Fair enough.
yet, @Chesterfield did not refer to the article or quote it. He inserted transgendered to specifically call me a hypocrite (since I’m clearly a SJW and cultural marxist, we all know that!). And I can also point out that I disagree with KAJ’s assessment, so there’s that.
No, I didn’t quote it. I assumed you had read it.
Okay. Fair enough.
I disagree with KAJ in conflating the two issues and that its inclusion in this discussion race constitutes derailing more generally. I don’t feel that makes me a hypocrite. Fair enough on my end?
And, if I misrepresented your intentions in making your comment, I also apologize to boot.
Everyone happy? Have I made myself contrite enough?
[ETA] did you see the link from @thaumatechnicia on this topic of conflating the two? Go back up the thread and read it, as I think it does a much better job in dealing with these complexities than does the KAJ article.
I dunno. With Dolezal it feels wrong, but at the same time, what were her intentions? Did she do GOOD in her position? Did she help right wrongs and help the organization? Or was it to some how game the system and milk a cushy job?
I would think if she got as high up in the org as she did, it would be based on her merits and accomplishments. In which case perhaps ends justifies the means?
If, has been suggested by some bloggers and comboxers, “transracial identity is not a thing” then we are going to have to keep clear and explicit definitions of each race so that self-identifed “transracial” people can’t try to cross the line and claim any sort of oppression cred to which they are not entitled.
It occurs to me that the former South African government used some database technology which could perhaps be put to good use here.
If the allegations about her committing hate crimes and acting like they were from outsiders against the organization is true, then I’d imagine the answer to your question is “not good”. She’s lied so much and about so much stuff, it’s hard to see any good intentions at all - why have somebody stand in as a fake father?
I think that’s an important question that the KAJ is wrestling with. On some level, you’re right that it comes down to a “do the ends justify the means” question. KAJ seems to think yes, it does. I think others disagree with that assessment.
Beneath these issues lie the same problem: we treat each other according to our differences, not according to our humanity.
Being treated according to skin color is very real, as is being treated according to gender, or faith, or sexuality. Humility in approaching anyone about their life and their troubles should not hinder us from approaching at all. Having to ask how to help should not stop you from helping.
Except she’s benefited from white privilege and now wants to shed that without a second thought.
She didn’t ask. She just inserted herself and assumed a black identity. She might have done it with the best of intentions, but that’s what she did. That’s the reality we need to wrestle with here. If we’re all on the same page that race is a construct, we need to deal with the reality of how that actually operates in society.
I’m not sure what KAJ’s point is in bringing up Jenner, but I suspect it’s not to say that gender transition is the same thing as race transition, nor that there even necessarily is such a thing as the latter. I think he’s instead being tongue-in-cheek there (thus the absurd comparison to Sean Connery), and maybe in the entire article. Here, for example, where he brings up another comparison that doesn’t actually fit Dolezal’s case:
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).
“for a little while anyway.” Which of course KAJ and others can surely see is not what Dolezal wanted. She instead went full bore black, with no apparent intention of ever going back, until she was caught.
Who can blame her? I suspect KAJ would, if pressed to dislodge his tongue from his cheek. I think he’d say that Dolezal can no more claim legitimately that she’s really black than he can claim that he’s really 5’ 8" (that being the point as I read it of another absurdity in his piece, his claim that he actually is 5’ 8").
OH! Satire!
Are white people (like me!) reading this as sincere when he’s meaning to be satirical?
I hadn’t heard about hate crimes…
No one ever (rightly) said that white people are quick to get jokes made at their own expense. 
Between April and August 2009, HREI installed security cameras to monitor potential hate crimes at its office. But in November 2009, after Dolezal reported a swastika sticker that had shown up on HREI’s door overnight, police found that the cameras hadn’t recorded the incident. Dolezal attributed the cameras’ failure to a power surge that had taken place a week earlier.
(snip)
This year, Dolezal told police she had received hate mail at the Spokane NAACP’s post office box. Nearly 200 people rallied outside the NAACP office to support her. But when police investigated the incident, they found that the envelope had no marks indicating that it gone through the mail. A postal inspector told police, “The only way this letter could have ended up in this P.O. box would be if it was placed there by someone with a key to that box or a USPS employee.” The three employees who managed the boxes said they didn’t remember seeing the envelope. The only other person with confirmed access to the box was Dolezal, who had a key.
This is KAJ and all of white America right now…
So we let one persons failings be the excuse for why we choose to stand apart, to let the differences rule us? We see these failings and make them a reason why anyone that is different is like another continent, that cannot be approached, talked to, reasoned with? I say this because you talk of not joining black people in their struggle, but instead working in the white community - as if these differences would be insurmountable, as if it would be the natural and only thing to stay separate, that any difficulty in approaching would be an excuse for not trying.
I think that more white people need to come to terms with white supremacy and its history and not ignore that when they are attempting to help the problem.
I did not say that white people can’t help within the black community, but it’s problematic when it happens by sweeping white privilege under the rug.
Totally. Like American kids with great white savior complex going to “volunteer” in the third world really aren’t helping things.
