Many of you will likely remember Rachel Dolezal. She is the white woman who believes she is black. She identifies as black. She calls people racist for not believing that she’s black. She’s worked for the NAACP and she’s been married to black men and she has black children. Her story went viral a few years back, and she did many delusional interviews about race and privilege and racism and more. Personally, I always thought if she had presented herself as a woke white person who wanted to work exclusively on African-American civil rights issues, no one would have had a problem with her. It’s the fact that she was calling herself a “sister” and blatantly lying, calling herself a light-skinned black woman all these years that made people go “WTF?” CB previously called her a charismatic con-artist and I agree, although I actually believe there’s some mental health stuff going on here too.
Anyway, Dolezal is back. She has a memoir called In Full Color. The NY Post got an advance copy of the memoir and… woooo, boy, is this something. The whole NY Post piece is worth a read, and here’s the first few paragraphs, which should sum up the situation concisely:
Rachel Dolezal — who convincingly passed as an African-American civil rights activist in Spokane, Washington, until her inarguably Caucasian parents outed her as white in 2015 — is now stepping back into the spotlight in all her bottle-bronzed, afro-hair-extensioned glory. Dolezal has penned a memoir in which she compares her travails to slavery and describes her harrowing childhood as a pale, blonde girl growing up poor on the side of a Montana mountain.
As she toiled in the garden for her strict, Evangelical parents, she’d dream of freeing her inner blackness, Dolezal writes in “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.”
See, she’d read her grandmother’s National Geographic magazines. So she knew about blackness.
“I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs,” Dolezal writes.
“I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo… imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways … that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in.”
She was so poor, she wore dog-fur clothing and played ball with freshly-butchered chicken heads, she writes.
“See, she’d read her grandmother’s National Geographic magazines. So she knew about blackness.” Nope. Just, nope. She also goes on at length in the memoir about how she was abused as a child, how she “taught” her adopted African-American siblings about black culture and blackness (did she learn it from NatGeo?), how she learned to “pass” in the black community and how after her first marriage – to a black man who wanted her to just be blonde and white (which she was), she reclaimed her blackness. She writes, “I was a Black-Is-Beautiful, Black liberation movement, fully conscious, woke soul sista.” Girl, no. Just, no.
Photos courtesy of Rachel’s social media, the ‘Today Show’.
I need another cup of coffee to formulate complete thoughts about what a complete whack job I think this woman is.
I like my coffee how I like my women – tanned, permed and delusional AF
Love you.
I’m trying really hard not to laugh. 😉
I like my men like I like my coffee.
Ground up and in the freezer.
Omg, I think I love you, Lizzie.
Yeah, it is 11 am here and I still am not fully enough awake to comprehend this mess. It does make me want to puke that someone gave her a book deal.
Yeah, but look at the publisher’s web site. It will explain a whole lot. https://www.benbellabooks.com
Many black Americans ethnically identify MUCH more with white Americans due largely to socioeconomic status. A rich black child in a wealthy subdivision is much more likely to apply long, straight hair extensions, use white girl makeup, shop at Banana Republic, and adopt cadences and vocabulary similar to that of her white peers. This is a social phenomenon that can AND DOES go both ways. Rachel Dolezal ethnically identifies as African American, meaning she prefers and has adopted the cultural norms of that particular demographic. When she says she is “black,” it’s just an ignorant misuse of the term. Black is race. African American is ethnicity. Race is biological. Ethnicity is cultural. Rachel Dolezal cannot be black. But she can be African American. Fin.
Is that right? Surely African-American means an American with ancestors from the continent of Africa?
I don’t know-my understanding is that unless you are biologically or genetically African American-you are not. It’s not like a religion that you can convert into.
Races are white, black, red, and yellow. (It sounds horribly made-up and antiquated, because, basically, IT IS. Arbitrarily assigned “color” names for a shared biological genetic ancestor.) African American is an ethnic culture of a particular demographic, which USUALLY overlaps with “blackness”. Like a white person could be Germanic, Persian, Welsh.
One cannot be genetically African American. One can be genetically black.
@Baby Jane are you black? There’s so much wrong with your comment and I’m not sure I have the patience or the tact to explain just how dead wrong it is.
“Race is biological”
No, nope, nein.The number of people who still believe this is actually disturbing. The concept of race has no biological basis, none that stands up to scientific scrutiny anyway. It is a social construct. It is pseudoscientific bullshit invented by violent European savages to justify their savagery.
Race indicates a shared biological ancestor, indeed. Now, the social ranking of persons based on physical biological characteristics associated with race is, of course, abominable. But there are clear, scholarly definitions of both race and ethnicity, whether or not you like how they have been applied to justify racism.
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-experts-03-02.htm
A black woman and a black man have a baby. That baby will be black. That baby’ siblings will be black. Those black babies have shared black ancestors.
