So NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal is really white?

So according to the left gender is what you choose but race is 100 percent genetic. Got it.

ramzzoinksus said:
So according to the left gender is what you choose but race is 100 percent genetic. Got it.

Oddly enough, I didn't hear anyone say this at all.

If she associates as black she is black. Why is anyone debating or questioning it?

If someone has devoted his or her adult life to fighting for equality and the rights of African Americans and has done a good job at that, should that person's race make a difference when filling a leadership position at the NAACP. I'm a white person. I don't think so. But I respect that African Americans might feel differently, and that is what counts

Although her race doesn't bother me. Her deceit does. Two separate issues.

sarahzm said:
If someone has devoted his or her adult life to fighting for equality and the rights of African Americans and has done a good job at that, should that person's race make a difference when filling a leadership position at the NAACP.

It does. See how many whites are in NAACP leadership positions.

flimbro said:
Sure. Errybody wants to be Black until the cops crash the pool party

Word!

sarahzm said:

Although her race doesn't bother me. Her deceit does. Two separate issues.

This

her deceit to take some kind of weird advantage to claim to be part of an oppressed group? If I were African American I would be pissed!

This story keeps reminding me of The Talented Mr. Ripley mixed with The Emperors New Clothes.

carolanne said:

sarahzm said:

Although her race doesn't bother me. Her deceit does. Two separate issues.

This
her deceit to take some kind of weird advantage to claim to be part of an oppressed group? If I were African American I would be pissed!

I am and it doesn't bother me that much. She lied. Lots of people lie. I'm gonna get a few more chuckles out of it and wait for it to blow over. In a few days she will resign and a few days after that it will be replaced by the next story.

GGartrell said:

carolanne said:

sarahzm said:

Although her race doesn't bother me. Her deceit does. Two separate issues.

This
her deceit to take some kind of weird advantage to claim to be part of an oppressed group? If I were African American I would be pissed!

I am and it doesn't bother me that much. She lied. Lots of people lie. I'm gonna get a few more chuckles out of it and wait for it to blow over. In a few days she will resign and a few days after that it will be replaced by the next story.

Yup. I think the NAACP acted in a responsible wayto say that race doesn't matter, but I think that she will be gone in a matter of days.

Her deceit bothers me as well and the biggest deceit is the lie about her race.

You can self identify all you want but your DNA has it's own story (hence Caitlyn Jenner).

There are whites who are NAACP members and there are whites who teach diversity and AA studies. As a white woman, she still could have associated with black people, studied black history, art, culture and married a black man and adopted fully black children if she so desired. There was no need to pretend to be black.

Wonder how her black girlfriends feel about being deceived? Sharing a bottle of Riesling after work, talking openly about police brutality, voter set backs and Black Lives Matter might not sit so right with her crew anymore.

kibbegirl said:
Her deceit bothers me as well and the biggest deceit is the lie about her race.
You can self identify all you want but your DNA has it's own story (hence Caitlyn Jenner).
There are whites who are NAACP members and there are whites who teach diversity and AA studies. As a white woman, she still could have associated with black people, studied black history, art, culture and married a black man and adopted fully black children if she so desired. There was no need to pretend to be black.
Wonder how her black girlfriends feel about being deceived? Sharing a bottle of Riesling after work, talking openly about police brutality, voter set backs and Black Lives Matter might not sit so right with her crew anymore.

Actually some of her students, colleagues and friends even though find her lying about her race offensive, they seem to to be somewhat sympathazize with her. One student interview Elizabeth Phillips said this,

"I don't hate her.I think she's a great person. She just needs to be confortable in her own skin. She's done so much for the community…it's sad to see people tearing her down."

A colleague Kyle Farmby said, "Truth told, my perspective is if someone takes a stand for people who are at margins, I really don't care who they are or what they look like."

I'm only a outsider looking into this issue which I find offensive yet hilarious. I don't live in Spokane and aware of her work in the community. Perhaps she feels she's a Black women trapped in a White woman's body. I dunno. If she talked the talk and walked the walk, I not hatin. Just disappointed she lied when there was no need to do so.

BG9 said:

sarahzm said:
If someone has devoted his or her adult life to fighting for equality and the rights of African Americans and has done a good job at that, should that person's race make a difference when filling a leadership position at the NAACP.

It does. See how many whites are in NAACP leadership positions.

It's not as if this man has been awarded a Spingarn Medal, but his is an interesting story:

http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2015/06/12/maricopa-county-naacp-chief-take-race-flap-rachel-dolezal/71162076/

(Maricopa County has a sheriff whose name might be familiar.)

