Journal apologies & retracts paper on Transracialism after social media backlash

[KingSweden]

I have seen at least one women who was apparently been born white, married and had children by a black man, and had restyled themselves as black. Maybe not fully black, but black enough to avoid some of the dirty looks that many white people give to white women with a black husband and biracial children.  The skin tone that she has affected is dark enough that one ignores her stereotypical Caucasoid features, and she may have affected frizzy hair.

In one such case I saw that her skin near her hairline was very pale. I was far too polite to ask any questions. Were I in her position I might have done the same.  It might be best for her biracial children as well as herself. Nobody likes dirty looks.  It's not a matter of choosing any 'black culture'.

In the case of Rachel Dolezal, she seems to have chosen to affiliate with black people very militantly. Maybe it is rebellion against repressive parents -- and she associates blackness with freedom from the norms that she knew. She has made political statements by going black.

Her loyalties are obvious; she is the definitive 'race traitor'. But this said, I can imagine nothing less harmful to betray than 'race'.  I suggest that we let people pass unless they are so inept and unsuited to it that they make a travesty of it or if they do things  harmful to their loved ones, as passing for white and so insisting that one is white that one joins the Klan or a neo-Nazi group and spews hatred of people who used to nurture them for 'race'.  Being elected to the Presidency of a local NAACP chapter is not anti-white behavior. The NAACP is not anti-white.
.   

On your last point, you're 100% right. And the NAACP in Spokane was clear they would have embraced her as a fellow advocate if she had never pretended to be black. Indeed she was a fine advocate, but her story definitely makes her seem a little... off. Needless to say, her defense of being "transracial" was not well received by anyone in Spokane (or it appears online)

Anyways! After doing my own research, the original essay here in question was quite innocuous. Very technical, philosophical, and certainly some interesting ideas. I don't subscribe to transracialism myself but the author was writing from a place of clear sympathy. The backlash she got was absurd. The internet crusaders really have no sense of perspective - essays encouraging support for non-normative people is not "violence"

"Transracialism" is stupid as hell, but I have to say that parts of the various responses are very cringeworthy as well...

"She uses the term “transgenderism.” She talks about “biological sex” and uses phrases like “male genitalia.”"

So what? Are those terms banned or something?

See examples of what I'm taking about in xingkerui's quote. I read these comments too

[KingSweden]

Jesse Singal of NY Mag wrote a great piece on this witch hunt, to use his terms, and from a place of clear progressive sympathy with the trans community.

The ignorant internet outrage machine is starting to turn on eager allies, it seems

[Stranger in a strange land]

Transracialism is NOT A THING. Have we already forgotten Spokane's greatest contribution to America since Bing Crosby and Tom Foley, the one, the only, the incomprable Rachel Dolezal?

Agreed that "transracialism" isn't a thing because race isn't a thing either. And the woman in Spokane did nothing wrong - by all accounts she was doing excellent work for the NAACP until some doofus journalist decided to "expose" her or whatever.

She was doing good work, but the black community of Spokane was still not amused that a blonde white girl from Montana basically performed benign blackface for several years and held herself out as sharing their cultural experiences (race may be a construct, but there is certainly an African american culture, just like there is Italian-American culture, ChineseAmerican culture, etc)

I get what you're saying here, but this sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric that TERFs use against transwomen (i.e. that you're only a true woman if you were born as a woman and that those not born as women cannot possibly understand, etc.). I think part of the problem for some on the Left is that transracialism carries uncomfortable echoes of "passing" in former times, which has a long and painful history in American culture. 

However, we have to accept that if gender is socially constructed, then race is too. If it's possible to change your gender (and I think it should be), then it has to follow that it's possible to change your race too.

[KingSweden]

Transracialism is NOT A THING. Have we already forgotten Spokane's greatest contribution to America since Bing Crosby and Tom Foley, the one, the only, the incomprable Rachel Dolezal?

