President of Spokane NAACP outed as white imposter

[pbrower2a]

She has lived as a black woman. That is enough for me. She married and had biological children by a black man. She has made herself look stereotypically black and she has been consistent at such. Such is completely inconsistent with any semblance of white identity.

The birth certificate and her early child hood are no longer relevant. She has completely abandoned any "whiteness" that she has ever had.

Some of the fantasy is of course false.

[pbrower2a]

She has burned every possible bridge to the white race except for her DNA. 

[pbrower2a]

I have seen white women having done what Rachel Dolezal did, darkening their skin and hair and frizzing their straight or curly hair. Probably after some dirty looks about having a black husband and mixed-race children they decide that being seen as black in public isn't so bad after all.

How did I notice this? The skin coloring did not quite reach the hair line. 

[pbrower2a]

Rachel Dolezal is black by choice. She is now so black that if she were to have a child by a white man the child, no matter what the DNA and appearance say, would have a black mother.   

[pbrower2a]

Rachel Dolezal is black by choice. She is now so black that if she were to have a child by a white man the child, no matter what the DNA and appearance say, would have a black mother.   

Incorrect. She is Caucasian.

Genetically only. She is about as complete a "race traitor" (this is not derogatory, since there is no moral defense of white privilege) as anyone could be. Unfortunately she is also a liar, even if the lies are about comparatively-benign stuff.

It's hypothetical -- the child would be white because of the DNA of both biological parents, but Rachel Dolezal would still be black unless she undid her black hair and off-white skin color -- and I cannot say whether she could do this.

Culture? She is now probably 'blacker' than Condaleezza Rice.  Heck, I would not be surprised to find that President Obama more appreciates Czech classical music (one of the world's greatest traditions from a small country) than does Rachel Dolezal.  (Speculation on my part -- President Obama has been very secretive about his cultural preferences, and he may have good reason for such).

[pbrower2a]

I may risk going into psychobabble here, but there could be more than 'race' and 'white guilt' here. Rachel Dolezal is a bright daughter of Christian fundamentalist parents  who put her in a gilded cage. Czech ancestry? This is not likely a home in which the music of Smetana, Dvorak, and Martinu (they are delightful composers!) are a disproportionate part of the music on the stereo. This is the homogenized, shuttered world of fundamentalist preaching and scolding. Most likely it is one of sexual repression in which the sole purpose of sex is to have Christian fundamentalist children in huge numbers. An intelligent girl is likely to reject this view of life and seek something very different.

Race may not be an overt problem for religious fundamentalists. Christian Protestant Fundamentalism accept non-whites should they accept the package of Biblical literalism, cultural blandness, and sexual repression. Getting the opportunity to get as far away from that environment as possible, she went to a historically-black university with intellectual rigor. Not only did she discover African-American culture; she also discovered secularism which permits a greater variety of possible plans in life than marrying early to have lots of children to be harnessed to a stilted view of the world.

Just imagine that she had attended Brandeis University, a well-regarded Jewish university. She would have discovered a world view very different from that of her parents. She might have still gotten a degree in Fine Arts... and ended up marrying some wonderful Jewish husband who introduces her to, among other things, the music of Smetana, Dvorak, and Martinu; such music is fully compatible with Jewish life as it was in Czechoslovakia when the country had a large and influential Jewish majority before Satan Incarnate (Hitler) took the country over in 1938 and 1939. Finding Jewish life so attractive at the least for intellectual freedom and gender equality, she converts to Judaism. She raises her children Jewish and starts assuming that her Swedish and German ancestors were really Jews. Her parents are incensed!   

Just imagine that she had attended Notre Dame, and fell in love with some sophisticated, intelligent, decent Polish-American Catholic from Chicago. He introduces her to the sort of culture that one would expect of well-educated Polish-Americans. He gets her to discover her Czech heritage, and she fits in. Her art often becomes heavily devotional to the Virgin Mary. Her parents are incensed!



 

[pbrower2a]

I may risk going into psychobabble here, but there could be more than 'race' and 'white guilt' here. Rachel Dolezal is a bright daughter of Christian fundamentalist parents  who put her in a gilded cage. Czech ancestry? This is not likely a home in which the music of Smetana, Dvorak, and Martinu (they are delightful composers!) are a disproportionate part of the music on the stereo. This is the homogenized, shuttered world of fundamentalist preaching and scolding. Most likely it is one of sexual repression in which the sole purpose of sex is to have Christian fundamentalist children in huge numbers. An intelligent girl is likely to reject this view of life and seek something very different.