Remember that she grew up in a family with five black siblings. She was either going to have some black identity or hate all blacks and things black. Obviously she told some ies, but I consider them white lies because nobody was hurt and a lot of people were helped by her activism.

Back when I was in high school there was a book we read called "Black Like Me" where a white guy used deiocation, skin dye and good know what else to experience the black experience, which was pretty horrible. Things are better now a days, but still there is white privledge.

Years ago I saw an older black woman who didn't look black, althugh her twin did. She went to great lengths to emphasis her "blackness", with cropped hair, big earings, Afro-centric dresss. etc. Was this wrong?

For the black posters here, especially Kibbe and Phoenix, how would you feel if you grew up in a house with five white siblings? Would your identiy be a llittle skewed?

BobK, point of information , it was 4 black siblings and she was a teenager when they were adopted and then her parents and the adopted children moved to South Africa without her. She did not grow up with them from an early age.Just to claryify

It's not just the lie about being African American. On multiple occasions at more than one workplace over several years, she has claimed to be a victim of hate mail, and has had authorities conduct investigations. There is indication that least one of the alleged articles of hate mail was delivered by a person in her own office, and authorities are looking into whether she self-authored this piece. She may have some kind of persecution complex.

She accepted a full scholarship to graduate school at a traditionally black college, when she was a white woman. That scholarship might otherwise gone to an African American student, whose education is the college's mission.

Her credibility is shot. The kindest view of her phony presentation of herself as a member of a non-privileged class, is that she is that she has mental problems. She is a liability and the NAACP should fire her and move on.

Here's the opposite story.

Broyard was born black and became white, and his story is compounded of equal parts pragmatism and principle. He knew that the world was filled with such snippets and scraps of paper, all conspiring to reduce him to an identity that other people had invented and he had no say in. Broyard responded with X-Acto knives and evasions, with distance and denials and half-denials and cunning half-truths. Over the years, he became a virtuoso of ambiguity and equivocation. Some of his acquaintances knew the truth; many more had heard rumors about "distant" black ancestry (wasn't /182 here a grandfather who was black? a great-grandfather?). But most were entirely unaware, and that was as he preferred it. He kept the truth even from his own children. Society had decreed race to be a matter of natural law, but he wanted race to be an elective affinity, and it was never going to be a fair fight.

http://web.princeton.edu/sites/english/NEH/GATES1.HTM

breal said:
It's not just the lie about being African American. On multiple occasions at more than one workplace over several years, she has claimed to be a victim of hate mail, and has had authorities conduct investigations. There is indication that least one of the alleged articles of hate mail was delivered by a person in her own office, and authorities are looking into whether she self-authored this piece. She may have some kind of persecution complex.
She accepted a full scholarship to graduate school at a traditionally black college, when she was a white woman. That scholarship might otherwise gone to an African American student, whose education is the college's mission.
Her credibility is shot. The kindest view of her phony presentation of herself as a member of a non-privileged class, is that she is that she has mental problems. She is a liability and the NAACP should fire her and move on.

^ THIS ^

Was following Joy Reid from MSNBC on Twitter and she said that there seems to be several lies regarding her being harassed via hate mail. Rachel alluded to the fact that the harassment was because of race but in fact, if true, it could have been based on something else and she added race into the mix.

BTW, my sister, who is much, much fairer than Rachel with straightish hair, is also a graduate of Howard University. Although no one EVER thought my sister was white, many did think she was bi-racial. Rachel didn't even go the bi-racial route. She jumped the Halle Berry, Mariah Cary hurdle and went straight for Soul Sister Number 9.

This from Jezebel:

Dolezal’s reverse passing—new term! new term!—would not have been tolerated at Howard, says our source along with another Howard graduate named Shannon Washington, who took a class with Dolezal in the early aughts. Besides, Dolezal looked white back then.

“She had straight, blonde hair,” he said.

“She didn’t look the way she looks now at all in school, that’s why when I initially saw the story I didn’t recognize her!” Washington told Jezebel. “She looks about three shades darker.”

While at Howard, Washington took an experimental studio course with Dolezal who was an MFA student-teacher at that time.

“She was a good teacher and never came off as ‘trying’ to be black to me,” said Washington. “She was Rachel, a white woman who could paint really well. She painted Black people but, being at Howard, I saw it as her painting the world around her. No one asked about her ethnicity because we didn’t need to. No one assumed she was black.”

