Will Rachel Dolezal deliver Affirmative Action coup de grâce?
Race as social construct embodied.
If Rachel Dolezal didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent her because she so embodies everything that is wrong with race-based politics and theories so prevalent in Higher Ed.
Dolezal is white. Elizabeth Warren white. As Mark Steyn once put it with regard to Warren, “the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out.”
Warren passed herself off as Native American, but mostly in secret so she could get put on a list of Minority Law Teachers in a 1980s directory used for hiring.
Dolezal was very public in her adoption of a black identity. And she’s standing by it.
Because Dolezal feels black, she says she is. It’s what is called among the campus activist class “lived experience.”
It is a well-worn script:
Rachel Dolezal — fresh off of stepping down as head of the Spokane NAACP chapter over criticism that she’s portrayed herself as black, even though she was born white — stood by that self-assessment Tuesday, insisting, “I identify as black.”
Dolezal did not deny her biological parents are white or that she has changed how she looks at herself over the years in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. And she admitted not having corrected various published reports over the years labeling her as transracial, biracial and black.
At the same time, Dolezal — while admitting she might have conducted some interviews differently — insisted she’d do the same thing again overall when it comes to how she has portrayed herself racially.
“My life has been one of survival,” she said. “And the decisions that I have made along the way have been to survive and to carry forward in my journey and life continuum.”
Put reality aside in this narrative, you are what you feel you are, and race is merely a social construct. So why can’t Dolezal construct herself as she wishes.
That view is more widely accepted than you might think:
Dolezal is disturbing for many people because she marks a cultural fault line. Like it or not, we have entered into an era of elective race — a time when people expect that one has a right and dignity to claim the identity of one’s choice….
As much as critics try to characterize Dolezal’s behavior as a fraudulent choice, sociologists and psychologists know that decisions about racial and ethnic identity are typically not merely expressive, strategic, or apolitical, but are driven by social conditions.
Growing up in a family with black siblings exposed Dolezal to the reality of discrimination and made her more sensitive to its effects. It probably helped her understand the contrast between the reality of black lives and white privilege. Other similar experiences, such as marrying an African-American and having black children, also make white people more sensitive to racism.
Dolezal likely became politically and socially conscious about these issues because of her experiences in an interracial family. In this sense, her parents must be proud of the child they raised….
Dolezal’s case forces us to examine our society, which made her feel that passing for a black woman was her best choice in her advocacy for African American issues. She forces us to consider whether our biology or our action is more important to identity, and should we act in ways that honor our chosen identity in meaningful ways. We should not have to be slaves to the biological definition of identity, and we should not use race or gender identities as weapons to punish one another.
Affirmative action already is under legal pressure because it is racism, albeit with some limited legal sanction in education and elsewhere.
In upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action in higher ed, the Supreme Court wrote:
“Before the Court addresses the question presented, it is important to note what this case is not about. It is not about the constitutionality, or the merits, of race-conscious admissions policies in higher education. The consideration of race in admissions presents complex questions, in part addressed last Term in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 570 U. S. ––– (2013). In Fisher, the Court did not disturb the principle that the consideration of race in admissions is permissible, provided that certain conditions are met. In this case, as in Fisher, that principle is not challenged. The question here concerns not the permissibility of race-conscious admissions policies under the Constitution but whether, and in what manner, voters in the States may choose to prohibit the consideration of racial preferences in governmental decisions, in particular with respect to school admissions.”
* * *
“Perhaps, when enacting policies as an exercise of democratic self-government, voters will determine that racebased preferences should be adopted. The constitutional validity of some of those choices regarding racial preferences is not at issue here. The holding in the instant caseis simply that the courts may not disempower the votersfrom choosing which path to follow.
In what world should Rachel Dolezal benefit from Affirmative Action?
Rachel Dolezal could be Exhibit A in the next push to ban Affirmative Action.
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Comments
How do I know that this woman exists ?
She is merely pixels on my screen.
It I use my mouse to move this story to my Trash, she is now trash.
Just like the Staples ads – “That was easy.”
And if it weren’t for Racial Politics, no one would care one iota how she chooses to be identified. Whether she is lying, profoundly disturbed, or an agent provocateur would be immaterial. She could change her skin tone just as readily as women change their hair color and no one would notice beyond maybe complimenting her on her new look.
So Michael Jackson was white…er….Wright….ugh…right!?
Michael Jackson – Black Or White music video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2AitTPI5U0
Thanks for posting that, I had never seen it before.
