In a year where race has been chosen as the only topic fit for media coverage, probably because it gets more clicks and views than “American Economy Stagnates Another Year; Hundreds Of Thousands Of Jobs Shipped Overseas As Undocumented Immigrants Drive Down Wages For All jobs Remaining”, this Rachel Dolezal business is the absolute most awesome thing in American “race relations” to happen since AC Cowlings fired up the Bronco.
For over two hundred years now, black Americans with light skin have chosen to “pass” as white. And, in 1850 or 1950, that was a brilliant idea. Even, whisper it, in 1987; would Guns N’ Roses have been just as popular had Slash kept his hair out of his face? Everybody understands why you would “pass” if you could. For ninety-five percent of this country’s existence, it’s been a definite advantage to be white in virtually all non-R&B-related professions.
Now we’ve seen the reverse: a woman earning a handsome living for being black. Problem is, she isn’t black. But if you want to know where the real racism is, ask yourself: Would her white skin have gone unquestioned had she been better-looking?
Nobody’s come up with a photo of this woman where she’s anything above maybe a 5/10. By “white girl” standards, she’s pudgy and pudgy-faced and has tiny pudgy little features. Ask yourself a serious question, and you don’t have to tell me the answer: When you saw the wedding photo above, were you surprised at the race of the groom, even before you considered Ms. Dolezal’s history? Isn’t she the fulfillment of the unpleasant perfect stereotype assigned to white women who marry black men? #NotAllWomen are like that, think of Heidi Klum and a presumable million other beautiful white women who have turned down all that we honkies have to offer, but still. If somebody made a drawing of that photo and claimed it was their original work, Reddit would call it “disgustingly racist”.
What I want to suggest to you is this: Had Rachel Dolezal, who is only thirty-seven despite looking about fifty, been a hard “Los Angeles nine” white girl pretending to be black, somebody would have said something. Note that nobody has ever called Iggy Azalea a “black artist”. You don’t have to be told that Iggy is white, If Rachel was half as good-looking as Iggy, she’d have been called out.
But as an overweight, unattractive woman, Rachel Dolezal got the hood pass she’d wanted for a long time. In a brilliant and self-aware column, Philly.com’s Elizabeth Wellington tells us how:
Let’s start with Dolezal’s hair, a curly explosion of what we now know to be over-processed ringlets to give the effect of the naturally spiraled bob worn by Tracy Ellis Ross, Diana Ross’ biracial daughter. Not only could Dolezal be a spokeswoman for Miss Jessie’s Curly Pudding, she had the wherewithal to know it was OK to be blond with waist-length braid extensions and still be considered black - a la Beyoncé…
She gravitated toward statement jewelry and rocked body-skimming dresses over the hourglass curves we associate with confident women of color.
And Dolezal, in all of her selfie glory, mastered the “smize.” The seductive smile-with-your-eyes trick promoted by Tyra Banks.
Her fashion tricks on their own mean nothing, but taken together, they give off a sense of ethnicity.
In other words, all you need in America to be black is to
- Dress black
- Act black
- Lie about being black
- Not be attractive
You don’t need black skin. And they, whoever “they” are, never would have caught her! Remember that the way she got busted was through her parents’ ratting her out, presumably because she just ratted her brother out for being a child molester. Without that, this broad would have been wearing a dashiki in the year 2045.
At some point in the future I’ll write about the fluidity of race and gender in 2015, but I’m still marshaling my thoughts on that. For now, just think about this: Had she been attractive, she could not have passed as black. And what does that say about how we view black women in this society? Why are black women always portrayed as in media as either crack whores or state court justices or elementary-school principals? How much of the crisis currently facing black women can be laid at the feet of a media that promotes the black-guy-with-white-woman idea all day, everyday but can’t be bothered to show images that reinforce the idea of black female beauty?
When we, as a society, relentlessly pound home the idea that white women are the only legitimate objects of desire for black or white men, why should we be surprised when black women feel unwanted? When we turn black women into stereotypes and caricatures, both negative and positive, why be surprised when they feel like outcasts in the culture and country that is supposed to be both my land and their land? And why, then, be surprised when, after we spend all this effort turning black women into outcasts, an outcast like Rachel Dolezal feels more comfortable among their numbers?
Solid post Jack, its an interesting question you’ve posed, all the more so when you consider the media blitz against white men, black women, would, you’d think, get not positive media coverage.
As far as the black female beauty issue, I’m afraid I’m with John Mayer.
Unrelated: solid mad max review/social commentary, the comments were….an interesting read.
This is a situation where no matter how much I read/hear about it, I’m most comfortable throwing my hands up in the air and just saying “I don’t understand this, I can’t understand this, so I have no opinion on it whatsoever.”
