I don’t understand where this ‘using her whiteness’ thing comes in. You presume (and the Motherjones article infers but doesn’t provide supporting evidence) that she raised the suit as a white woman protesting ‘black privilege’ in terms of education support. Her current position on blackness and black culture doesn’t support that. I suggest (and may be quite wrong) that the article is too sparse to support that notion, and it is equally possible that she may was suing because she felt that she was being mis-classified in a discriminatory manner - that she was black, identified as black, and felt that the university classifying her as white was false.
I totally agree with that point, although it risks echoing the German Anarchist slogan of “An end to all nations, but Israel last”. I think that there are all sorts of approaches to the issue both possible and practiced which can end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. However in a situation where really what we are talking about is the defining of people who are ‘other and inferior’ what set of concepts should we tear down except the ones built around otherness, inferiority, not belonging? And how is that accomplished without expecting black people to demolish their self-identification?
I honestly can’t say I understand her position. I haven’t heard anything like enough of her side of the story. It could be a cynical ploy to gain a political position that would otherwise be filled by a black person - it might even be the act of someone who belives that ‘reverse racism’ is so powerful that she could only get a fair shake by impersonating a black woman, although I doubt it!. It could be as you say, an overt if misguided rejection of malign whiteness. It could be a kind of orientalism, a fascination with the ‘other’ to the point where she wanted to become or absorb its ‘otherness’. But it could also be that she identifies with a part of her ancestry that is denied by her family.
As for ‘appropriating an experience’ or ‘amplifying voices’ - I don’t think these are meaningful phrases. If she is appropriating anything it is an appearance, a set of symbols which are taken to mean a set of things about a person (what they mean varying depending upon who is interpreting).
I would ask whether any of the criticisms levelled in terms of her not experiencing the totality of black oppression (either in terms of growing up in a state of oppression, or being able to set aside black identity at will and thus escape oppression) could not be equally levelled at a person of black origin who was able to pass in white society - say, Walter Francis White, who had 5 black great-great-great grandparents, but was chief executive of the NAACP? Surely his ability to pass in white society (which he used regularly) meant that he couldn’t share the black experience fully?
