FTFY.
This is all punching down. Examine your motives.
Speak truth to power. Get back to that.
What this thread has become ISN’T punching up.
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Or potential school shooters. At least that’s one of the tactics du jour for the gun lobby.
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Which who exactly is in a position to state? You? Me?
Lets revisit this when someone thinks your opinion about your identity is out of line, relative to a subject they are passionate about, and suggests that for you!
You’ll be the first to sign yourself up, right?
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I tried reading the comments to see who this person is and why I should care. Alas, I failed. All I get is that she identifies with an ethnic group that her biological parents did not belong to, and that she did some fibbing on some paperwork to get more than she was supposed to get. Which seems more Italian to me, or Greek. Heck, even my German ex wife lied on her tax returns and hid the money she earned giving music lessons.
I guess the one thing that irks me is that is seems this person is being shamed extra hard because of the role as an advocate or celebrity, something like that, as the alleged fraud is, well, petty. Middle class. Bourgeois. The sort of trickery people of all classes do, really.
If anything, it says certain people feared her that they might make this minor scandal into some big brouhaha. And those people are assholes anyways.
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Wikipedia has a decent overview:
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of what? She’s just a person. Not famous other than for this behavior.
How though? She is just one person. Made fun of by the right, and now by us too.
I don’t see how she ever had any power, so I am left wondering if it’s just that she gets attention that upsets such normally tolerant folk to the point of personal insults towards a stranger who never did a thing to them.
It’s sort of a sad day to be a mutant.
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You mean, er, scamming her way into the job of President of a chapter of the NAACP by putting on dark makeup and inventing fake Black ancestors? Ignorance does not become us.
Wait, now I’m confused. She was literally President of a chapter of the NAACP, but she ‘didn’t have any power’, and we’re supposed to be siding with her now, because it’s totally okay that she pretended to be African-American to steal money and get jobs – that’s what mutants do?
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For clarity, local chapter of the NAACP
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My mistake. Much appreciated.
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Great. You’re really sticking it to institutional racism when you harass a woman who identified with her black adopted siblings after they were all abused by her racist parents. I understand the desire to take any win you can when the right is so ascendant, but this dumb shit is just a moral panic.
While there is of course a diversity of opinion within any community, this reaction from The Root may be illustrative of a perspective not uncommon within Black America:
Or this:
…or you could Google for a thousand similar articles. Or go have a poke at what Black Twitter is saying.
Rachel Dolezal is not Black, and she is not a victim. She is a racist predator.
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Yeah, “identify” my ass; the woman co-opted Blackness just to further her agenda, out of her own sense of opportunism, without suffering any of the oppression and strife that inherently comes with being Black.
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There’s a well-done interview here, BTW:
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Things are so fucking backward. The right is harnessing chaos magick to influence the spectacle while the left is competing to see who can be more fundamentalist. “A POC feels this way so I have to also” is an abdication of agency and a sure sign you can’t be trusted to really have anyone’s back. We’ll all be better off if everyone learns to think critically. Especially when the left has collectively given up on the struggle for liberation and instead settled for viciously enforcing racial essentialism. I got links by POC (not that it matters), too. A systematic, thorough, and devastating dismantling of idpol as a whole can be found here (pdf).
If you want the quick and dirty, here is a piece that sums it up:
Those who either don’t have the courage or accessible inspiration to think for themselves, or who actively promote culture and nationalism always turn to manipulation tactics like shaming and guilting others who refuse to assimilate.
What if I did think about her scammery critically and came to the conclusion that those POC who also deride her scammery are correct in doing so?
You’re not going to convince anyone of anything when you insultingly tell them that the reason they disagree with you is that they’re not thinking critically.
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Rachel Dolezal did not appropriate a hairstyle.
She:
a) Falsely claimed membership in an oppressed class for personal financial advantage, causing harm to the workers she displaced.
b) Falsely claimed expertise in a field in which she is blatantly ignorant, causing harm to her students.
c) Falsely claimed to be racially harassed, causing harm to those who are genuinely harassed.
d) Falsely claimed a racial identity in a manner that causes particular harm to mixed-race Black people, who already have more than enough of that shit to deal with.
It is certainly worthwhile to listen to the views of the Black community on issues such as these, especially on the question of who is or is not Black.
But there is more than enough here to condemn Rachel Dolezal on purely consequentialist ethical grounds. She caused harm to others, on purpose, for personal gain.
I feel no more need to stand in solidarity with Dolezal than I would with a cop who claimed a working class background. Regardless of her own difficulties, she chose to prey on those even more oppressed.
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BTW, a reminder of some of the collateral damage of Dolezal-style nonsense:
This predates the Dolezal scandal by a few months. Y’all think Rachel helped with this sort of thing?
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Thanks, havent heard from Jay in awhile. He’s the bomb (as we used to say).
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I think it is possible to feel some compassion for this troubled woman (and especially her family) while at the same time recognizing that many of her behaviors were unacceptable, offensive, and fraudulent.
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