That black couple lives in Rekjavik. They raise their baby according to Icelandic culture, including language, food, family structures, and so on. That baby is ethnically Icelandic. Racially black.
Race is not biology, nor is it destiny. It is the social construct meant to enable the economic hierarchies of the pigmentocratic society. My ancestors WERE Bantu, among the many other slave-producing regions that brought our grandmothers and grandfathers against their will from Africa, according to our family DNA, and these folk lived and toiled for centuries here as slaves. My family is today ‘culturally’ white (I come from generations of women who were raped by their masters), but my grandmother was the daughter of slaves.
And this woman — along with her vivid imagination and white guilt — truly, truly, needs to go away.
There is nothing to be learned or gained here from CRAZY. She’s just putting on a costume, and the disdain for all people and for history evident in her play- acting should be emphatically discouraged.
How is what she does any different from the white kid appropriating Pocohontas on Halloween?
Or different from Marie Antoinette, when she had a pretty farmlette constructed, and gold handled porcelain milk pails made, and silken milk maid costumes fashioned, so she could pretend to be a peasant when the mood struck?
To be an American is certainly to have the freedom or to believe one has the freedom, to reinvent the self; that’s a time honored tradition in which African Americans have also taken part, when freed from slavery. But you cannot be what you are not in the essentials. And to insist on a history that just isn’t there, to insist on a skin color that makes one marked for certain designations and for the daily prejudice, is a most dangerous and offensive lie.
I remember going to a family reunion of cousins, black and white, and all the hues in between, and one of the white kids, a millionaire descendant of our slave-owning, slave-raping, forbear, showed up that particular year wearing dread locks (though the year previous he was a prep school, clean cut, WASP). His hair style choice came from a place of arrogance, condescension, and disdain. And, yes, the privilege of knowing he could always remove the disguise if and when he wanted. He decided to play black for the day and he embarrassed himself. But he, like Ms. Dolezal, could play race martyr knowing he won’t be stopped and searched by the police just because, or living with the fear that ICE isn’t going to be breaking down his door any time soon.
Enough with the play acting garbage.
We have real issues to talk about in terms of American race matters.
Thanks for listening to my rant. Not a regular visitor, or poster, but had to respond to this!
I will not be reading this garbage book.
Bantu is not a race.
I realize your emotions are high because, thanks to human history and socialization, race has incorrectly provided a backdrop and a “justification” for racism, genocide, and so on. However, despite these tragedies, race and ethnicities are actual social science concepts with real definitions, as stated above.
“Race indicates a shared biological ancestor,
indeed”
1. All humans have a shared biological ancestor.
2. Race is actually based on arbitrary physical attributes like skull shape and skin colour.
“But there are clear, scholarly definitions of both race and ethnicity, whether or not you like how they have been applied to justify racism.”
3. 21st century definitions of race are centered around social constructionism rather than biology because the latter is based on junk science.
4. Scholarly definitions of ethnicity are based on language and culture.
Hey Rachel *waves*
Except she’s not. She’s a known scammer and liar who decided in her late 20s (after a lifetime of being a self proclaimed “white woman”) to pretend to be black as part of a specific financial scam, and found it profitable to keep going.
When she says she feels black or identifies as black, is that like when she says she feels like someone with cancer or identifies as being a person with cancer, despite not actually having cancer?
She can be black, which is a socio-political self-identification. She probably can be african-american. No more than an african, with african citizen ship can BE african-american. She can self-id as she pleases as can we all. One drop rule has no valid race id purpose.
@Baby Jane
That all sounds fine and dandy in theory, however this woman also pretends to know the struggle and problems of said race, which is a crock of shit.
Unless you are or were really born with said roots and have lived, breathed and experienced everything that goes along with it, you can only assume to know.
This woman has mental health issues and identity issues which should be adressed instead of being given yet another platform to gain attention.
Race is not biological. The term has been invalidated over half a century ago.
“In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a statement asserting that all humans belong to the same species and that “race” is not a biological reality but a myth. This was a summary of the findings of an international panel of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists.”
http://www.newsweek.com
/there-no-such-thing-race-283123
That UNESCO statement was literally strictly in response to the Holocaust and the “racializing” of Judaism. That does not change the fact that people of the same “race” have a shared biological ancestor, and no, not hundreds of thousands of years removed, but immediate.
Honest q
Why is her identification as black any different that Caitlin Jenner’s as a woman
Why do we view one with disapproval and headshaking and the other with open arms?
If she truly feels this way why are we so against it?
Maybe because she’s used it to try and get jobs-taking spots that would belong to actual African Americans.
Because she has identified as white in the past when it has suited her. She’s using it as a costume to cherry pick the best parts of being black while being able to shed that at a moment’s notice if things get tough. No matter our personal feelings about Caitlyn it’s obvious she’s not going to do that.
This chick is one pure nutjob
Yes, I think she has a MH issue (or two). Identity problems and a disassociative disorder lol. I almost want to read the book – it sounds shitastic.
