Some things in life are never OK.
Pretending to be black if you are not is one of those things.
Rachel Dolezal, a woman of Swedish, Czech, and German background who’s been falsely representing herself as African-American for years, is blatantly ignorant of this fact.
Dolezal is an adjunct professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University and the president of the Spokane NAACP, two positions for which she seemingly thought lying about her race would be a wise decision.
She now finds herself in a whirlwind of controversy after her parents recently revealed she’s actually Caucasian, the biological daughter of two fully white parents.
Details of her deceit are starting to unravel, like the fact that she once wrongfully claimed a black man to be her father and that her adopted black brother is her son. After watching 12 Years a Slave, she suggested her “fellow” African-Americans sit in the back row so people wouldn’t be inclined to look at the “black response” to the film. As in, the kind of black response she was having as a 37-year-old white woman from Idaho.
She was also the victim of a hate crime via a letter in February, which, on top of being void now on account of her actual race, is shrouded in plenty of uncertainty.
Dolezal has responded to the accusations with a very skeptical vagueness. She calls the situation a “multi-layered” issue with “a lot of complexities” that not everyone would understand. Probably including herself.
This answer is particularly amusing:
I, for one, sure as hell don’t understand it.
It’s perfectly reasonable for a Caucasian woman to teach African studies and advocate for the rights of coloured people (the goal of the NAACP), so choosing to falsify your race just seems like a completely unnecessary endeavour. Her lied-about race also didn’t contribute to her selection for professional positions in the city, so that rules out any economic gain.
It’s offensively dishonest and potentially diagnosable as a personality disorder, but above all it’s just very odd.