Splicetoday

Politics & Media
Jun 15, 2015, 08:49AM

Transracial Is Not the Same as Transgender

The Rachel Dolezal story is just more white supremacy.

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After months of discussing police brutality against African-Americans in the mainstream media, race has once again re-centered around the experiences of white people. Rachel Dolezal, head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP and a professor in the African-American Studies department at Eastern Washington University, has come under fire after revelations that the white woman has misrepresented herself as black for at least a decade. While the outrage is certainly understandable, much of the dialogue isn’t productive or illuminating.

The timing of this controversy is unfortunate. An astounding number of commenters have drawn connections between Dolezal's conscious fraud and the recent public disclosure of Caitlyn Jenner's gender identity. 

The issue may seem complicated, but it really isn't. Accepting transgender people as the gender they identify as doesn’t mean we must accept anyone who claims an identity they were not assigned at birth. Race is not gender. Race is hereditary, while gender is a complex concept involving one's identity and the way someone feels on the inside.

Claiming to "feel" black as Dolezal does is a function of white supremacy and isn’t particularly new. During the Harlem Renaissance, a number of individuals, mostly women, considered themselves "voluntary negroes." What makes this meaningless is that black identity has a distinct history of marginalization and threats of violence associated with it. The mere fact that a white person claiming black identity can return to his or her white status along with all of the associated perks and privileges at any time voids any professed understanding of blackness and what it means to be African-American.

Transgender people do not have a choice. If they transition, it’s to feel closer to what their actual identity has been since birth. Equating the two is offensive and shows a lack of understanding of both race and gender. They have completely different histories and cultural and social implications.

Some have expressed sympathy for Dolezal, reasoning that anyone who would carry on this sort of charade for so long must be mentally disturbed. But she’s fully responsible for her actions as an adult. Co-opting a black identity in order to gain access to black spaces is yet another part of white supremacy. She's not conducting herself in this way because she honestly "feels black,” but because as a white person with a serious black culture fetish, she thinks she deserves room in these spaces. In a few weeks, the name Rachel Dolezal may no longer be in the public consciousness, but white people will, by and large, continue to feel entitled to every part of the black experience aside from the actual oppression that faces actual black people. 

Discussion
  • Really good piece. I disagree though about the statement, "...but white people will, by and large, continue to feel entitled to every part of the black experience aside from the actual oppression that faces actual black people." I don't see white people suddenly jumping on the "let's be black" bandwagon. Although I do think that if more whites understood the black experience better there'd be a lot less hate and a lot more understanding. And by understanding there are a lot better ways to understand than passing oneself off as something they are not. If Rachel Dolezal felt a connection to black culture, I think it's great, but to portray herself as an African American was wrong. The people she represented, the people who trusted her, looked to her for guidance believed she was one of them, that she had fought the same fight and struggled through the same crap as they did. But she didn't. She saw the world through a white person's eyes because that's who she was. And all her life until this charade, she was seen as white and treated as such. She may care a great deal about the plight of African Americans but there were ways to help and it didn't require passing herself off as someone she's not, lying about experiences and struggles that never happened, lying about a man who isn't her father, a sibling who isn't her son. She's tainted everything she's ever done for the cause. And it sucks. She would've been better off being a proud white woman standing up for a cause she truly believed in. At least she'd still have her self-respect.

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  • "The mere fact that a white person claiming black identity can return to his or her white status along with all of the associated perks and privileges at any time voids any professed understanding of blackness and what it means to be African-American." Guess you never heard of the human trait called empathy. By your reckoning, a white person can never feel the pain of racism, never feel persecuted or marginalized, and never feel threatened because of their race. Seems a rather shallow take on the human condition. I know little about this woman and neither defend nor attack her unknown motives. It just strikes me that if one race can't empathize with another race, then all hope for a civil multi-racial society is gone.

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  • Dolezal's family says their daughter is estranged from them and did this to hurt them. I wonder if they could be right, or is this just a straight case of white supremacy regardless of their opinion?

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  • What might be embarrassing for the Spokane chapter is that they figured a white person was the best for the exec position. As to transing races, Asian applicants at top-tier unis are trying to appear white. And faking black will get you moved up several levels. If you couldn't make the physical requirements for the FDNY, you can trans to woman--without the surgery, presumably--and get a waiver. This is all complicated, mostly because if you do it right, you can make out like a bandit.

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