Yesterday I saw the story of Rachel Dolezal on Facebook. For those of you unfamiliar with it or who live outside the United States, Rachel Dolezal is a graduate of Howard University- an HBCU (Historically Black College/University), an Africana Studies professor at Eastern Washington University, and is the president of the Spokane, Washington branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Sounds innocuous, right? Here's the thing- Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who has been disguising herself as a black woman since 2007.
Her parents reached out to every news outlet they could to reveal their daughters true heritage and to bring her lie to the attention of the public. They provided a birth certificate, photos, and family anecdotes. Her parents said that they are of German and Czech descent. Dolezal has several adopted siblings who are black and is married to a black man (she married him while she was white, mind you), and has been using her youngest adopted brother as her "son" and does not allow him to contact the rest of the Dolezal family. According to another one of her adopted siblings, she made her "son" despise white people, even though she herself is a white person.
Dolezal also claims to have been the victim of nine hate crimes over the past few years. However, information provided by the postal service has debunked her most recent assertion that she has received hate mail. Based on all of her other lies, how can anybody believe that she hadn't staged any of her other hate crimes?
I personally am incredibly disgusted by her actions. Cultural appropriation is something that I have very mixed feelings on, because I believe that it is okay to adopt elements of a culture into one's life if it is done respectfully, but Dolezal has taken this too far. She essentially lives her life in blackface! It repulses me to think that she simply chose to adopt this culture and preaches about the struggles of the culture when she personally has never had to face the oppression and has had to suffer in the way that black people have. What she did is a slap in the face to every person of color, as well as a slap in the face to her own heritage.
Many news outlets are trying to compare her mess of lies to Caitlyn Jenner's transition, but frankly they are completely and utterly wrong. Caitlyn is being true to who she is, Dolezal is lying to everybody around her and disrespecting not one but two rich, developed cultures.