In response to @AaronWorthing I sent out a tweet apologizing to the Jackson Five about a reference to Rachel Dolezal.
Better yet:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4XTmqBJLSw
Tommy Lee Davidson never got the credit he deserved.
I don’t know when it fell out of vogue, but I’m gonna cling to the idea that I’m a human being, and that other human beings are…well…human beings.
Rev. Wright may think that black brains are different…he’s been spewing that crap for decades…but I’ll just carry on thinking that people are people, and all grey matter is the same color.
I like simplicity. I hate lies and the people who tell them. They hurt so many people, and our society.
RE: “…I’m gonna cling to the idea that I’m a human being….”
That’s racist! The Democrat Party/Media Complex told me so!
We have truly fallen through the looking glass.
Did we break it?
I’d say more agent orange than agent provocateur.
Rachel Dolezal bio-cloning: Didn’t Gertrude Stein write “The Autobiography of Alice B. Jolson”?
I’m reminded of the South Park episode in which Kyle had negroplasty surgery to become a better basketball player. As usual, Parker & Stone were ahead of the curve by a few years.
Recall RDJ’s character in “Tropic Thunder.” And, in a slightly different vein, “Watermelon Man,” in which a white man awakens one morning to find that he has turned black.
I’d bet that Dolezal and Lizzie Borden Warren are just the tip of the iceberg on these sort of frauds.
I seem to remember a certain Community Organizer and State Senator from Illinois who pretended for over a decade, via his book publishers online bio, to be from Kenya in order to make himself more interesting and sell more books. Either that or he is from Kenya. Either way he’s a liar.
and the knees were made from the testicles of mr garrison who had sex mutilation surgery to try to make himself into a woman.
so that episode really covers all bases.
Didn’t Steve Martin make a movie about “lived experience”?
I’ve been saying since this story broke that the “construct of race” that Dolezal claims to be struggling against is the foundation of everything from affirmative action to “black lives matter.” Destroy the foundation and the entire edifice collapses. Blacks who are today supporting her may come to regret their support once they realize that Ms. Dolezal has hammered a nail into the coffin of legally-sanctioned race-based advantages.
That might be true in a reality-based society.
Unfortunately we live in a trans-reality society.
What would happen if all of us checked the “African American” box any time we were asked?
Think about that. It could work…!!!
Honestly Rags, I think that’s what every conservative, GOP and Tea Party member, etc. ought to mark every time as often as possible. That or Hispanic would do too.
My father’s people are of Dutch extraction. The Netherlands was once the Spanish Low Countries. So, technically, I am of Spanish heritage. However, that makes me of Spanish descent, I must have come from South-of-the-border. I’ve met some really white, blonde people from South-of-the-border.
I once told my students “I don’t tan very well but I do pink really well.” Their objection was my using an adjective as a verb. “Hey”, they said “You con’t use an adjective as a verb!”
“What do you mean?” I replied “I just did. And you understood perfectly the meaning of that sentence.” See, just because we think a thing is this, it might be a that. (My apologies for the pronouning here. I do have a sign in my room that unambiguously states “Death to pronouns. We hates them.”)
(More apologies for the violent imagery, as we really can’t bring the life of a pronoun to an end. I was speaking figuratively, literally.)
And can I include my parrolet Henry as an Africa-American dependent? Just think of the tax money due I could be exempt from.
Henry is from Columbia so he must be Hispanic and he’s practically African-American since Africa is divided by the Equator and Columbia is just north of the Equator.
And, maybe, he’s Cherokee, too, since he wants to go to Harvard as a minority after he claims a victory for an insurance company in an asbestos lawsuit.
Besides Henry tells me wants to be human and black and white and rainbow colored-just a FreeBird.
I check something different every time.
Think about it, Henry.
If we all (or mostly) checked the A-A box, the U.S. would become MAJORITY A-A…!!!
Just that ONE facet would entrain HUGE turmoil in the whole “race” industry. If you think Sharpton gets flustered reading a teleprompter, just imagine…
Delicious…!!!
Dear Legal Peeps, simple-minded confused poster that I am, isn’t this some kind of fraud? Are you setting yourself up for any kind of prosecution? Enquiring minds want to know, cuz its a great plan! I am the kind of person that always follows rules, maybe it’s time for a bold move, like not check the correct box.
Hey, assert your personal dignity! Nobody has the right to tell you who you are in this brave new world!
Nah, Amwick.
It’s called “civil disobedience” and the Democrats Love it!
