tue Jun 16, 2015 11:23 pm

Cinemachinery wrote:Meh, I've no issue with transethnicity, but lying liar is a lying liar.

This. Just saw an interview where she can't admit she has white parents and was born white, claiming that she's never made her parents go through a dna test & that the birth certificate was issued a month and a half after she was born.

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 2:30 am

What the fuck is transethnicity?

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:04 am

The term 'transracial' originally referred to people who were adopted and raised by parents of a different race.

It's since been mutated into something scary.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:14 am

I'm just thinking this sort of thing happens the other way around too. People craving for white features so much they go into skin bleaching and plastic surgery. How acting "white" is viewed as more educated and stuff.

This world sucks!

But being lucrative and exploitative of a struggle from an oppressed race is just demonic. (which also happens all the time too, just not this much in-your-face kind of way) I also think if it was the other way around, like in White Chicks, would people defend a black woman like this?

So my conclusion of this is white people have no boundaries when it comes to exploitation and being evil.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:34 am

Well, it's easier to explain when it's the other way around when society bombards us with messages that white people are awesome and beautiful; it's like how it makes sense that lots of people are anorexic, when society constantly tells us that the thinner you are the more worthy you are as a human being, especially for women, and there are all these unhealthy beauty standards that are dependent on someone being clinically underweight. So it would be unfair to tell people "if you want to be treated like a human then you have to look white", and then criticise them when they try to look white.

POC might also try to look white either for survival or in order to be taken more seriously by people, which is an understandable motivation. Whereas what Dolezal did isn't down to any legit reason but seems to be entirely due to weird exotification of black people and being a lying liar.

Although:

How acting "white" is viewed as more educated and stuff.

I generally take issue with that claim because it implies that white people have a monopoly on being educated and stuff, which is firstly racist and secondly implies that non-white-dominated countries (where the most educated and high class people aren't white) aren't real countries.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:47 am

According to Brandon they aren't real countries.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:53 am

That's settled then.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:55 am

I see I need to do this again:

Real Countries:

Predominantly English-speaking countries except Belize
Germany
Japan
Brazil
The Scandinavian countries (maybe)

These are the only countries that even matter. The rest are shitholes and will remain shitholes with hilariously bad comic book villains as leaders who then blame their problems on real countries.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:04 am

The Scandinavian countries (maybe)

Scandinavia is the Margaery Tyrells of the world. But as far as mattering, don't think so.

And Brazil is a shithole, we've been through this. Chile and Uruguay offer better living standards and freedom than that hellhole.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:06 am

Yes, we've been through your perpetual wrongness before.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:15 am

I don't think you won't find anywhere that says that Brazil is better than Chile. Unless you are talking about women, in that case yes, Brazil is the better country. If you are talking about men though, Chile still wins.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:22 am

Brazil is bigger, therefore better. But I'm more concerned with your support of Uruguay than that of Chile. We're talking about a country so comical that it actually supports Argentina's illegitimate claims to the Falklands by refusing to allow British ships in their ports if those ships are bound for the Falklands. They should be nuked. The good thing is one nuke would do it.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:31 am

Wtf?! Is not support. I'm latin american, we all hate each other's guts! Those southerncone idiots are fucking racists pricks idiots.

Brazil has a big economy and poverty everywhere. Chile has a growing stable economy and its population isn't as screwed up. It's simple, which countries have better health and education indexes? Chile and Uruguay. Possible with Argentina as third or even second. So can you imagine poor Brazil if a shit country like Argentina can beat it?

Using your logic India and Russia would also qualify as real countries because of size when reality states that they are third worldist fascist hellholes.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:32 am

So what I'm trying to say is, anything lower than Argentina can't be considered real.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:34 am

Uruguay isn't even big enough to consider a country. It's practically a colony of Argentina. It should just change it's name to Argentina's Bitch.

Dr_Liszt · Post by **Dr_Liszt** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:40 am

Meh... I can be ok with that. Considering Argentina is entering a crisis now a days and the president sent to kill a reporter or politician or whatever recently. I still find Uruguay better.

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:50 am

And real countries don't use horses as a source of food for people. That makes them as backwards as France or Italy.

Unvoiced_Apollo · Post by **Unvoiced_Apollo** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:13 am

After reading the dialogue between Cash & Liszt, I'm not so sure I meant Whitey in my joke on the dress thread

.

Post by **Islandmur** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 10:59 am

It's interesting to note that She started all this after suing harvard for allegedly discriminating against her because she was white, back then she was Rachel Moore. One thing is not clear did she reapply as Dorezal (and black) and get the scholarship or what?

CashRules · Post by **CashRules** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:26 am

Moore was her married name. She divorced her black husband because he wouldn't help her teach their son to hate white people.

Unvoiced_Apollo · Post by **Unvoiced_Apollo** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:33 am

Islandmur wrote:It's interesting to note that She started all this after suing harvard for allegedly discriminating against her because she was white, back then she was Rachel Moore. One thing is not clear did she reapply as Dorezal (and black) and get the scholarship or what?

She sued Howard, not Harvard. And it was over both teaching positions and scholarships.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grad ... was-white/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Monk · Post by **Monk** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 3:37 pm

My thoughts are similar to Jon Stewart's, "Whaaaaaat?!"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/1 ... 92380.html

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 4:48 pm

This whole fiasco is revealing a lot of weirdly interesting things about how ignorant white people are when it comes to race. People don't seem to know what race means at all. White people seem to believe that the political/social constructions of race are real and essential....or something. That is has little to do with how society treats you, but just what you are and how you feel. I mean...I already knew this..but this is some twilight zone shit.

Post by **Islandmur** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:03 pm

Unvoiced_Apollo wrote:
Islandmur wrote:It's interesting to note that She started all this after suing harvard for allegedly discriminating against her because she was white, back then she was Rachel Moore. One thing is not clear did she reapply as Dorezal (and black) and get the scholarship or what?
She sued Howard, not Harvard. And it was over both teaching positions and scholarships.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grad ... was-white/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ahh ok lol no wonder I was confused!

But still it seems her transformation stems from that period. Though she claims otherwise.

Cassius Clay · Post by **Cassius Clay** » Wed Jun 17, 2015 9:29 pm

And this is a good article to show to any idiots hijacking the idea of race being a social construct(it is) to justify this woman's actions(or anyone making false comparisons to gender). They are paradoxically treating race as essential, while seeming to base that on the assumption that it's not....because they are idiots that don't think anything through.

http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/06/as- ... s.html?m=1

Post by **aels** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 1:36 am

Anakin McFly wrote:The term 'transracial' originally referred to people who were adopted and raised by parents of a different race.

It's since been mutated into something scary.

I first heard it through Mark Oshiro's tumblr when he was complaining that (almost always white) idiots who listened to reggae or watched too much anime were declaring themselves transracial and how it was already a term that existed to describe kids like him who were adopted across racial lines and that these people needed to sit the fuck down.

Anakin McFly · Post by **Anakin McFly** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 2:17 am

oh yes, tumblr. I remember browsing their transracial/transethnic tag a year or so ago and being both horrified and fascinated. Mostly horrified. Unfortunately, a good number of posters there were trolls, and it was hard to tell which was which. Also TERFs. so many TERFs.

Post by **aels** » Thu Jun 18, 2015 2:53 am

This Dolezal thing has also brought the TERFs out of the woodwork. Ick.