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Rachel Dolezal Back in the News


Black Aliss

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On 2/28/2017 at 1:15 PM, Terrie said:

I'm not comfortable comparing her situation to people who actually are part of a minority but can pass, even indirectly. I've known people, such as bi people in opposite gender relationships or biracial people whose appearance favors their white parent, who have really struggled with the conflict of their identity vs. how they are perceived by society. I have one biracial friend who made a very deliberate choice to start using his full name, including his very obviously hispanic middle name, because he felt like he was giving up his connection with his Mexican mother and her side of his family when people pegged him as white based on his very WASP-y first and last name that he inherited from his white father. Even when it really is his identity and his community, it's a source of tension between him and his brother who takes much more after their mother and would never be pegged as white. Both guys get what the issues are and why they are issues and it's still tough for them both to figure out what the "right" thing is.

Meanwhile, Ms. Dolezal doesn't seem to care about anything beyond herself.

I feel the same way. My mom, though raised and identified completely as black, is so light-skinned that people often take her to be white or Asian. She has never tried to pass as anything but black, but when people assess you for your race, they look at your skin color and hair without taking into account the genetic lottery most of us have to deal with. One thing I found interesting about the Rachel Dolezal case was that no one seemed to question why the US defines blackness in such a way that one can "look white" but still be classified as black due to the one drop rule. To my knowledge, no other country defines blackness in this way, not even South Africa, which shares our collective obsession with racial classification and segregation.

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Per many online news sources this morning, she has legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, which translates to "gift of God."

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29 minutes ago, Marian the Librarian said:

Per many online news sources this morning, she has legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, which translates to "gift of God."

OFFS! So now instead of pretending to be African-American, she's pretending to be American-African? For the record, google translate partially recognizes the phrase as Igbo, but says it means "Buckle Amare Diallo". And "gift of God" translates to Igbo "onyinye Chineke". I think, though, that she is onto something. If she emigrates to Nigeria, she will probably have an easier time finding work.

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2 hours ago, Cleopatra7 said:

I feel the same way. My mom, though raised and identified completely as black, is so light-skinned that people often take her to be white or Asian. She has never tried to pass as anything but black, but when people assess you for your race, they look at your skin color and hair without taking into account the genetic lottery most of us have to deal with. One thing I found interesting about the Rachel Dolezal case was that no one seemed to question why the US defines blackness in such a way that one can "look white" but still be classified as black due to the one drop rule. To my knowledge, no other country defines blackness in this way, not even South Africa, which shares our collective obsession with racial classification and segregation.

Thinking about the one drop rule can lead to uncomfortable conversations, since at least in my understanding, it's a creation and outgrowth of slave-owning society. If you can't call someone black no matter what their appearance, you can't keep raping your slaves and still claiming the children as property. Plus it allowed owners to have ever-so-refined looking slaves as household staff to serve at parties and keep African-looking ones out in the fields.

It reminds me of the Nazi's careful parsing of degrees of Jewishness--one Jewish grandparent was enough to send you to the camps.

One of my daughters is multiracial and identifies as such. If she doesn't have a multiracial or "other" category on ethnicity questionnaires, she leaves them blank. So imagine her surprise when she saw some personnel documents from her job recently and found they had assigned her African-American as an ethnicity. She's never tried to avoid being black among other things, but it's important to her to be acknowledged having multiple racial identities. (She also got more than tired as a kid of being teased about being "light, bright, damned near white.")

Has anyone read "The Color of Water," by James McBride. His mother married a black man, raised 12 children in black neighborhoods and refused to discuss her background in any way. McBride was an adult before he learned that she had been raised as an Orthodox Jew and rebelled against her abusive father. I found the book an engrossing exploration of race and family.

 

 

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1 hour ago, older than allosaurs said:

Has anyone read "The Color of Water," by James McBride. His mother married a black man, raised 12 children in black neighborhoods and refused to discuss her background in any way. McBride was an adult before he learned that she had been raised as an Orthodox Jew and rebelled against her abusive father. I found the book an engrossing exploration of race and family.

 

 

Loved that book!

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On 2/28/2017 at 4:34 AM, Terrie said:

Her lying disgusts me, but no one should be homeless.

I agree, no one deserves to be homeless, especially not her poor kids, who didn't ask to be born to this nutcase of a woman. I also agree that her lying is disgusting, but another part of me reads the reports about her continuing to identify as black, and being unable to find work and I think to myself, "Aren't black people statistically more likely to be rejected for jobs? Aren't black people statistically more likely to face poverty, and be at risk for homelessness?" So she wants to be a black person, but wants to keep her white privlege, and I'm thinking, "Nope, sorry Charlie! If you're going to identify as a black person, you've got to take the good along with the bad."