What’s her mental health diagnosis? I’m not being sarcastic. I get mad at what she does but I don’t get mad at her bc her brain wiring must be off.
Yeah, what is this exactly? I don’t even know what you call this kind of crazy. Is it a new category? It’s kind of morbidly fascinating….
Fruit loops,batsh**, whack-a-doodle, cray-cray…
I’m sorry I know that’s not an answer to your question but I could go on all day.
Obviously! She probably did have an extremist upbringing which she, perhaps already incapable of coping, warped in her mind into a shared experience with the oppression of black people in America. In case people don’t remember, she was in trouble at GWU for plagiarizing canonical art at an opening of “her work;” so yes, there are some definite mental issues going on here.
It’s strange because on the one hand it does seem like she has some sort of mental illness, but it doesn’t seem like it’s one that keeps her completely unaware of her pretending, because in the past she’s accurately self-identified as a white person when it suited her.
This fucking lunatic again?
What bugs me the most about her is that as much as she play acts being black, she will never, based on how she looks, suffer the continuous blatant and hidden discrimination against African Americans in this country or elsewhere. She’s a racial tourist, plucking the good stuff while oblivious to the reality.
Oh, stop it.
Initially I kind of wanted to give her a pass, but she’s giving full on crazy eyes in all of her pictures, and the more I read, the more grossed out I am by all of this.
Yeeeeeah there def might be some mental health issues going there but yikes. No. I don’t want to say I hate her but I kind of do.
-____-
Ugh stop giving her press. She’s awful and she’s learned nothing
True that
She’s…crazy. I don’t know how else to say it.
I asked my psychiatrist brother-in-law about her, hoping to hear some insight, maybe learn some possible diagnosis for her delusions. He just grinned at me and said “Nah, she’s just fucking nuts.” Sounds about right.
Hahahahahah 🙂 He sounds about ready for a vacation.
LOL I agree with your brother-in-law
This lady is stone cold nuts. Wow.
Oh Jeebus…
i have a friend i recently found out isnt the ethnicity she claims to be. she makes a living off of being an expert on that ethnicity. she seems so sane and smart (my friend not rachel). twice she’s had genealogists try to prove she is a trace of what she claims to be. came back whitest white person ever, freakin mayflower descendent.
i am not sure how appropriation of identity makes you a better ally or what went wrong with a person to make them think that.
Did your friend grow up believing she was another ethnicity? Or did she completely make it up like Rachel? Just curious. I know I’ve got Native American ancestory (my great grandparents) but I would never try & pass myself off as Native American or pretend that I can somehow understand what they go through as a community even now. It just boggles my mind that people would do that.
i dont know because she refuses to admit she isnt and hasn’t always been, although now i know some of her timeline if off and fabricated
Which race is your friend trying to be, does she appropriate the culture?
native american and yes, she makes a FT living off of it and always has
White people falsely believing that they are Native American has a very long and interesting history in and of itself. The English try and convince themselves they are the descendants of landed gentry; and many people, particularly in certain parts of the US, are native in their own minds even though they aren’t. It’s quite a common story to have passed down through the family although it is frequently completely false.
It sounds like the friend is wrapped up in the romance of Indian (native) culture, and really really wants to be a part of it even though she isn’t.
Eh, I know two ladies from a sort of hippy community who claim they’re spiritually Native American (the way Dolezal is claiming she’s black, now when she can’t claim she’s actually black anymore) and then go to the forrest to camp in improvised tents and only eat berries there and then post their tens of mosquito bites in “the beauty of nature” outbursts on Facebook. I guess it comes from “the noble savage” trope or something.
And this is Southeast Europe.
And they’re adults, one has a kid.
yeah went all through school on NA scholarships, then had jobs where she was supposed to have tribal membership, which she always said she had. finally she was asked to provide a tribal card and provided someone else’s card.
i feel sorry for all the people who had more right to that scholarship money, as she was always an excellent student and there were other ways for her to pay for school
Supposedly a lot of people’s family stories about a Cherokee princess great-grandmother really started as lies to cover up black ancestry back in ye olden days. Sad and pathetic that anyone lies about who they are.
@JC126 I had never heard that. My husband’s family has a story about a Cherokee bride in the family tree, but given that they settled in NYC, your explanation makes a lot more sense.
Yes, my black uncle was raised to believe that he had native ancestry, but a recently taken DNA test proved that the story was false.
Cherokees were very amenable to European settlers, frequently intermarrying with the white folk, educating their kids the European way, speaking English, doing business with them and so forth. Historians believe that this is a big contributor to the prevalence of the belief in Native ancestry amongst (mistaken) white Americans.
Unfortunately it sounds like the friend of the OP is a liar and tried to pull the wool over her eyes as well as everybody else’s.