I saw a video of small kids asked what they want to be when they grow up, which got a lot of answers like “a fire engine,” “a cat,” or “my mommy.” Some people don’t seem to grow up.
I am not a ‘campus activist’.
I call things by their name.
That’s called B.S.
Isn’t that last thing you mentioned what all “campus activists” aspire to be?
In the big picture, vis-a-vis radical progressivism, they seek to erase all the lines that define, well, everything, before they can redraw the lines in pursuit and support of their agenda. It’s post-modernism on steroids: all is malleable, fungible, no lines, no solids; everything is relative to the feelings and beliefs of the progressive, subject to change as well, by the mere will of the progressive.
Hey, this is great. All parents should change their racial designation on the school survey forms to “black,” to qualify their children, and their schools, for enhanced funding.
In California, it’s worth 50 points added to your SAT score for white kids, and 75 for asians (to get rid of the 25-point penalty.)
If all of our kids magically become black, we have a level playing field, again.
She’s also excellent proof of what’s wrong with modern American colleges. You can bee a complete loon and still get a job in any Grievance Studies Department.
I was ahead of my time. I decided when I was ten years old that I was really Chiricahua Apache – don’t ask me why, I think I was in love with Cochise. Or maybe it was Geronimo – I can’t remember, it was 1955 after all. Wonder if I could pull that off today – I do have a horse.
Every child applying to every college should simply identify as “black”. Next year, we’ll have 100% black student bodies across the nation.
That’s called “Progress!”
or Progressivism…one or the other……
Mark Twain once observed that the difference between the truth and fiction is that fiction is restrained by what is plausible while the truth had no such constraints. Not even the Onion could have come up with a story like this.
Twain also wrote The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Very insightful author, that Twain.
A man a pen and money to be made. Clemens was a realist, like Joe Conrad and O. Henry. Greats that left no real successors. The Sinclairs and the Memmingwhos don’t count, nor the Updikeans. That Valley of the Dolls girl, maybe she could be counted.
America was once very literate.
When Hank Aaron, a real gentleman and class act, was closing in on Babe Ruth’s homerun record, a number of White* racists were upset. Little did they realize that the Babe was 1/4 Black. Take another look at his pictures, especially the lips and nose. Once Ty Cobb** was supposed to share a room with him at an All Star event, and protested, he wasn’t “…going to share a room with a n…” But that was baseball’s secret. The Babe was popular and hit homeruns.
*As I revise this before submission, I added “White” because we mustn’t forget that racists come in all colors. For full disclosure, I usually identify as “White”, mainly because “freckled with lots of pink” or “deadfish gray” aren’t on the list of choices. Frequently my tanned arms and face are darker than the corresponding arms of my “Hispanic” students. What’s up with that?
**Cobb was neither a gentleman or a class act. He was rather an aggressive piece of scum who excelled at baseball really well. He was always proud of the fact that he and Ruth entered the Hall of Fame at the same time, and he had more first place votes than Ruth did.
I am a product of evolution and identify as a purple manosaur.
OK, I’ll say it: She only did this so she could hump black men more easily.
“OK, I’ll say it: She only did this so she could hump black men more easily.”
Actually, when it comes to Black-White dating, the data I remember from ages ago was that better than 80% of the couples were Black male with White female. White liberal women take it as a badge of honor to have been with a Black male, and to have borne his child. Somehow I doubt those women have trouble finding the men to volunteer to help with this.
It’s a short-sighted decision they make. One of two things usually happens: 1) she tells him she’s pregnant and he vanishes, or 2) she figures out he’s not going to get a job and dumps him because she’s tired of paying the bills, groceries, utilities, rent, etc. with her paycheck and loaning him her car which she hardly ever sees anymore except when the tank is empty, tired of him laying around and never lifting a finger while she works all day, then shops, cooks and cleans. When she dumps him, he chimps out and puts her in the hospital or her grave because he’s just not going to give up a hard-working white woman. He’s entitled.
Just read your monologue. You couldn’t be more accurate generally (though there are exceptions – several of my friends are). You don’t deserve the down arrow just because you tell the truth so I gave you an up.
BTW< how do you think we got that doofuss in the WH? That's right boys and girls, his momma had a thing for blacks but she didn't want to raise the unplanned punishment. So she gave mister awesome to Grandma to raise.
Was Grandma a racist? No, she was a typical white woman.
Years ago I read a fascinating article about the connection between height and interracial marriage.
In every ethnic group, men are significantly taller than women. Men prefer women shorter than they, and women prefer men taller than they. You probably know several interracial couples, but do you know any couple in which the man is shorter than the woman?