While this is somewhat interesting in its own right, between this and the shark attacks I gotta say; the interns banging congressmen better watch out and I hope our “intelligence” services are doing a better job than they were in the summer of 2001.
Jack, i was hoping you would address this.
Alas, it looks like i’ll have to wait for your thoughts on the befuddleing salon.com outrage of this lady who “identifies” as black versus the deification of bruce jenner who has decided that despite being a 65 year old man he “identifies” as a 40(30?) year old socialite.
As a white suburban father I honestly don’t understand any of this, but I can’t even ask a question lest I be castigated for being a bigoted chauvinist homophobe who’s living in the past.
I don’t know of anyone who would castigate you if you have sincere questions, but if you pose said questions like “deification of bruce jenner who has decided that despite being a 65 year old man he “identifies” as a 40(30?) year old socialite” it comes off Glenn Beck-style JAQing off. i.e. you’re not asking a legitimate question, you’re telling people what you think in the form of an insincere question.
Do a web search on Bruce Jenner’s new name and Goddess. People have literally deified this transformation.
In other news, the FDA bans trans fat. Brucelyn Jenner better watch its diet.
(I’ll be here all week, please tip your waitress.)
Did she do a good job? I guess that’s irrelevant, definitely not newsworthy.
And I agree that it’s great that all of America’s problems have been solved and we just have nothing better to promote as “news.”
“Did she do a good job? I guess that’s irrelevant, definitely not newsworthy”
Bam. This.
No one cares at all about what actually matters.
“Did she do a good job? I guess that’s irrelevant, definitely not newsworthy.”
It is not irrelevant, but what is relevant is so much more relevant as to deserve our attention.
She claimed white privilege at Howard, when it was to her (personal) advantage.
Later she claimed black privilege, the right to be considered a spokesperson for a group of people she could never be a member of, because there is no DNA-reassignment corresponding to “gender reassignment”.
She did what ever was convenient and advantageous to herself, even at the expense of other members of either or both groups who were entitled, at least by society’s rules, to enjoy owing to their correctly classified position.
And I say that this is robbing from the lives and work of others. I will give two cases in point, both of which I swear to be true and which I have/had intimate first hand knowledge of.
Jack was a black man who advocated for Black Power in a southern college town in the late sixties, at a time when even the progressive towns of the South were still trying to get their minds around the idea of such things as voting rights and school integration. He was non-violent, but a person who would not be forced to accept being treated as “less than” anyone else.
And one day, he just disappeared, after having been in local headlines for weeks. No trace of him was ever found, thought the most widely held theory was that he was buried under a pile of construction vehicle chain at the site of a new shopping mall.
A good man, and a personal friend, one of the nicest, and most sincere, men I have ever known — gone because he was black and because he insisted it was as good to be black as to be anything else.
He did not try to pass for white, seek special privileges for being black, or go to somewhere where he could live more easily. He lived and died as a black man, standing for what he believed it meant to be a black man of courage, honor and dignity.
Rachel Dolezal is not worthy to claim she belongs alongside his memory, and the memory of countless others who died for being black and for not accepting that being black was being less.
A friend of mine from high school had an older brother who went into the Peace Corps. Harry had a repuation for standing up against injustice no matter where it existed. And he was white. He ended up in a country with a repressive black regime that lived off the sweat and suffering of its black population. And Harry fought to expose the corruption and to replace it with a system that did not systematically steal from, and imprison, the members of the society that existed there.
It was reported that he died in an “accident” — no further word, no explanation of what kind of accident, no attempt to re-patriate his body to his mother and the rest of his family. Just a hasty burial in a poorly documented grave, because he was a person who fought for justice for all. He did not claim any special privilege by virtue of being white, as did Rachel Dolezal, and he died an honorable death, fighting for social justice, while never once asking for privilege as a result of his race or identity.
Rachel Dolezal’s careful leapfrogging between identities to further her own cause and to provide herself with the advantages of both being black and being white, is a disgrace in light of the way Jack and Harry lived and died.
People like Rachel Dolezal set back the cause of racial and social justice, by her blatant self-aggrandizement and self-promotion.
Did a good job? Made a contribution? So what? She did it for her own good, and she consistently chose whichever identity suited her needs at the moment. Never once did she wear either identity as something to be endured, as a cause of suffering to be shared with others.
She was, and is, a sick weasel, a sick one, yet nevertheless, a weasel, a weasel who is a disgrace to people like Jack and Harry.
