Before and after
The scenario is somewhat impossible to fathom.
But it happened. And it has been discussed throughout regional and even national news outlets.
We will address it briefly because…we are still shaking our heads and there is always the need to discuss how we identify…well…identity.
Rachel Dolezal, 37 years old, from Spokane served as NAACP President for the Spokane Washington chapter, presenting herself as an African American. She was proclaimed “one of the Inland Northwest’s most prominent civil rights activists,” according to the Spokesman-Review.
But she was in fact, white. Her parents attested to that in the rash of news about the controversy.
“She’s clearly our birth daughter, and we’re clearly Caucasian — that’s just a fact,” Lawrence A. Dolezal said in an interview from his home in Montana on Friday. “She is a very talented woman, doing work she believes in.
Why can’t she do that as a Caucasian woman, which is what she is?” Ms. Dolezal did not respond to numerous phone calls, emails or knocks on her door in Spokane, Wash., on Friday And you can also take a look at the photographs and then stop shaking your head in disbelief.
We’ve discussed issues of “Westernizing” our physical appearance, but what do you call it when you “minoritize” yourself?
But there is something to be considered when you want to label yourself as other than white.
And when you get to the point where you have to label yourself as “other.”
There is a difference in taking advantage of checking the minority box on application forms for financial or personal gain. Was there that intention?
What we need to evaluate is what was the real motivation.
Did Rachel Dolezal truly identify with the race she wanted to portray?
That is probably what should be addressed. (end)