The Rachel Dolezal case and phenomenon is interesting.
Part of me finds it very silly.
People have been talking about this idea of transracial like if you’re comparing her
to Caitlyn Jenner and saying, you know, well if someone can choose, can say that they were
born feeling a woman or born feeling a man in a woman’s body or what have you.
Then if they can make that choice shouldn’t someone still be able to make that choice
around race.
I would push back and say that I don’t think that those are the same thing.
I think those have very different consequences and implications and manifest themselves in
very different ways.
And, you know, Rachel Dolezal why she might deeply love black culture, while she might
deeply believe herself to be a participant in black social and cultural spaces at the
end of the day she can opt out, you know.
She can say – she can choose to not be black in a way that black people cannot choose to
not be black.
I can’t, you know, get pulled over by a policeman and tell him I’m white today.
So the way you should interact as me as a white person because that’s how I identify.
I can’t do that.
That’s not a reality.
I don’t have the opportunity or would ever want to opt in or out of my racial identity.
For Rachel Dolezal she can.
She can choose if it came down to a matter of deep inconvenience she could choose to
not navigate the world as a black person anymore.
And in the implications of her actions are subsequently very different than a real black
woman’s.
And I think it brings up a larger conversation around what is race which I think is an important
conversation to have.
Because again we have to recognize that race is largely a social construct.
Like it is not an actual real thing.
Racism and because race has been made a real historical issue those things are real.
But when it’s done I think and what’s important is it is sort of there’s a catalyst
for a dialogue again in a different way as so many things over the course of this year
have around what race is, how we think about it, how we conceive of what it means to be
racialized.
And I think these are important conversations to have.