Race may not be an overt problem for religious fundamentalists. Christian Protestant Fundamentalism accept non-whites should they accept the package of Biblical literalism, cultural blandness, and sexual repression. Getting the opportunity to get as far away from that environment as possible, she went to a historically-black university with intellectual rigor. Not only did she discover African-American culture; she also discovered secularism which permits a greater variety of possible plans in life than marrying early to have lots of children to be harnessed to a stilted view of the world.

Just imagine that she had attended Brandeis University, a well-regarded Jewish university. She would have discovered a world view very different from that of her parents. She might have still gotten a degree in Fine Arts... and ended up marrying some wonderful Jewish husband who introduces her to, among other things, the music of Smetana, Dvorak, and Martinu; such music is fully compatible with Jewish life as it was in Czechoslovakia when the country had a large and influential Jewish majority before Satan Incarnate (Hitler) took the country over in 1938 and 1939. Finding Jewish life so attractive at the least for intellectual freedom and gender equality, she converts to Judaism. She raises her children Jewish and starts assuming that her Swedish and German ancestors were really Jews. Her parents are incensed!   

Just imagine that she had attended Notre Dame, and fell in love with some sophisticated, intelligent, decent Polish-American Catholic from Chicago. He introduces her to the sort of culture that one would expect of well-educated Polish-Americans. He gets her to discover her Czech heritage, and she fits in. Her art often becomes heavily devotional to the Virgin Mary. Her parents are incensed!

1: >99% of Czech-Americans do not listen to Czech classical composers.
2: For that matter the vast majority of the few Americans who do have no Czech ancestry. I've never noticed classical music fans being discriminating toward composers of their own ethnic background.
3: Jews and Polish-Americans are just as white as me or the family of Dolezal's upbringing.
4: Most Jews, Czech background or not, do not listen to classical music primarily of Czech composers.
5: Anyone who converts to Judaism who is intelligent enough to graduate college should be able to realize that converting to it does not retroactively make their ancestors Jewish. I do not believe that my ancestors are now retroactively emergent church Christians.
6: Most Polish-Americans do not make Virgin Mary devotional artwork, and the hyper-Catholic people who do likely come from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds.

OK -- You are right on all six. I doubt that her parents listened to any kind of classical music. I am roughly half German or Swiss and about half from the non-Catholic parts of the British Isles... and if I listen heavily to music of people from German-speaking lands such is a matter of quantity and quality. The preponderance of music in most classical music collections is by German-speaking composers due to quantity and quality I do not have a disproportionate amount of music from British, Scots, or Welsh composers.   Czech? Hungarian? Probably more than those from the British Isles -- and I have no Czech or Hungarian ancestors. Again, quantity and quality. Then there's Russia, one of the powerhouses of Western culture.

I am setting up a fictional scenario. Fiction can go into odd expressions.  In view of what she did in real life, she would go to the extreme in any pattern. She has some serious delusions, and I am trying to express how those might manifest themselves. She has done little in moderation and if she were to have found some different community to join, she become an extreme expression of whatever she joined.

[pbrower2a]

No, you just wanted an avenue to express your racist paternalistic notions of ethnic white people, much like a lot of your other posts on this board.

Very fitting you felt fit to post right into a thread about racism.  Now posters know what kind of posts to avoid if they want to be taken seriously.

There is more to this story than race, as I have learned from further perusal of the news.

1. There is no superior culture. The one that I was brought up in? Hell no! I despise it for its insipidness. Thrust back into it, I feel alien and I can hardly wait to get away from it.  We Americans have freedom of cultural self-identification.  Many have composite cultures. The only question of inadequacy of a culture is if it is a criminal subculture or a destructive/exploitative cult... for obvious reasons.

I have much respect for all 'white ethnic' groups. The more that I meet of Mexican-Americans, the more I respect their rich and vibrant culture. Black culture? There is no single black culture, dammit, any more than there is any single "white culture"!

2. Parents cannot be certain that their children will grow up to like the milieu in which they were raised so much that they will preserve it completely. The pattern that I have seen is that people run from the excess in their parents' lives to what they were missing. How many people listen to the insipid "easy-listening" pap of the 1960s and 1970s as their parents did in the 1960s and 1970s?