@jc126
+1 yep. I read that. They’ve done studies that bear that out – that the great great great Cherokee grandma was actually a black slave woman, and conversely for black folk their Native American lineage, was/is in many instances, European. Not that many don’t have Native American ancestry, it’s just that many very willfully leave out the African and Euro lineages.
Take Johnny Depp. He has long romanticized his Native ancestry, complete with tats of feathers and Indian motifs and playing Tonto in that awful Lone Ranger film a few years back… But a few genealogists have done his family tree and he’s a direct descendant of the first black slave woman to sue for her freedom and win. Her name was Elizabeth Key Grinstead. Saw pics of his Dad when he was very young he looked like ppl in my family
Depp being the good Kentucky boy that he is, he never mentions that and doesn’t go there. Maybe his southern family would be mortified. As they would have been in the olden days. See Imitation of Life. Lol
It would make a great movie. He could even produce and star. But white folk touting their black ancestry is practically unheard of (Ty Burrell of Modern family and Bill Hader of SNL, are unusual as well as super cool – they were on Finding Your Roots PBS).
My husband is of Acadian descent on one side. Come to find out he actually may have NA ancestry as a some French settlers had children by First Nation women and many of them identified as Acadian and French to avoid the racism they would have experienced if they acknowledged their First Nation parentage. He’s going to have his DNA checked to see if he is one, as the family name is one we are told could well be of First Nation descent. It was really interesting to find out all this. He had no idea.
this post isnt ending up where i wanted it i think but
my friend wasn’t / isnt vaguely NA or cherokee, she is, per her, a descendent of 2 much smaller tribes. she had membership, per her. she lives on a reservation, per her. she has a ton of stories about growing up on this reservation in the midwest
the 2 NA genealogy specialists couldnt find a single NA relative, or a single non white relative
she is actually from southern california. her sister also made a career out of it, more famously, and at one point, publicly promised to stop lying about her background to promote her work. however, she still lies about it.
Lisa is the sister someone like an author? I’m dying of curiosity about this story.
@jc126
yes she is an author and academic
if there is a private message function here i can tell you more
@Lisa Any chance the academic sister you’re talking about is Andrea Smith? I enjoyed reading her book “conquest” and was pretty shocked when it turned out she was falsely claiming NA identity all along, and worse she doesn’t seem even a tiny bit remorseful.
@gretchen yes
I had my DNA analyzed by 23andme, and discovered I have West African DNA on BOTH sides. My mother has always claimed, however, that her family has Native American DNA. Nope. Not a drop. Not a teeny tiny bit. (My dad’s side, however, does.)
So I told her about this, showed her the results, and she got super pissed off and claimed the test was a lie. I said DNA doesn’t lie. She said my results must have gotten mixed up. I laughed.
She’s nearly 70 and a southern white woman, so she really can’t handle this. But I always looked at pictures of my grandmother as a young woman and wondered why she didn’t exactly look white. The story was that “NA blood” that ISN’T there.
So yes, LOADS of white families, especially in the south, make up these stories about NA genes, while really it is a cover story for African (specifically West African) genes.
I waited a couple of weeks to tell her we also have Ashkenazi DNA in us, too! I thought she was going to faint.
Ha! We have NA from my grandmother. Her father was half Menominee. All of her siblings were very dark-skin, hair and eyes. She was blonde and blue eyed (she took after her mother.) She used to get called “White Girl” where they lived on the reservation. When my daughter did 23andme, this turned up as well as West African. We don’t know where that came from.
You only inherit half of your DNA from your mother. Unless you have her DNA tested you can’t refute her claim, you just may not have inherited it. DNA doesn’t come across as an even split of everything your parents have.
Coincidentally, I was speaking of my DNA results with my grandmother last night. We pondered why I had 0% Native American ancestry in my results when we supposedly have heritage based on a census from 1840-1850. In that census, a relative claimed himself to have NA blood but in a later census claimed to be white.
I tried to get her to understand why I trust science (DNA) vs. someone reporting NA blood, but was still trying to understand what benefit someone could have to claim themselves NA (then, “mulatto” which was neither white nor black). If there was less shame in claiming to be NA than black and white, this makes so much sense, albeit very sad.
Also, my DNA results DID show 3% West African ancestry, which I fully expected. The rest of my results were 96% European, mostly from Great Britain.
@grumpy says:
March 24, 2017 at 5:20 pm
You only inherit half of your DNA from your mother. Unless you have her DNA tested you can’t refute her claim, you just may not have inherited it. DNA doesn’t come across as an even split of everything your parents have. ”
From what I’ve read that’s not how the DNA testing for the maternal line works, though I may be off. If it were her Dad making the claim, possibly, but not the Mom. From Family Tree:
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial is passed from mother to child. Since only females pass on their mtDNA, testing the mtDNA tells about the mother, to her mother, and so on along the direct maternal line. Both males and females receive mtDNA from their mothers, so both men and women can test their mtDNA.
