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?

What does it mean to 'feel black'? I don't understand what she means when she says that.

(and I feel like a supermodel but I'm going to pass for one in this lifetime!)

And her lips... or nose. Why not change them, too
I mean people who want to live trans-gender normally acquire or remove breasts as the top priority, they need to look the part to be the part.
Bruce Jenner had LOADS of work done to change his jaw line before becoming Caitlyn (I find his facial changes disturbing, if I'm honest).

RD has only made a half-assed effort.

I'm guessing that as with people who desperately want to belong to the other sex that it is not so much that she 'feels' black but that she wanted to be black. She portrayed herself as mixed race, which can include a whole range of appearances as people have already stated in this thread. I know mixed race people who are very dark and mixed race people who are very light, some with Caucasian features and some with very Afro features.

I can see how someone could easily pass as politically black, and RD is proof of that. I wonder if she felt her parents loved her black adopted siblings more than her and that was the root of her very early identification with them. It certainly sounds like a very dysfunctional family.

Alternatively she could have a fantasist thing going on. I worked with someone who was a fantasist and she genuinely believed the things she invented (I even watched the process at work, when someone complained that she was bullying her and by the end of the meeting she was utterly convinced she was herself the victim). I don't think she was at all well in herself, and it sounds very much as if RD is a very unhappy person.

On the plus side it also sounds as if she has mostly used her appropriation to do good things, although perhaps that is just a veneer.

It's not the same as transgender and its ridiculous ro compare her to Bruce/Caitlin Jenner. Caitlin Jenner is not pretending she was always a woman, has not faked a parent who will vouch for the fact she was always a woman, nor is a spokes person for women or on the struggles girls and women face.

The fact is she lied, she made a huge series of lies up. She has claimed to have been a victim of racisit as a white person (against her university) and then as an black woman in recent years.

She speaks about struggles she has never had. It's wrong. Of Caitlin Jenner started talking about how she struggled with puberty as a female, I am sure most people would agree, that she doesn't know what it's like because she has never lived it.

Well, she's denied her parents are her parents, accused them of abuse and now tells us she's bisexual.

She is trying to join every minority group going.

funnyossity yep, Grey Owl. He was from Hastings.

Thank you Sister, that explains why googling Grey Wolf got me nowhere!

I thought you could choose your own ethnicity because it's about how you perceive yourself - at least that's what we've been told at work with regard to freedom of information requests. We don't record the ethnicity of school pupils because it's subjective, but do record nationality because it's a kind of legal status.

I never quite know what to put for the ethnicity of my sons.

I also find it interesting that Obama is seen as the first black president of the USA when he's mixed race, and wonder if he'd be a 'white' president in Kenya?

Here is the thing that is bothering me about this whole thing, being transgendered is a genetic thing. Having the thoughts and feelings of a different gender to your biology. Transgender presupposes that there is a real difference between male and female and I don't have a problem with that. I can see the evidence for it. It is a clear "thing".

Transracial presupposes that there is a biological differences between the races and that is my problem because I don't believe there is. There are physical characteristics influenced by localised evolutionary pressure but fundamentally people are people. I just can't accept that a white person can be born into a black body or a black person born into a Chinese body etc etc.

I think you can have an affinity for certain cultures and this woman may feel most comfortable in the black community but that does not make her black or Transracial. It makes her a person who likes black culture more than her historical culture.

I think she has deep hurts and sees herself as someone special who needs special attention, even nurturing, because people have been nasty or she hasn't received what she needed in life. To someone with these needs, becoming a leading figure as a black woman must have been a great way of getting what she needed and wanted. It's a not normal thing to do and she's clearly trying to justify it now with paper-thin excuses padded out by a very intelligent mind. But I wonder if part of her disordered thinking relates to not ever having thought through carefully the difference between true and false, if she thinks 'well I have felt the same way in the past for different reasons as a black person might for other reasons so the black person's handle (being black) must really be meant for me too'. And then once the first few lies were told, perhaps she couldn't afford to look fully in the face of what she was doing but instead continued to live in the weird world of 'in every way that matters, this happened to me, not literally, but nobody would understand that...so I have to just tell them it happened to me'. I wonder if she half believes it now. Remember Catfish?

She has rejected an upbringing that may well have been lacking while also placing huge emphasise on Christian values such as honesty and truth. When she turned away from her religion, it might have been very difficult to fashion a new moral compass for someone so driven.

I actually find the idea that she thought this was simply an easy way to make a living utterly implausible. She's bright and winsome; there were easier ways. This was about her demons.

well said Scotchfree

I don't understand why it's become such big news. It's weird, but not incomprehensible: she clearly has issues from her childhood, and has found some sort of comfort in that culture. She's lied repeatedly and that's wrong, but that's for her employers, friends and family to deal with, not the whole world.

Why do we feel the need to vilify people who clearly have substantial issues? I hate the press.

Rachel Dolezal obviously has a huge battle with the truth, that's the trouble here. She seems quite deluded to me, and may well have 'substantial issues' - do you mean mental health issues here Ponty? I think she's beyond 'issues' - she needs some serious help. She can identify all she likes, but she can't become black - neither can anyone else - you either are or you aren't, and she ain't!

And the whole world knows about it because this is a story. An utterly compelling one - as good as the man faking his own death in a canoeing accident or the missing airliner in the Pacific - which grips the imagination of anyone who hears it. That's what news organisations do. And this story has run and run. If Dolezal had climbed down off her ludicrous 'transracial' perch, this story would not have lasted more than a day. Her continued nonsense is what is keeping this one on the boil.

Not so much mixed race as mixed up. There is a big difference.

it shows how far some people will go in lying and possibly believing their own lies: at least she hasn't slandered and made false accusations against other people

If people can feel they were born the wrong sex (which is genetics), why can't someone identify with a different race (which is predominantly a social construct).

I disagree. You can choose your nationality, and you can choose your lifestyle, but you cannot change ethnicity. I can become a Chinese citizen if legally entitled to be, but I cannot ever claim to be ethnically a Chinese person.

I'm going to eventually settle in another area (currently spend all of my holidays there, but am preparing to officially move) which has a very specific cultural history. I am accepted in the community and I am considered one of the 'locals', however I will never be able to claim the cultural heritage of this particular place and claim to be one of 'them'. I can live in the community, I can participate in their rituals and ceremonies, but I will never ethnically be of their heritage, no matter how I live my life.

It's not about whether she 'feels black' or is transrace.

She lied. She said her mother and step father (she didn't have a step father, she was referring to her bio father) beat her because she was mixed race. She Has been claiming a different black man was her father.

She has spoken to the black community about the racisit abuse she suffered as a mixed race child. She wasn't a mixed race child and so its completely inappropriate to do this.

If a woman fighting for woman rights, used their own experiences, then turned out not to have had those experiences because she was a man until recently. People would not be saying that it's up to her what she does.

ponty it's a big story because she is in a position of influence, she got there using experiencea that never happened. Many people who looked upto her feel duped And betrayed. She has then kept the story running.

I would not speak to victims of rape about my experiences of being raped, because I haven't been. I can talk about my experience supporting a close friend through it. But it would be utterly wrong for me to adopt those experiences and pretend they were my own and use them to become a spokes person for victims of rape.

If I did that and became a prominent figure, I would fully expect this sort of coverage when the truth came out.

It's the lies and deceit that are making this story big.