Statistically, African-Americans are taller than whites, and whites are taller than Asians. The article stated that over 70% of black-white couples were black husband/white wife, and over 70% of white-Asian couples were white husband/Asian wife. The thesis was that this bias was not for cultural reasons, but simply because the combination of tall black man/short white woman is statistically far more likely than tall white man/short black woman. Similarly for white/Asian.
Probably not true. This seems to date back to the time 4 black children were adopted by her family.
And she acknowledged she was white till about four years after she and her husband separated. Then, she started disguising herself * and lying about her background.
She did such a good job disguising herself that she must have had some help doing that. There had to have been people who knew and were involved.
* First her hair but then later her skin tone.
Affirmative action was supposed to equalize racism. It didn’t so a new theory had to be created… “white privilege”.
What does “white privilege” bestow on Whites? Since the majority of competition for jobs and positions is amongst White people, there is no advantage. We are talking of “keeping down” … what… 15% of the population a large portion competing for lower level jobs. If White people constituted 15% of the population… such as under apartheid, then the concept has some validity. Same with micro-minority segments of the population…. In main stream America, “white privilege” is of NO value. BUT now days, being a minority pays big dividends.
It should be pretty obvious to all but the grossly obtuse, which is actually a hell of a lot of people, that Dolezal saw an easier time by exchanging her white privilege for the benefits of black privilege. Now she’s paying lip service to what Manchelle calls “our shtruggle” and all the other race mongering memes with the hope that the “African-American” community doesn’t abandon her completely. But the joke is on them, although most of them don’t fully get how and why she’s gotten over on them.
The college where she was teaching some sort of Anger Studies course decided not to renew her contract which was up a week or two ago, and the NAACP dumped her as well. If she can’t worm her way back into their good graces, she’s going to be up the creek without a paddle. She may even have to move into her white parent’s basement in order to keep that teepee she and Lizzy were born in over her head.
Or maybe she and Brian Williams can form an African-American video news service called “Keepin’ It Reel” in which she provides the research about blacks inventing an untold number of useful machines, including egg-beaters, elevators and cell phones as well as their contributions to engineering and science, such as being the real Egyptians, the first Greek mathematicians and having been astronauts 6,000 years ago. Williams can deliver Rachel’s academic research data while regaling us with tales of his adventures in the stratosphere as a ride-along dodging alien predators with them.
They can close each program with, “This is Brian and Rachel, somewhere near a black hole in space, signing off until our next edition of “Keepin’ It Reel.”
AA is an industry. This mediocre woman with no particular skills or talents (have you seen her art? LOL, derivative plagiarism with junior high angst) but attention seeking made sure to live in areas where there are very few blacks and bullied her way into prominence as a small fish in a smaller pond. Bull$hit art, bull$shit jobs, and bull$hit activism. Affirmative action which started out as a means to level the playing field turned into a con long ago. It is past useless now and is objectively harmful. What Obama has made obvious and dangerous this grifter woman has now made ridiculous.
When is species a social construct? I consider myself to be a Vulcan.
Two comments:
1. My family was thrown out of their home by greedy landowners who wanted to put sheep and cows where humans once lived. It’s called the Highland Clearances, look it up.
2. If Rachel Dolezal wants to claim Black status, let her live in a crime filled neighborhood, change from speaking correct English to Ebonics and go on welfare.
The New York Times had a story yesterday that reveals a couple of important things or twists, some of which you have to read between the lines to see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/us/rachel-dolezal-nbc-today-show.html
1. Somebody hired a private detective to expose her, while hiding their role. That’s how she was exposed.
The story was circulating amomng various kinds of media outlets, who supplied the name of her true parents, and when they went to her parents, they told the truth. Probabl;y the private detectve agency first pretended to be reporters and checked to see what they would say, maybe pretending that otherwise they would write some damaging story about them, and when it was clear they would tell the truth, used that as the means of breaking the story. Her parents did not go forward on their own (nor could they have made this a story)
Now this costs money.
This is an even bigger story than Rachel Dolezal. Who, or what organization, was interested in destroying her – not just interested, but willing to invest a large sum of money?
2) Last year, her brother Joshua, published a book about her family: “Down From the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging,”
http://www.amazon.com/Down-Mountaintop-Belonging-Joshua-Dolezal/dp/1609382390/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434612177&sr=8-1&keywords=down+mountaintop+dolezal
He is an English professor at Central College in Iowa.