My mother was weird about DNA as well. My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. It turned out I had a genetic abnormality inherited from my mother’s side of the family. She absolutely refused to believe it and became hostile when I tried to defend the science.
I wasn’t blaming her. I still loved her just as much. If DNA affected love, I would have grown up hating my father for our nose.
and for the record, my friend thinks people should leave rachel alone, because of course
@gretchen
yes
there’s way more grift in the story, i keep finding out more details
it disappoints me so much because she was someone i really looked up to
I just can’t with “she taught her adopted African American siblings about blackness.” 🙄🙄🙄
“Blackness” that she learned from National Geographic.
Not that her book isn’t absurd, it every well may be….
But honestly, the excerpt above is not in her words, it’s a snarky take on her book and what’s in it. So the National Geo issue teaching her ‘blackness,’ is something i doubt she’s claim or say. The woman may have mental or emotional issues but she also seems fairly bright. I’m interested in reading what she has to say about how she became who she is today just on the psychological and behavioural tip. Lol
That said, i know many people dislike her and some white people seem to hate her with a vengeance ( which is telling and says quite a bit about them). I just can’t get all that angry at someone, no matter how delusional, who thinks who I am, and what my culture is, is so fabulous they want to share in it. Someone who thinks brown skin and kinky hair is beautiful. Someone who recognizes injustice and racism and in her own bizarre way and was fighting against it.
Yes she went about it wrong. Yes she lied. But in my top 500 list of enemies, she is no where near making the list.
I’m not mad at her.
I agree testmilk. I think she’s made some mistakes but I don’t really get the level of vitriol she attracts. It seems pretty clear that she did this out of a genuine sense of cultural identification (however misguided), it really doesn’t seem like she did it for personal gain.
Testmilk, I think it’s not that she appreciates black culture and wants to fight for social justice-which is awesome and she could have made an incredible white ally for your culture.
It’s that she claims to be black without ever having gone through the struggles of someone who is actually black. And she only seems to identify as black when it suits her-don’t forget she sued a historically black college for racism against her because she was WHITE. She’s picking and choosing the best parts about being white or black without living and understanding the worst parts. I’m sure it sucked to grow up poor in an evangelical household, but that is in no way comparable to slavery. That’s why people have such an issue with her.
@Kelly – I agree, plus she took a job that someone else could have had. It’s not just Hollywood where white people think they know best
” it really doesn’t seem like she did it for personal gain. ” To add on here, when her story first came out in 2015, it came out very quickly in checking her story that she did indeed do it for personal gain. There may be other issues involved, but personal gain was one of those issues.
I don’t care if she calls herself black, but to work in a field about identity and completely misrepresent hers is unethical.
ok…………
Good God Rachel, stop trying to make fetch happen.
It’s for money I’m guessing
Of course it is
This woman is addicted to claiming identities that she thinks will bring her attention. First she claimed to have cancer when she did not. Then she claimed to be Native American and she is not. Then she went to Howard, an HBCU and attempted to sue the school for racial discrimanation against her for being white when they wouldn’t allow her to exhibit her plagiarized artwork for her master’s thesis show, and then she finally claimed to be African American. I think she is ill but she is also an *asshole.
Yes. I remember the reporter who busted her with the picture of her white father. Dolezal was friendly and chatty until the reporter asked “Is this your father?” Her face fell and she ended the interview immediately.
Yes. She seems to fall into the category that the woman who claimed to be a 9/11 survivor falls into, whatever that is.
I watched the documentary they did on that 9/11 woman’s story on Netflix. Even when she was so close to being exposed, she would not stop with her lying. I really wonder what that mental issue is. She couldn’t just help, it had to be about her.
Isn’t that the very definition of narcissism? All about me, damn the consequences?
*Laughs in black princess* She is obviously cray
I think she watched The Jerk too many times.
HA HA HA HA!! Love this!
Having an affinity for African American culture is one thing, doing racial drag is another.
Wow. I just don’t know what to say
2 words: FUCKING MENTAL
This woman is delusional or a pathological liar.She said she lived in Africa in a tepee when she has never been to Africa.Her parents did live in Africa but she was an adult and didn’t go with them.
If her lips are moving she is lying.
Also please don’t say her lies haven’t hurt anyone.She reported fake hate crimes.She claimed she received racist threats in the mail but the police determined the letters were never sorted at the post office.Reporting fake anti Black hate crimes hurt Black people who try to report real hate crimes.
When I originally heard about this story back in 2015, I genuinely lol’d while at work for the entire day. But the more coverage this got and the more think pieces that were written about this delusional woman I became more and more pissed off. There were people who were actually trying to legitimize this fool and her “struggle” as a “black woman”. There are so many untold stories about biracial and black woman that never get told but this white woman gets to dominate the news, talk about her experience on camera, get people of all races rushing out to cape for her sorry ass, and make money off this foolishness. It was beyond ridiculous and was a true sign for me that she was a white woman. People bend over backward to make excuses for white women and their issues. The only people who really cape for black woman are other black women.