We Americans are always redefining ourselves as a people from parent to child.

3. Youthful rebellion is NORMAL. It allows youth to become fully adult; without it people would wallow in increasingly-empty traditions. That is one way to cast off superstitions, manias, bad habits, phobias, and traditions that no longer work. Of course reality sets in and youth often discover the hard way why some of what they thought silly, priggish, and senseless aren't so silly, priggish, and senseless. Some people have far more to cast off, and some have more to retrieve, than others do.

We Americans sort things out that way. That makes us adaptable to momentous change. The Nazis laughed at American pop culture in the 1930s -- and it was America that survived. The Soviets laughed at the American counterculture as evidence of the failure of our culture as well as economics. Our system outlasted theirs. We Americans have flexibility that allows us to adapt to technology and discover what is best in recently-alien cultures.  

It may be hard to believe, but we have one of the most durable and resilient of empires (reference to scale and not to style of government) that has ever existed. The USA has been around as a political entity since the late 18th century, and it has always wielded power over an impressive landmass. Of course it does not resemble what it was 220 years ago.

The United States has proved more adaptable than, for example, the Roman Empire.

4. There's more to this than race. Rachel Dolezal reverted to her not-so-rare maiden name (probably so she could maintain her reputation and marketability as an artist) -- and she uses the Czech hacek above the "z" in some of her materials. She got a high-visibility position in an organization whose primary objective is the improvement of the lives of people who look much unlike what she looked like as a child. Those who knew her as a child were going to figure out what she was. She could not change her vocal patterns.  If she had taken a commonplace English surname (like Smith, Williams, Jones, etc.), she might have gotten away with it. She was not hiding.

5. Have you met the parents by watching the video plea for her? They have their own delusions. They called their daughter's choice to identify as black a disguise.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/16/rachel-dolezal-evangelical-christian_n_7598562.html?cps=gravity_2425_-6379242375903799519
 
6. Christian Protestant Fundamentalism may have its virtues -- but it is easy to see how someone smart, imaginative, and creative could chafe under it. I certainly would have.  

7. Her parents apparently want her to return to their fold. In view of the black children that the parents have adopted, race is clearly not the issue. Secularism, which evangelicals consider a snare of evil, is much more of a problem to Christian evangelicals than is race.  

[pbrower2a]

Christian fundamentalists believe that Christian fundamentalism is for everyone irrespective of ethnicity and nationality. Christian fundamentalism is not racist as such.

The family appeared with the daughter and her black husband in a wedding picture. The family did not disown her then. She went off in an unexpected direction.

Maybe the problem isn't that she identifies as black. Disguise? She used a not-very-common surname, her maiden name, to identify her art. If one is to go in disguise to avoid being tracked down, then one had better not use a rare maiden name.   Most likely she is NOT a Christian fundamentalist any more. Christian fundamentalism is easy to outgrow.

Her family and she seem to have some problems.  

[pbrower2a]

She may have made most of the cultural transition to being black, but she is still a white woman here. 



No deceit here. The woman in the image has clearly renounced all connections to any prior 'whiteness' except for keeping a Czech maiden name that blew her cover.

[pbrower2a]

Her genes are still white. If she had a child by a white man (she is young enough to do that, but whether she has such an inclination is pure speculation), then she would be a black woman with a white child. Otherwise, what she claims to be is what she is.

She is an extreme example of reinvention of oneself.

Few people have a more interesting story to tell.

[pbrower2a]

DNA does not lie.   In that, she is white.  Otherwise...

She made her choices. Irrevocable choices? I cannot say.  I see no cause for her to reverse those changes.

There are black people with some stereotypically white features, even including blond hair and blue eyes. But we know that such people are black because some other features establish that they are not white. 

[pbrower2a]

I have known black people with lighter skin than hers. The hair? Do you know of any white person with hair naturally like that? She makes Mariah Carey look unambiguously white.


 

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.tmz.com/2015/06/17/rachel-dolezal-spray-tanning-salon-black/

[pbrower2a]

I have known black people with lighter skin than hers. The hair? Do you know of any white person with hair naturally like that? She makes Mariah Carey look unambiguously white.


 

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://www.tmz.com/2015/06/17/rachel-dolezal-spray-tanning-salon-black/

[pbrower2a]

Just the fascination with people reinventing themselves, something that many Americans fantasize about doing. Great story, and weird.