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On 2/27/2017 at 7:07 PM, Glasgowghirl said:

Same here, she should have been honest and said she was white but felt trapped in black persons body, people may not have understood but she wouldn't have faced the backlash she got. 

ITA but OTOH way back when, at her age and with her background, it would've been just short of miraculous if she'd had the presence of mind and composure to express herself so well. That she didn't think to do it later doesn't surprise me; at what point could she have felt safe in admitting to her DNA?

I hope she can get to her feet and become self-supporting.  I also hope her parents have a huge wave of self-awareness and realize what assholes they've been and continue to be. 

But if I could only hope for one, it would be for Rachel.  Much rather have her life improved, and there's a much better chance of it happening, than of her parents having any amount of remorse. 

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5 hours ago, TeamDefraudinSquad said:

I"Aren't black people statistically more likely to be rejected for jobs? Aren't black people statistically more likely to face poverty, and be at risk for homelessness?"

Yes, especially when they can't find work because they've been charged with a crime (Dolezal wasn't) or fired, especially from a high profile job like the Dolezal she had with the city council.

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On 2/27/2017 at 2:22 PM, Black Aliss said:

It's a fascinating read mainly because RD is a composite of so many of the QFOS subjects from the Nauglers to the Pearls to the adopters who save black children for the lord. From her unattended home birth to the modest clothing, growing up foraging and helping maintain the homestead, having the devil beaten out of her, raising her 4 younger adopted siblings after her mother took to bed with self-diagnosed CFS. . .You get the picture. Add in a generous helping of patriarchy, and I'm actually at the point of feeling sorry for RD.

 

This.  When her story first broke, I was appalled.  She had made an impressive career off of pretenses she took pains to present...and taken jobs and positions that should rightly have gone to members of the community she was appropriating.  But then I read more about her past, her fucked up parents, their adoptions and the whole problematic family structure.  Now I just think she needs as whole lot of help.  I also think it's tricky when intelligence and mental illness combine -- sometimes people will use their intellect to justify everything they do and pretend that they don't need any kind of help or therapy whatsoever, because all their problems stem from other people and their actions. Not trying to armchair diagnose anyone, but I don't think she's entirely sound.  Reading the article, she doesn't appear to have really grasped the emotional responses of those she hurt, either; accepting responsibility seems difficult for her.    

There are parts I understand, though. I'm a white American, and lord knows I'd love to be able to separate myself from the politics of privilege and oppression.  But that can't be accomplished by lying or pretending to be someone else.  She needs a different strategy.

Thanks for The Color of Water recommendation!  I just ordered it and am excited for its arrival.  Sounds fascinating. 

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I know Rachel's parents are Young Earthers (or something like that) but is there much evidence, other than what Rachel has been saying, that they were actually abusive?  Or are they just ultra Fundie, very strict disciplinarians, and speak in tongues (per the bio brother Joshua's memoir)?

Rachel's tapestry of lies makes me doubt everything she says.

Certainly the family looks like a tangled dysfunctional Fundie mess.  I don't take the parents' story at face value either, and she did get custody of one of her siblings.  

However, the sexual abuse charges against Joshua (her bio brother) were dropped with prejudice.  And her parents claim that she manipulated those charges.

Ezra, one of the African-American siblings, wasn't exactly supportive of her either.

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She reminds me of assholes in the trans community who put in no effort to pass beyond maybe some lipstick (as in they don't even shave their faces properly) specifically so they can scream at people when they're 'misgendered', claim that you don't need dysphoria to be trans (in other words, being trans is a choice they made) and appropriate womens' struggles and claim they know more about what it's like to be female and/or feminist than women who have lived that way every single day of their lives.

I completely believe that a trans woman can speak truthfully about feminism and their personal experiences with being female just like a person of a different race can understand and speak about minority racial issues, but these people are like Rachel and are talking over people who deserve to be heard and refuse to acknowledge that they cannot possibly understand the issues they're talking about the way someone born female/trans/black ect can.

I knew about her fundie background from the start because she mentioned having conservative Christian parents many times, but I'm more inclined to believe she read up on ex-fundie experiences and appropriated them than I am to believe her. It seems like she's going through the checklist of fundie abuses like Razing Ruth did.

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6 hours ago, Palimpsest said:

I know Rachel's parents are Young Earthers (or something like that) but is there much evidence, other than what Rachel has been saying, that they were actually abusive?  Or are they just ultra Fundie, very strict disciplinarians, and speak in tongues (per the bio brother Joshua's memoir)?