This woman was never “woke” (I am really beginning to hate this word). If anyone who actually knew anything about AA history and listened to what she was teaching her white students, you could tell she did not know what she was talking about. She took some facts and then made up the rest. It only sounds like she is woke to other clueless white people and some non-whites who don’t know that much about African American History.
Thank you! I am so sick of people brushing off her actions as minor.
Which publishing house was stupid enough to think this book would sell?
Think it’s worth pointing out this woman identified as white her entire life growing up and well into adulthood, and sued her university (at the age of 25) for ANTI-WHITE racial discrimination on the grounds that she as a white person was being discriminated against by not being able to apply for opportunities open only to BAME applicants.
So there is hard proof she “identified” as white up until at least the age of 25, and strongly enough to try a lawsuit based entirely on the fact she is a self-proclaimed “white woman.”
She first started identifying as/claiming to be non-white when she applied for a BAME scholarship. So this whole black-identified thing started for purely financial motive.
In other words: chick’s a grifter, and a racist. She doesn’t believe she’s black or identify as black, she’s just out for $$$$$.
She also wrote White,Black and Native American when she applied for a position in 2014 with the City of Spokane(police commission).
Yes-she’s disgusting.
Aside from the craziness that is Rachel, I really wish the term “woke” hadn’t gone mainstream. Now people are using it in the wrong way and also overusing it.
I agree.
I guarantee, as a 50 year old white woman, I would feel like a total moron saying it.
I totally agree. I hate that phrase with a passion – especially now it has been adopted more widely.
The fuck??!
Meh. If she wants to identify as Black now that everyone knows that she sued her University, lied about her childhood and experiences as a black woman to get a job, and made weird (likely false) claims to the police that she was being targeted as a black woman… Sure. Everyone has a right to try to make a living.
But that’s the thing, she shouldn’t get to make a living off being a lying liar who lies. She’s still appropriating black culture to get $$$$. I bet a black person talking about genuine day to day struggles wouldn’t have the opportunities to make bank like she evidently has.
My black friends don’t understand why white people have a problem with her. They think she is harmless and endearing, even if she is crazy. Why do white people take up causes on behalf of black people?
But those are *your* black friends, right? Plenty of black people in this forum and elsewhere have expressed a differing opinion.
“Why do white people take up causes on behalf of black people?”
I agree that we do that sometimes and it’s something I continually struggle with: how to be an ally without co-opting a cause.
But I don’t see white people doing that here in this thread, do you? Seems like most white people here are just dismissing her as crazy, not trying to speak on behalf of how black people may feel about her which is again, a varied opinion.
I’m confused? Your black friends don’t understand or did you mean your white friends don’t understand ?
Your black friends have no problem with a white person intentionally lying that she’s black in an attempt to scam money and take opportunities from actual black people? They don’t mind her faking racist hate crimes for attention?
This non-white person sure as hell does!
A couple of my Black friends have made similar points. The conversation always goes to transrights… Like why can someone be a transwoman but not transblack? Imo, there’s no objection to her being transblack, the objection is to her lying to police and creating a false (and very sympathetic) back story to her life on her resume.
So many things wrong with trying to normalize her actions, on so many levels. Signed a black woman.
There are few people that repulse me. Trump being one. Her being the other. I agree, if she just would be a “woke” white person I’d be like YES, Girl!! But she’s not. Or even if she didn’t want to claim a race because there is some mixture in her bloodline somewhere…sure. But come on. I’m not Asian just because my brother in law is.
Grifter is as grifter does.
Disgusting that she’s getting rewarded for her grifting.
This is what it is. This chick is on the take. She’ll stop when it stops getting her attention and money.
Why does Elizabeth Warren get a pass for pretending to be Native American while this woman doesn’t? I think it’s still hilarious, but what if there is something truly wrong with her mentally? Is it okay to laugh at someone mentally ill?
She didn’t get a pass. Plenty of people have called Warren on it. It was also a completely different situation – she legitimately thought there was NA heritage in her family, never used it for financial or social benefit beyond marking it on an employee section years later, and then she acknowledged the error later. Dolezal is well aware of what she is and is utilizing the facsimile of blackness to her benefit. I thinks she may have mental health issues, too, but mental illness isn’t an excuse for the choices you make. She needs help.
Elizabeth Warren heard a family story about having NA ancestors, and given that lots of NA people are in fact NA without being enrolled tribal members, no one has proven that she doesn’t have that ancestry. I don’t know what she says about it now, but as she put it, Scott Brown insulted her dead parents for political gain. And she doesn’t go around speaking on issues that particularly target NA people or speaking “As a Native American” sorts of things. At some point probing about a family’s background is just intrusive.
I think it is wrong to laugh at people with mental issues but Rachel D might be a pure grifter and con artist.
I believe this person is mentally ill. Attention from the press and media doesn’t help.