3) She became black around 2008. She first changed her hair style and then the color of her skin ad the skin color change caused a neighbor to think at first it was different person.
Now where did she get the expertise to do that? She claims to have been doing her hair all by herself and even to have done some free lance work. Now the Daily News reported that about 10% of the customers of someone who does black hair styles are white or Latina. So that’s something known. But where are the people who specialize in skin color changing?
4) She kidnapped her youngest adopted brother, Izaiah, about five years ago. I suspect to bolster her story.
Incidentally, she might have invented the sexual abuse story against her brother as part of an effort to keep custody – this would undermine the credibility of any testimony he might give.
5) Like many fabrications by women, it starts with something that is true, and just imagines something different. Rachel Dolezal claimed to have been born iona tepee. Her parents did live in a tepee for about a year (as part of a back to nature/communal Christian/survivalist drive) but before either she or her brother were born She claimed to have lived in South Africa. Her parents did live in South Africa for awhile after she was a grown up.
6) She’s been making false complaints to police since at least 2005. But in the earliest ones, in 2005, she was white. By 2009, she was black.
7) She took to the 4 children her parents adopted when she was 15 to 17, very strongly. This probably is the root cause if her interest in blacks and black culture and in her TODAY interview on Tuesday, Rachel Dolezal even seems to have admitted that, saying she thought who was going to be the link between these children and her family.
8) She went to a Christian college in Mississippi and adopted a (black?) Mississippi minister and his wife as surrogate parents (not her eventual black father)
She married somebody black named Moore in 2000, gave birth to a son in 2002, just days after she got a Masters degree in Fine arts in 2002 from Howard University (she did not get a scholarship, but she sued claiming that Howard University didn’t give her one figuring she had white relatives who could pay her tuition) and separated in 2004, when she went to live temporarily with her uncle, who was the only link to the rest of her family.
The investigator is almost certainly for the white natural brother of Rachel who she has assisted in accusing of sexual abuse of an adopted sister who reputedly has Reactive Attachment Disorder from PRIOR to being adopted. These parents had natural kids at home when they decided to give their time, attention and resources to black adopted children. Instead of Rachel. Drama and being black gets attention. And she is still angry with her parents for doing that to her. This is a simplistic but basic explanation of the family dynamic.
Actually, she is Indian. Elizabeth Warren Indian. She is what Elizabeth Warren pretended to be!
Amazing.
Martin Luther King Jr was a white man by this modern measure. Not only is one the gender or race that one wills, anyone one thinks of becomes what one wishes to think of them. And what is wished is truth.
For example many Real Blacks ™ wishedClarence Thomas into the White Race, and now that is True ™. Because that’s the way it is ™.
What I get from reading all this ( I quote from Little Big man) ” I have this strange pain in my head”
liked the Watermelon Man reference I just can’t think of any from ” The Jerk”
[looking through the new phone book] [stops riffing pages; jumps up yelling and screaming] “I’m in here. I’m somebody.”
[quote is not exact. too lazy to go fetch accurate one]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7aIf1YnbbU
More:
While Rachel Dolezal resigned from her NAACP leadership position, and her appointment to a teaching position at the college has expired, she is still Chair of the Spokaane Police Obmudsman position. Mayor David Condon wants her (and two others) to resign.
There was a separate investigation going into her tenure on the commission besides the one about what she put on the application form. The report was released yesterday.
She and two others are accused of breaching their duty to keep identifying informationn confidential. aAnd not only that:
They altered the minutes of meetings
And their conduct was biased against the police. In one incident, about police camera training she asked if all the suspects in the training scenario were black. No, she was told, they were all white! Flustered she turned her body away from the officers and busied herself with her cellphone.
She also had pretended to work as a model and took some pictures around 2012 which she put on her web page to “prove” it.
She used spray tan applied by a tanning salon.
Ooookay. After all that foolishness, I expect a sex tape to follow…
You will not have long to wait.
Her ex-husband made her do it while abusing her she says. I guess he also made her do all those semi-nude “glamor” shoots in beads and weaves since she divorced him. She had to use the child support from him for something I guess. She also now claims to be bi-sexual. OK. TMI. My favorite part of her antics at the police commission advising and investigating mistreatment and harassment of blacks in Spokane is that she was the one mistreating and harassing city employees as documented by a lawyer hired to investigate HER! This woman’s psychological projection is off the charts. And of course she went to Oakland for radical movement training paid for by the citizens of Spokane so she could mail herself hate mail. Her brother’s defense investigator found a Pandora’s box of loony and dysfunction.