That is why “did she do a good job?” is not enough to forget about how she used race to her advantage, not just occasionally, but consistently to gain the upper hand over others, by being that chameleon that always tried to sun herself in the most pleasant spot (for her) that she could arrange to land in.
J’Accuse, Rachel Dolezal.
Why do I get the impression that millions of news-watchers see this story and think, “wow, do all the other people watching really care about this?”
But the networks put it in front of you, therefore it’s “news,” after seeing how well the topic trends on Reddit and DailyWhatnot the day(s) before. And now because it’s “what’s on,” more people talk about it.
I’d be disappointed to think this is the type of story people are truly asking for, just as I am already disappointed to see the story masquerading as news.
If the last few weeks don’t force The Last Psychiatrist out of retirement, nothing will…
That would be awesome!
Also, seriously, someone should make a news chart weekly trend - a la Top 40 style. Sad, but I doubt there would be many legitimate stories in between Royal Weddings, celeb babies, DadBods, Bruce, the Duggars, etc, etc.
I gotta think Twitter and FB have enough capability to data mine this kinda thing. Lord knows that’s where CNN, MSNBC, and Fox get their news anyway.
In fact, during the first-semester senior symposium in J-school, we did just that. Plotted out story lines, story life cycles, on one graph. On another, each individual story was then plotted across the major daily papers, networks, and weekly news mags.
This was in the infancy of cable (early 80s), and even then, we concluded that the whole point of MSM news was, “Look, Squirrel!”
Way worse today. It is (he said with a conspiratorial sideways glance) almost like it’s a coordinated plan to push infotainment and an ever-changing be-afraid-fear-this story to the front of each news cycle, and keep the real issues undiscussed and undisclosed. Or something.
Jungle fever is a complicated subject. I am light-skinned, so in that sense I can understand why I’m attracted to light-skinned black women and not dark-skinned ones. But my attraction to caucasian or other cream-colored women (Oriental, European, etc) isn’t as clear-cut. When I’m at the gym, I just don’t find myself looking at the sisters when they get on the treadmill. Given two cuties in spandex working out in front of me with identical body shapes, I will still be staring at the white girl’s ass 100% of the time. I’m obviously not alone, or we wouldn’t have this topic to discuss…
I also don’t care for super skinny chicks, and prefer them to have some meat on their bones. Not like the girls in Spock’s book, mind you, but definitely curvy. Again, it’s just what my dick tells my brain it would like to go inside. I’m not sure if human attraction is nature or nurture, because the South I grew up in sure as hell didn’t promote interracial relations. But I see beauty my own way, not the way “society” may intend.
I have no opinion on this matter but Leo Parente just tweeted this;
http://share.gifyoutube.com/KR2Anw.gif
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3127173/Rachel-Dolezal-SEX-TAPE-ex-husband-forced-perform-sex-acts-camera-against-claimed-court-papers.html
Just so much WTF.
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Subscribed .
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-Nate
Sorry, but you’ve lost the plot on this one.
Have a shave with Occam’s Razor. The dark complexion in at least the later photos that I’ve seen would suggest to the casual viewer that she is at least of mixed race. Combine that with her claims that she was black and there would be little reason to doubt her, particularly if she spent a lot of her time in the black community working on black causes.
Here’s the thing about mixed race — if you are of mixed race, then you are always in the minority, wherever you go. People in the dominant culture will always regard you as being a minority based upon the half of you that doesn’t resemble them. It’s not about attractiveness, but about being different.
Wow, just read the article in the Philly paper.
Her parents adopted four children, and all four of them were black?
No wonder she decided to gravitate towards black, within her family dynamic.
“You ALWAYS loved black kids better! Maybe if I become black, you’ll love me, too. Look at me! I’m black now! Love me, who came out the only way I could, as a white child, as much as you love those other four children, whom you CHOSE as being better than choosing another child who might look like me.”
I could understand if her family was “socially conscious” and “altruistic”, and adopted four children. But the fact that they were all four black, rather than a mix of black, perhaps Asian, Latino and conventionally white, must have clearly sent a message to Rachel that if she wanted their love, she would have to become black also.”
Now I am beginning to think that her parents are far more pathetic than she is, or could ever be.
She is just dim-witted, oblivious to the greater meaning of her actions, while the actions of her parents scream of white “self-loathing”.
I would be fine with seeing Rachel Dolezal continue to work for racial justice, but with an honest acceptance of who she is and is not.
Apparently her chameleon behavior had more to do with the search for love and acceptance from her parents, than it did with seeking acceptance from politically aware blacks, or seeking advantages because she felt discriminated against as a white.
Hell, in her family of origin, she WAS discriminated against on the basis of her being white, or at least so it would strongly seem.