Oh my God. I mean…I legitimately think there might be some mental health/potential disassociation issues going on there, but what the hell is that publisher thinking enabling and normalizing that.
Off topic, but if she told me that she is black I would believe it. She looks racially ambiguous.
She needs mental help.
That’s because she dyes and curls her hair and wears makeup to darken her skin.
Really? The first time I ever saw her, my first thought was literally, “That is some unfortunate genetics at work to make her look like she’s wearing black face.” That was BEFORE I read the headline and realized that was exactly what was going. The hair is curly and the skin tanner, but her facial features are all Caucasian to me.
the pictures of her before she decided to tell people she was black were not ambiguous at all. now she looks like side show bob.
Somewhere along the line, in her delusional state, she felt that she could not reconcile her actual ethnicity with the fact that she ‘felt that she was really black’. The consistent and constant rejection of herself seems to be at the root of the cray cray. She needs to figure out why being white isn’t enough, and she needs to figure out why she’s felt the need to base her life on a series of lies. Authentic people don’t need to lie.
While I certainly don’t think anyone needs to put up with her shit, I feel sorry for her because she seems to be someone who doesn’t like anything about herself and that’s no way to live.
This.
wrong post, ignore.
All heck. Give her and Elizabeth Warren their own talk show. 👀
Although to be intellectually curious……why can we accept transgendered people were born into a body their brain didn’t align with — but not this?
You know I had the same thought. Although I think she’s crazy, the difference in the reaction is interesting.
The fact that you two are drawing such an incredibly-obvious false equivalence is further proof that critical thinking in America is truly dead.
The fact you go for the personal insult rather than furthering a response to consider says to me that civility is truly dead.
No, Kitten is correct, neither of you comprehends FACTS. Please see the above commenter’s post (#32) for an actual explanation of correcting an honest mistake vs actual grifting. You might actually learn something.
The F*cking Olympic Yoga Reach yall limbered up for to posit such a point is just… I Mean REALLY ?? We are walking the gentle “transracial ” dog Again??? when White women such as this one have proven the amount of not our backs they don’t have Usurping and taking the air and space from real ass struggling scholarly minded, activist better haired Black Women ??? Ya’ll are being so cute by half
At best And I do mean BEST case she is mentally ill, cause Otherwise this is a textbook attention seeking trash ass person
*takes medicine* I’m sorry for commenting out of my ass. Always willing to be educated. It’s new ground for me.
I knew I should have stayed away from this thread. The crap she is doing if far from harmless. Especially when she can take off her “blackness” when it suits her. As a black woman who’s ideal is to own acres of land in a more secluded area, I have to do so much research and work just to make sure my family would be safe in an area. I can’t just like a town and go from there. I’m looking at voting records, crime stats, education levels, and other kinds of stuff. But I guess if I was transracial I could just say I was white and go wherever I like. This woman will never know what it is truly like to live as a black woman, and people need to stop making it seem cute and harmless.
For the record…..I think she is assanine, I don’t think she’s cute although I’m not sure who she harmed more than herself and her own credibility. Clearly she was dishonest and others relied on her honesty in promoting her professionally, By extension, Those that did may have lost credibility. But I think did what she did for Reasons of trying to game the system For twisted personal gain and now she’s just doubling and tripling down on her crazy behavior.
But…….what if she isn’t (or at least not to the extent we think)? What if her brain and body wiring are out of sync on the matter? Is it medically / psychologically impossible? No one here has responded with a serious answer answer as to why they think it’s impossible…..just with snark and attitude. I too am willing and o read a legit response that explains why that isn’t possible.
So I’ll wait And see if that might offered up.
I do think there is a bias on here against any dialogue on race that goes against our own beliefs or biases. And there is also an “all knowing” element of that we represent, When I speak — I speak for myself, Not all women, Not all white women, Even if we share common skin color or body types, we all have different experiences and can’t speak for others.
Because she’s shown in the past that she knows she’s a white woman, and knows that both of her parents are white. She just switched to claiming that she was black when it was convenient for what she was trying to accomplish, after she had already used her whiteness in the past to get something she wanted. That doesn’t mean she can’t also have some mental and emotional issues.
1. Transgendering isn’t something done lightly and comes with a whole host of medical issues should the individual choose to transition. They suffer social consequences whichever way they transition.
2. Transracial isn’t a real thing because it doesn’t work in opposite direction. POC can’t wake up and decide to be white, else I’m sure we’d see a hella long line at the local Hot Topic for some Edward Scissorhands foundation shades. It only works for her because she can quite literally shed her blackness when she wants to and not have to live with it.
She obviously has issues. She has not been brought up as a black girl, not experienced what life is like for a black girl, then woman, in the US. She cannot appropriate or claim to understand that struggle any more than a
man could appropriate or claim to understand the experience of a woman.
I’m offended. Black woman here.
Also offended and not black. It’s disrespectful on so many levels, and that’s without adding in the evil grifting parts.