Given what we know about patriarchal homeschoolers who adopt internationally to "save" children at any cost, being very strict disciplinarians could very well mean they were abusive.  Homeschoolers Anonymous used to have information from people who'd known the family growing up, but it seems they've taken down some of that content due to the sensitivity of the issue.  They didn't want to appear to be offering apologies for her behavior. From what I recollect of the story at the time, several witnesses from other homeschooling families remember the parents are very strict and physical (occasionally public) disciplinarians.   Patheos has this: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/lets-talk-about-rachel-dolezals-parents.html

The Homeschoolers Anonymous statement: https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2015/06/18/statement-concerning-our-rachel-dolezal-coverage/

The comments are interesting here, though the original article seems to be removed: https://homeschoolersanonymous.org/2015/06/17/heres-what-joshua-dolezal-wrote-about-his-and-rachel-dolezals-christian-fundamentalist-upbringing/

The truth is difficult to find here, but the parents seem to have all the ingredients for an isolated fundie horror show.  There are certainly some incredible problems between the parents and the adult children.  

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14 hours ago, amandaaries said:

The truth is difficult to find here, but the parents seem to have all the ingredients for an isolated fundie horror show.  There are certainly some incredible problems between the parents and the adult children.

Yes, the truth is very hard to find.  Rachel has cried wolf too often and I needed independent witnesses.

Many thanks for the links to HA.  It just goes to show how the practiced liars like Razing Ruths and Rachels can cause havoc in really good organizations.  

I think HA managed to handle that very well.  Unlike NLQ. 

I

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I would believe Dolezal a bit more if all her siblings verified her stories.  One sibling does, but she's estranged from the rest - including Black siblings. 

But this is the risk of lying over, and over, and over - especially with her background of suing her college for race discrimination for her being white as the really weird 'gotcha!'.  I just can't believe anything she says, because why would she lie about SO much else, but be perfectly truthful about this one aspect?

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10 minutes ago, Palimpsest said:

Yes, the truth is very hard to find.  Rachel has cried wolf too often and I needed independent witnesses.

Many thanks for the links to HA.  It just goes to show how the practiced liars like Razing Ruths and Rachels can cause havoc in really good organizations.  

I think HA managed to handle that very well.  Unlike NLQ. 

I wish there were more info still out there.  I read as much as possible when the story broke, really trying to process WTF was going on.  From what I recollect (but from articles I can no longer find), most of the adult children had separated from the parents and all recalled strict-to-the-point-of-violent childhoods.  There was a lot of intra-family drama; some members were willing to disclose issues to the press, and some were not.  A very negative picture was painted.

I believe one or more of the Homeschoolers Anonymous articles included quotes from other previously homeschooled people from the same part of Montana or in similar religious circles.  IIRC, someone remembered the parents kicking the shit out of some of the kids in a parking lot at some point, in front of a number of witnesses.  There were some other witnesses, as well, though that was one of the most memorable. The parents seemed to be following in the footsteps of the Pearls and their abominable methods.    

It's horrible, though, that her credibility is so shaky...yet she has only herself to thank for that.  I find her lies disconcerting, as it is difficult to discern her grasp of the truth and its value (much like a certain horrific sorta-elected person in office these days).  It's hard to ever improve and heal if one cannot acknowledge problems and issues, lies and truth.  I think she needs a lot of time with a really good therapist.  

8 minutes ago, Lurky said:

I would believe Dolezal a bit more if all her siblings verified her stories.  One sibling does, but she's estranged from the rest - including Black siblings. 

Well, almost all the rest.  Having read up on some of the results of these transracial, transnational adoptions by evangelical Christians, a splintered family in adulthood seems par for the course.  Differing accounts regarding treatment and punishments vary, as these accounts seem to do in these situations. In the family, Isaiah has been informally adopted by her, and Esther supports her, though the other brothers seem to side with the parents (or at least against Rachel, or whatever her new name is): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/17/esther-dolezal-rachel-dolezals-black-adopted-sister-posts-message-of-support-online/?utm_term=.7701d9f12429

Hiding pedantic grammatical correction here. My apologies, but I just have to: 

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15 hours ago, amandaaries said:

From what I recollect of the story at the time, several witnesses from other homeschooling families remember the parents were very strict and physical (occasionally public) disciplinarians.  

 

 

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Many thanks, @amandaaries.  That was incredibly helpful.

4 minutes ago, amandaaries said:

 Having read up on some of the results of these transracial, transnational adoptions by evangelical Christians, a splintered family in adulthood seems par for the course.

My god, yes.  It is criminal.  Above Rubies is a classic example.  Kathryn Joyce is a good source (but you probably already know that.)

