The Rachel divide

[HarryLovesDraco]

Rachel Dolezal was raised by highly abusive, fundamentalist Christian parents. They adopted 4 younger black children when Rachel was a teenager and abused them horribly. Rachel secretly studied African American literature, art, experiences to meet her siblings' identity needs and adopted one of them as her own son.
Rachel later went on to have a further biological son who is black.
Rachel strongly identified with black people, culture, art, history etc and strongly identified away from her abusive, colonialist fundamentalist Christian white parents and brother who sexually abused her sister.

Rachel was seen by many as black. She experienced racial prejudice.

I know Rachel isn't black. I know she retains white privilege and that she is appropriating black experiences in a way that is fundamentally dishonest. But, if the standard for being a sympathetic trans identifies person in a good faith, a genuine belief and difficult life experiences then Rachel definitely qualifies.

Has anyone else seen the documentary and has any thoughts?

I watched the documentary on Netflix last night.

I initially felt shocked by her deceitfulness. Then I learnt about her past and felt sympathetic. By the end of the documentary, I lost all sympathy for her and just pitied her poor children.

Although I can understand why she wanted to disassociate with her parents and her upbringing, her need for attention was startling. Yes, she had a difficult childhood but her current behaviour is destroying the lives of her children.

You can understand and sympathise with dysfunctional behaviour and mental health issues due to a poor upbringing. Doesn’t mean you have to collude with the madness.

I feel sorry for her. But she isn’t a black woman.

I saw it. It's so interesting in that the case for someone claiming they are black is sooo much more ambiguous than claiming they are female.

Black/white is categorically not a binary thing. It really is genuinely a spectrum. Which isn't to say that there are not clear cut cases at either end of the spectrum. But there is definitely a grey area in the middle where debate exists over whether someone can identify as black or not.
If you have been perceived by society as black your whole life, if you are physically unable to pass as white, does it matter what your genetic makeup reveals, or what your parents look like? Is there more to being black than how others perceive you?

Is it about how you behave? Your culture? Shade of skin? Parentage? How society treats you? Where do people of mixed heritage (and we are all mixed) fit?

I noted that her baby was described as black. Yet he has one white parent. Is he black, or mixed race or white? And what of people who have a mix that isn't 50:50?

And yet, even with all these grey areas, it's completely apparent that Rachel is unambiguously Caucasian, and her upbringing and parentage bear this out.
I understand the revulsion and betrayal black people feel at her claims.

I don't think she means harm but her actions and claim are harmful nonetheless.

I thought her words at the very end were so revealing. About how she couldnt go back to being white because of all the associations of her childhood.

And I just thought about how she needed to break those associations - not reject the reality they are falsely associated with.

No, in a nutshell.

Belief doesn’t define reality. Our feelings don’t define external reality.

She’s had a deeply fucked up life, which isn’t her fault and she’s making poor choices, which is, although she’s clearly scarred by her upbringing.

She isn’t black, she doesn’t get ‘a pass’ to be black and I can well understand why black people find her actions dishonest, distasteful and offensive.

She needs to have therapy to deal with her awful childhood, not force the rest of the world to believe the same lies she does. Making other people accept she’s blackbis a way of displacing her issues onto the wider world. You cannot force people to believe in lies to protect your own mental health.

Isn't it interesting how we can sympathetically discuss Rachel with nuance and subtlety and most of the world either agrees or thinks we are being too soft. Yet replace black/white for male/female and that exact conversation would be bigotry.

I thought it was fascinating and like others initially sympathetic when I learnt more about her childhood but felt so sorry for her sons with her desperate need for attention.

I see huge parallels between this and transsexuals and don't understand why she is so reviled for pretending to be an oppressed group in society and taking away a spokesperson position and grants and a mtf trans doing something similar isn't?

In the end she was working hard for black people rather than trying to further a cause of trans racism.

I absolutely understand why black people are angry with her, but it doesn't feel any different to women being angry with trans women's officers and we're not allowed to be angry 🙄

Is the difference just that she is a woman and the transsexuals making a fuss come from a position of male privilege?

I think it's that if the people objecting are male they will be listened to.

A white man making RD's claim would equally meet with resistance from black men.

In the hierarchy of objecting voices the deeper your baritone the more you will be listened to.

A white man making RD 's claim would equally meet resistance from black men

Yes BB that really is the difference isn't it