I anticipate this book will sell about as well as the album “Paula.”
Agreed. I’m still trying to figure out why her lying fake ass was given a book contract to begin with. What audience does she expect to reach?
That’s a really good question about the audience. It would be really interesting to read the book proposal, which would contain a section on that very point.
She sounds delusional and needs help.
Honestly I feel sorry for her. I know, I know, But i can’t help it. She’s been publicly humiliated with everyone calling her dumb and crazy….as much as she ignores it that HAS TO secretly destroy her self-esteem. She has so many strange issues that I believe her parents were abusive and oppressive and so I can’t help but pity her. She’s a laughing stock that seems unwell to me.
JFC, no one abused her. She is a sociopath who lied and got caught and is now manipulating everyone’s emotions. She tried to do it when she was pretending to be Black and would attempt to manipulate situations. Now she’s trying to do it by claiming she’s the victim of her own lies and the people who called her out on it??
Just no f—g words for this sociopathic grifter. She lied, got caught, and is now trying to insist she’s the victim because she knows what it’s like to be Black in this society? I have never wanted to throat punch someone this badly. She is a cesspool of a human being. She is manipulative and that’s how she gets through life.
Countdown until Trump tries to hire her to be his senior advisor on race in 5…..4……3…….
It’s rather horrifying to realize that she’s raising children at all, regardless of their colour.
That is very worrisome and I do hope her kids will be OK – they’re blameless little souls.
Maybe she has a really amped up version of Foreign Accent Syndrome only instead of waking up one morning sounding like she’s French (or whatever), she woke up one morning and thought she was Black?
I dunno, this broad is something else.
I feel bad for her kids. If I understood correctly, she has a small child, can’t get any job and she’s on the verge of homlessness. And she still won’t give up her lies. That tells me she’s completely off the charts. You’re endangering your children and still you won’t quit.
Please don’t yell, but I support her. As I am a mixed “race” woman, a humanist and supporter of transgendered people, I support Rachel too. She was “lying”? I don’t know, I can’t read her mind.
There is plenty of evidence of her lying and claiming to be white when it suited her if you cared to look in this very thread.
I’m not even touching the transgender thing. Just… no. Not remotely the same.
Ange, my support is based on empathy and logic. Her identity conflicts with a culturally constucted understanding of race. Her case is odd, no doubt. But after giving it a lot thought, I came to the conclusion that — as a supporter of trans people — it wouldn’t make sense for me not to support her on the same basis. If I did not, would that mean that I feel “race” is biologically real and definitive in a way that biological sex is not? That didn’t make sense to me. So.
It’s true that it is not the same. Race is a social construct and biological sex is real (as opposed to gender). You can never change your biological sex, but you can oppose the social norms of ‘race’.
It’s not so easy for people suffering under current social norms about race to just walk around saying it doesn’t exist. It’s along the lines of saying ‘i don’t see colour’ well how nice for you, other don’t have that luxury.
Transgendered people are a whole different kettle of fish because this ‘transracial’ nonsense is nothing like that, it doesn’t cut both ways. Dolezal can take off the wig, wash off the fake tan and go back to her life as a privileged white person, no black person can do that. Comparing her to a genuine transgender individual is insulting to the transgender person IMO. Dolezal has sued a historically black university for not receiving opportunities because she was WHITE, do you think now being black (and the struggles and culture therein) is so important to her? She turns it on and off like a tap. No transgender person would treat their journey so lightly.
She lied about having cancer.
I try to touch this with kid gloves because I really do wonder if she’s got some mental health issues at play and if she does, it’s certainly not my place to shame her on that end. It just is very outside my realm of experience and I wonder that she would try so hard to disassociate from her parents. I mean, I have no great affection for being caucasian, but I know that I am and would not pretend to be otherwise. So I wonder what affected her to the point of … what essentially seems like trying to become a different person. I’m not really interested in the book and I don’t support what she did, but I do hope she finds peace. I mean, sure sometimes my own mother drives me crazy but it seems like there’s a deeper issue where she really tried to become someone else. It sucks that it took a racial turn, but I wonder if that’s not secondary to some deeper issue inside herself. Like she created her own, personal “witness protection program.”
She, for years, identified and presented herself as a black woman. She had relationships with black men, and had mixed-color babies. Whether she’s right or wrong in doing so, I’m sure she did experience some of the outright racism and racist microaggression that actual black Americans experience. She worked within the black community and was head of an NAACP chapter. She seems to genuinely care about issues black Americans face.
So yeah, she’s got some metal issues, delusions of identity, whatever. I can totally see how people would be surprised and offended by her actions. But she was using her crazy for good. She wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, quite the opposite.
Dog fur clothes and chicken head sporting goods….Hmmm.
Couldn’t Her Grandma forgo the National Geographic for one Month and buy her a nice plastic ball to kick about instead.
I see my comment aint make it…. LOL