I tend to focus on Ethiopian adoptions gone bad, but there is so much evidence that the Evangelical adoption frenzy had dire results.  Countries are now closed to international adoption because of the abuse and homicides that became public.  There are probably many that have never been identified. 

Some Pearl followers (and the evangelical ilk) are still adopting, abusing, rehoming, and complaining.  

Adoption reform is lagging so far behind.  It is a disgrace.

 

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On 3/2/2017 at 11:44 AM, older than allosaurs said:

Thinking about the one drop rule can lead to uncomfortable conversations, since at least in my understanding, it's a creation and outgrowth of slave-owning society. If you can't call someone black no matter what their appearance, you can't keep raping your slaves and still claiming the children as property. Plus it allowed owners to have ever-so-refined looking slaves as household staff to serve at parties and keep African-looking ones out in the fields.

It reminds me of the Nazi's careful parsing of degrees of Jewishness--one Jewish grandparent was enough to send you to the camps.

One of my daughters is multiracial and identifies as such. If she doesn't have a multiracial or "other" category on ethnicity questionnaires, she leaves them blank. So imagine her surprise when she saw some personnel documents from her job recently and found they had assigned her African-American as an ethnicity. She's never tried to avoid being black among other things, but it's important to her to be acknowledged having multiple racial identities. (She also got more than tired as a kid of being teased about being "light, bright, damned near white.")

Has anyone read "The Color of Water," by James McBride. His mother married a black man, raised 12 children in black neighborhoods and refused to discuss her background in any way. McBride was an adult before he learned that she had been raised as an Orthodox Jew and rebelled against her abusive father. I found the book an engrossing exploration of race and family.

 

 

I read that book, it was an excellent read. I have been called light, bright, almost white (except my hair). The one drop rule  had an economic basis. No inheritence for these "black" children. When I went to a competitive university where blacks were not even ten percent of the student body, the first year was so hard. I could not wait until I could go back to my all black community where I was born  and raised, and  be comfortable. I never felt or identified as anything other than black, although I surely have white blood in me.  How could Dolezal claim a culture she had no experience living in? Sorry for rambling, this is an important topic to me.

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41 minutes ago, SilverBeach said:

I read that book, it was an excellent read. I have been called light, bright, almost white (except my hair). The one drop rule  had an economic basis. No inheritence for these "black" children. When I went to a competitive university where blacks were not even ten percent of the student body, the first year was so hard. I could not wait until I could go back to my all black community where I was born  and raised, and  be comfortable. I never felt or identified as anything other than black, although I surely have white blood in me.  How could Dolezal claim a culture she had no experience living in? Sorry for rambling, this is an important topic to me.

I don't think that's a ramble, and it's good for me and others to hear. That's been a hard thing for my daughters, adopted with white parents and raised in a mostly white area. I know they have struggled with feeling they have the "right" to claim black culture when they didn't grow up in it. When we were raising them, I told myself that their contact with birthfamily was enough. And no question it has helped. Looking back now, I think we should have moved. On the other hand, they grew up hearing that anything they chose to do was a "black" (or multiracial) thing to do, simply because they were doing it. Seeing the range of their interests and avocations makes me really happy.

Adoptive parents who think it's good enough to just say "We don't see color" fill me with frustrated rage. 

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I keep coming back to this, because all the excuses about a shitty childhood in the world don't justify what she did.  It's the stealing jobs from actual Black people, the lying about hate crimes, which increased community tension and meant that other people reporting hate crimes got a different reception, and telling Hispanic and mixed race students that they weren't black enough to understand (!!!) and all that bullshit, that really hurts people, that kills me.

Like I said upthread, if she'd "just" lived a life pretending to be Black, but doing unconnected jobs, I dunno, teaching English at a uni or whatever, I'd feel very different.  But she didn't just pretend to be Black, she did so. so much more.

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She comes across as a bit unhinged. She just really, really, really wanted to be a victim and play the victim and cry wolf on behalf of victims.

All the negative attention is probably making it worse, now she has additional "cause" to be a victim some more.

I can only hope she seeks professional help and... grows up, for lack of a better word. A shitty childhood does not make you a professional victim.

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  • 1 year later...

Resurrecting this topic after watching the Dolezal documentary on Netflix: The Rachel Divide.

I wish it had explored her fundie roots more and how that might have played into her desire to take on a whole new persona. A lot of people reinvent themselves, but Rachel took it to a whole new level. It was heartbreaking to watch the social impact her deception had on her family, especially her sons, and seeing a new baby thrown into the drama left me with a feeling of dread. I flipflopped between feeling sorry for Rachel and wanting strangle her--I can't imagine how the filmmakers felt. 

Has anyone else watched this?

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