Wow. She’s been able to “pass” as part of two different socially-constructed cultures that have no scientific validity?
Laws a mercy!
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Unfortunately, those social constructs have had (and continue to have) real power in society. That’s the problem. I wish it were as easy as pointing out that they are constructs, then we all look at each other, shrug and go grab one of those meat pies you mentioned… the deep dish ones. Unfortunately, we still have young black men getting shot for existing, spending years in jail with no charges, being harassed by cops, daily, being denied jobs because of their names, the school to prison pipeline known as the new Jim Crow, etc. Until we deal with these problems, these discussions over identity are going to continue to matter, I’m afraid.
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Just remember, us engineers have a tendency to piss off social scientists, especially when we use the oldy but goody.
Physics is applied mathematics.
Chemistry is applied physics.
Biology is applied chemistry.
Social science isn’t science.
(i’m going to hell populated entirely by sophists and modern oklahoma history anthropologists)
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Well, see there is the thing. I think there is a tendency to privilege science and rationality as the only mode of knowledge production, but is it? I’m happy not to be under the science umbrella, as a historian. But I don’t think that means that historical knowledge is somehow less important.
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call me crazy, but i think if everyone spent six months a poor black individual in america, a week as a patient in a mental care hostpital, a few days in jail, and 3 months as a scare illegal immigrant with no language skills, a lot of these problems would equalize fast.
no easier way to humanize other people than to walk a mile in their shoes.
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You’re not crazy! I dunno… I think there is a subset of white people who still wouldn’t get it. For me, it was just watching Eyes on the Prize as a kid, and seeing race play out in my small southern town. But some human beings are just impervious to empathy, I’ve found. They walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and they still manage to make it all about them… if that makes sense.
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well, depending on the brand of history it is also applied chemistry, deductive logic, and reasoning based on the most provable facts available. these are all measurable.
but how do you measure positionality, reflecivity (in the social sense), bias, inclusiveness, culture, and religion? that is what i gently make silly jokes about. history allows you to have a hypothesis, test it, and measure the results.
and also look at some badass tapestries.
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(i am really earning my Tasteless Joke Badge today)
isn’t that what australia is for?
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I thought it was for getting rid of Irish debtors… Also, Midnight Oil… Beds are Burning… we live in a minefield of issues around race.
One of the things that bothers me about Rachel Dolezal is how much the focus is on her, one specific individual. There are a few other people that have been mentioned, but I haven’t heard anyone suggest that there really are any other people in her situation – having white parents but identifying as non-white. Perhaps there are others, but there’s no suggestion that she’s any sort of vanguard or spokesperson for a category of people. It’s just Dolezal and the abstract “conversation about race”.
As far as Dolezal herself is concerned, I feel convinced at this point that she’s just a opportunist fraud. As such, I’d be inclined to just ignore her as just a weirder-than-usual example of that genre. But I’m wondering why we’re talking about her so much.
A lot of people have pointed out that news coverage about Dolezal quickly displaced news coverage of the police assault on the pool party in McKinney, Texas, with the implication that this was a deliberate shift. Possibly, but I think it’s more likely that the mainstream media – and for that matter, most of us – are much more comfortable talking about an individual’s unique experience in conflict with an abstraction, than with a material, structural conflict.
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Agreed. Also, It’s much easier for the media to focus on a white lady who wants to be black, because of that abstraction, then it is to focus on the police assaulting black children. Which is precisely what happened in McKinney.
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Have you read the Kereem Abdul Jabbar article yet?
Also, haven’t we known for several days that her parents blew this up to detract from her testimony against in the sexual-abuse trial?
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Let Rachel Dolezal Be as Black as She Wants to Be
The evidence against Dolezal does seem pretty damning. Her birth parents have decided to express their parental love by outing her in response to a legal dispute they have with her (#returnworld’sbestparentstrophy). They offered photos of a farm-fresh Rachel looking like she just stepped out of the General Store in Mayberry and a white-on-white birth certificate. Some siblings have also attested that she’s not black, though she was raised alongside four adopted black children. Dolezal herself has just stepped aside from her position at the NAACP.
Despite all this, you can’t deny that Dolezal has proven herself a fierce and unrelenting champion for African-Americans politically and culturally. Perhaps some of this sensitivity comes from her adoptive black siblings. Whatever the reason, she has been fighting the fight for several years and seemingly doing a first-rate job. Not only has she led her local chapter of the NAACP, she teaches classes related to African-American culture at Eastern Washington University and is chairwoman of a police oversight committee monitoring fairness in police activities. Bottom line: The black community is better off because of her efforts.
[…]
The thing about race is that, scientifically, there is no such thing. As far back as 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) released the conclusions of an international group of anthropologists, geneticists, sociologists, and psychologists that stated that the concept of race was not a scientific entity but a myth. Since then, one scientific group after another has issued similar conclusions. What we use to determine race is really nothing more than some haphazard physical characteristics, cultural histories, and social conventions that distinguish one group from another. But, for the sake of communication, we will continue to misuse the word, myself included, in order to discuss our social issues so everyone understands them. As far as Dolezal is concerned, technically, since there is no such thing as race, she’s merely selected a cultural preference of which cultural group she most identifies with. Who can blame her? Anyone who listens to the Isaac Hayes song, “Shaft,” wants to be black—for a little while anyway (#who’sthecatwhowon’tcopout).
[…]
Dr. King said we should be judged by the content of character rather than color of skin, which is what makes this case so difficult. So, yes, it does matter. Apparently lying to employers and the public you’re representing when the lie benefits you personally and professionally is a deficit in character. However, the fight for equality is too important to all Americans to lose someone as passionate as she is and who has accomplished as much as she has. This seems more a case of her standing up and saying, “I am Spartacus!” rather than a conspiracy to defraud. Let’s give her a Bill Clinton Get Out of Jail Free card on this one (#Ididnothavesex) and let her get back to doing what she clearly does exceptionally well—making America more American.
…where did you hear that? This is the first I’ve heard about anything relating to sexual abuse allegations.
Me too, but I just found this:
It’s also referenced in the KAJ article.
And it may have just been “yesterday” that I heard this, not “several days.”
Hm.
Well, this doesn’t make Rachel Dolezal look any better, in my book, it just makes her family ALSO look at least a bit fucked up.
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I know someone who is a historian of science, and she says that scientists are usually pretty hopeless at history. Scientists like things to be neat and tidy, and tend to ignore hypotheses and theories that didn’t work or become popular. What isn’t relevant to the scientists is very interesting to historians though.
Her interests are the history of sex and gender, and the evolution of evolution. Neither is as simple as people like to think they are.
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Yeah, and as much as I love Kareem, I’m not sure I 100% agree with him. But my comments on that are on the other thread, including some links…
ETA:
http://www.leninology.co.uk/2015/06/as-long-as-you-think-youre-white-theres.html?m=1
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He never worked hard enough on defense. Lots of times, he didn’t even run down court. And he didn’t really try, except during the playoffs.
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But he played in a jazz band with Stephen Colbert and was in Airplane, so there’s that.
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