Rachel Dolezal

[TheSnowFairy]

DH and I have been watching this story unfold with interest.

Is she delusional? Or trying to make a difference and feels she can only do so from 'within'?

We think you cannot choose to be black if you were born white - AWBU?

Her voice is ultra-Caucasian, too.
There's some discussion online from African Americans admiring how well she did the hair.
I went to school with a blonde blue eyed AA person (who looked truly AA and had hair texture to match). My schoolmate also had an AA voice. Why make so much effort on the hair but not get the voice right? Tsk tsk.

I read that her hairdresser must have known the truth (unless she did it herself).

she has fabricated a whole life that is the difference and sold her story of her suffering racial abuse because she is a black woman

that is very different from someone wishing to change sex as they have never felt comfortable the sex they are

being a trans woman does not make you a women, you may identify yourself as a women but you have not experienced life as a female from birth so the experience is different

i would feel the same if a transwoman was running a support group for woman and claiming to be a woman, or rather not being honest about being a transwoman

I find this a really weird one when I think about it.

I'm mixed-race African/English and adopted into a British family as a baby. White neighbourhood, very white private schooling, vast majority of my friends and all boyfriends have been white throughout my life.

I've now married a white DH and my two kids have come out white, blond hair, blue eyed. When I have to fill out forms about their ethnicity I really have NO idea what to put - they look totally white but I don't want to completely ignore their African genes. Even though I myself feel more white than anything else.

Just a big old mess I think. She shouldn't have lied about her parentage but I can completely relate to not feeling like what is on the outside.

Phenomenology - no one else can ever understand our inner reality or how we choose to relate to the world. Its not about deception its about being true to ones self

Wildrumpy I am in an almost identical situation, I'm mixed race (British and black British) and have a blond haired blue eyed DS and often get mistaken for the nanny
I put the same for his ethnicity as I would for mine-mixed black and white British

Freudians fantastic post

I think this woman explains it perfectly
www.upworthy.com/a-black-trans-woman-explains-changing-gender-vs-changing-race?c=ufb1

She will be drowning in litigation soon. That student that lost out on the scholarship she got on the basis of ethnicity: they have a case.

one can be true to oneself

and be honest with others

I suppose that Rachael has a certain amount in common with Michael Jackson.

I find it sad that it should matter whether someone is black or white.

m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33152596

latest from the BBC

YANBU some people's outsides don't match their insides. she is trans racial as catelyn jenner is transsexuals.

which was in itself a notion that was mocked and denied for decades until real research was conducted

get on the right side of history

Transrace? Now I've heard everything.

Whites will now feel Ok to 'identify' as a non white race and appropriate the culture. Non whites will never be accepted as white.

Check. Your. Privilege.

Stop appropriating our cultures and even colours. You've done enough fucking damage.

And stop bringing transgender into it. What a stupid fucking comparison.

Transrace = new accepted term for race appropriation. It can fuck off too.

I may be slightly on edge today

I am sure transrace will in time become accepted

Even if appearance is changed and they become a different race their experience is not from that race so is different but it is what they identify with. though I wonder what it is the suffering, the feeling of not being accepted the desire to be different none if these or all of these

I identify as Royal.

Yeah, like people with black skin can suddenly decide they feel white inside and pouf their experience of living as a black person disappears.

Not.

Wasn't there a case historically of a British-born man who passed himself off as Native American and became an author?

She's transracial. The whole thing is similar, really, if this is a "mental illness" it an identity disorder, which I remember trans people used to be considered "ill" with - and don't give me that nonsense that a person can't change race as a privileged person and understand what it means to be black, when that's exactly what any other trans person does when they adopt a gender they did not have to live. If anything, if this proud black woman (uk terminology, sorry) has lived as such, and is campaigning against the racism and the privilege, people can't even pretend she doesn't understand these things exist or treat them with adequate seriousness. There is also this assumption of dishonesty, but which person knows she is being dishonest, and does not genuinely identify as she says?

The arguments and slurs people presume to utter about what another person identifies as, are the same kinds of arguments and slurs, and really there is an undercurrent of transphobia to the way people talk about this.

I'm unsure if he is mentally unwell or just a complete cow that has woven a web of lies for her own personal benefit.

What does surprise me though is that she ever 'passed' for black. She looks like an essex girl with a horrific fake tan, not a black or ethnic person. My guess is people were too "PC" to ever raise the issue and she got stuck in a situation where lying by omission led to more and more lies having to be told.

The fake stories she told about her made up black father being chased out of the 'deep south' are racial aggravation IMO.

I think with both transcolour issue and transgender issue highlights the privilege that we do not want to talk about

White person wants to be identified as being black and tells black people they are and they feel black

Man identifies themselves as being a woman has surgery, presents themselves as a woman and tells other women they are a real woman

Both in position of privilege - I can tell you how you feel claim to
feel how you feel because somewhere in my subconscious I am aware i am placed in a better position in society to make those decisions despite never really having to think about the difficulties faced as they themselves have not faced them but in their own internal world are struggling with different issues

I am less touchy feely, myself - I think she's got a bloody cheek, she is a massive insult to ethnic minority people, and looks like Old Greg.