Eventually Rachel Dolezal's scaffold of lies was doomed to collapse. It had to had been hurtful to her parents that she claimed she was beaten by them with a baboon whip in South Africa and was made to hunt for food with a bow and arrow while living in a tee-pee. (Dolezal's parents admitted to the tee-pee life, but that was *before* Rachel was born. Also, Rachel had never been to South Africa.) Dolezal "rented" a real black man to appear with her to at least one event and pressured her adopted younger brother to pose as her son. She has also claimed that a bout with cancer turned her hair blonde. Her past is sprinkled with unfounded reports of racial harassment, including incidents involving a Swastika painted on a building, a "lynch" noose hung at her home, and her unproven report of hate mail received in her post office box. (The previous owner of the "lynch rope" home admitted that he had hung the rope, but it was for a deer he had hunted.) Rachel plans on making an announcement, but she ought not to bother if it's anything but the truth. Otherwise, the sideshow of the bizarre concoction of her life continues.

(Apologies if I have repeated anything already reported.)

Personality disorder?

Dolezal was also briefly engaged to a Mississippi man who dedicated this musical tune to their love:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=_u-AKfb5MwQ

This whole thing leaves me just plain gobsmacked. I don't even know what to think. Although I do think the NAACP would be wise to distance themselves from her... not because she lied about her race, but because of the faked hate mail and the other elaborate attempts to fabricate a history she doesn't have. She doesn't seem stable enough mentally to hold a job that important, and her exposure will be all anyone can focus on from now on. Which is kind of sad, if she was doing a good job for them, but yeah... totally mentally ill.

Dave, Broyard must have been Roth's inspiration for the protagonist in "The Human Stain," don't you think? Anyway, what Broyard did in the 1960s was an un-victim thing to do. A Gatsby-esque thing to do. The barriers in the way of him becoming an American man of letters were unjust, and so he simply nullified them. And proceeded to have great success as an American man of letters. Was he as brave as the AA writers who didn't pretend not to be AA? No. But he was still braver than me. His example advanced America, in the end, I think. The shame in Broyard's story is that he had to give up his birth family and the AA strand of his racial heritage to gain access to the work that his talent qualified him for.

This current story is not like that. I like that she minimizes racial distinctions, like Broyard. But you can't give testimony about being black in America if you have never been black in America. Let someone else talk who has direct experience, and be content with your ally status.

14 Amazing Lies told by Rachel Dolezal

http://thoughtcatalog.com/daniel-hayes/2015/06/rachel-dolezal/

Here’s an interested take from the psychological side. Seems Rachel plays into this “self-deception”.

How Scientists Explain Rachel Dolezal

Since news of Dolezal’s deception surfaced, a diverse array of people have taken to social media to respond, speculating about what her motivations may have been. No one knows for sure what may have spurred Dolezal to behave the way she did. But her case may have the makings of what researchers call “self-deception.”

While researchers acknowledge that self-deception has some benefits, and could even build confidence, they warn that it creates problems when exhibited in excess. Experts say that people who constantly lie become trapped in those untruths to the point that they create a new reality.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/06/12/3669253/self-deception-science/

Goldie Taylor hits this on the point!

Dear Rachel: A Letter From Goldie Taylor To #RachelDolezal

http://bluenationreview.com/dear-rachel-a-letter-from-goldie-taylor-to-racheldolezal/#ixzz3d4RNHMwy

A comment from the Washington Post:

You're all missing the point. The question is, IS ANYBODY IN SPOKANE BLACKER?

Okay, I hate to laugh at that, but LOL! From the comments I read online, it's not exactly a diverse community...

kthnry said:
A comment from the Washington Post:

You're all missing the point. The question is, IS ANYBODY IN SPOKANE BLACKER?

Spokane demographics

People Magazine weighs in on the race vs. gender identity issue:

http://www.people.com/article/rachel-dolezal-psych-expert-not-caitlyn-jenner

ml1 said:

GGartrell said:

tjohn said:
If we can embrace transgender people, shouldn't we also embrace trans-racial people?

I agree. As a matter of fact I think the police should go over to her house, drag her out in the street and beat the hell out of her right now. She deserves equal treatment.

as long as she's unarmed

Don't you guys know the drill? She's gotta reach for her wasteband and resist arrest. Either one is a capital offense.

The NAACP is in a bind, I think. If they fire her, is it discrimination? But how can you let a pathological liar lead your company? Any company?

jeffl said:
The NAACP is in a bind, I think. If they fire her, is it discrimination? But how can you let a pathological liar lead your company? Any company?

My theory is that she will "resign" rather than face an investigation. But I guess we shall see.