Agreed that "transracialism" isn't a thing because race isn't a thing either. And the woman in Spokane did nothing wrong - by all accounts she was doing excellent work for the NAACP until some doofus journalist decided to "expose" her or whatever.

She was doing good work, but the black community of Spokane was still not amused that a blonde white girl from Montana basically performed benign blackface for several years and held herself out as sharing their cultural experiences (race may be a construct, but there is certainly an African american culture, just like there is Italian-American culture, ChineseAmerican culture, etc)

I get what you're saying here, but this sounds an awful lot like the rhetoric that TERFs use against transwomen (i.e. that you're only a true woman if you were born as a woman and that those not born as women cannot possibly understand, etc.). I think part of the problem for some on the Left is that transracialism carries uncomfortable echoes of "passing" in former times, which has a long and painful history in American culture.  

However, we have to accept that if gender is socially constructed, then race is too. If it's possible to change your gender (and I think it should be), then it has to follow that it's possible to change your race too.

It's a tough knot to untie, for sure. And I don't purport to have the answers. I've read the highlights of Tuvel's essay and she makes sound arguments clearly extrapolating acceptance of transgender to transracial. The attacks on her character basically boiled down to her not saying the wrong thing, but saying the right thing he wrong way - which, I have to say, is not a long-term winning strategy for the intersectional left to deploy. Not that I'm sure the most ardent internet crusaders care at this point.

In Dolezal's case, and the reason I keep circling back to her, is that when she was "outed" she basically whipped out a defense that bordered on "hey if people can change their genders then I can totally change my race!" Essentially, I'm of the opinion that she pulled it out of her rear end to save face. I do not think this is something the trans community does, and that her comparison was unfair to them.

Edit: I also think your note about passing is spot on. Race issues have, for a variety of reasons, a very different history in the United States than gender/sexuality issues. It's not a clean comparison, and that's why I'm generally open to the arguments of the trans community and deeply skeptical that "transracial" is a thing

[Santander]

Edit: I also think your note about passing is spot on. Race issues have, for a variety of reasons, a very different history in the United States than gender/sexuality issues. It's not a clean comparison, and that's why I'm generally open to the arguments of the trans community and deeply skeptical that "transracial" is a thing

Gender identity and sexual orientation themselves are completely separate issues, which is why I refuse to use stupid alphabet soup terms like LGBT.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Great arguments lads. If the left accepts [thing], then we are massive hypocrites because we don't accept [other, completely different thing]. Reminds me, wasn't gay marriage supposed to a slippery slope leading to men marrying houseplants by this stage?

The fact that the typical INTERNET HYSTERIA made them retract the article is bad. One it's a genuinely bad trend on the internet (and it crosses all ideological divides, even to apolitical stuff, like mobs  viciously attacking movie reviewers who "ruined" a perfect 100 percent on RT; and two it shows a lack of conviction.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Great arguments lads. If the left accepts [thing], then we are massive hypocrites because we don't accept [other, completely different thing]. Reminds me, wasn't gay marriage supposed to a slippery slope leading to men marrying houseplants by this stage?

Gender identity and racial identity are different, but the latter has actually been much more fluid and malleable in most Western cultures for most of modern history, see my earlier reference to passing. I guess what I'm missing here is why gender identity is fluid but racial identity is rigid and unchangeable: why is it that in so many left-wing circles these days, a white woman passing as black and trying to live as a black woman to the extent she can compared to blackface and minstrel shows, while a biological man transitioning to living as a woman is held up as an exemplar of courage and progress, rather than accused of being a disrespectful mockery towards women. If I have offended anyone, I am truly sorry because I know how delicate and sensitive this issue can be, but I just want to get a better understanding of the issue.

[Famous Mortimer]

The left opposes "trans-racialism" because it makes transgenderism look stupid. That's the only reason. Any other explaination for why trans-racialism is bad in an obvious post hoc argument designed to justify the conclusion they already wanted.

Why is racial social construction different from gender social construction? The left's answer is because "they're different". How are they different? "Because they are". Their rejection of trans-racialism relies completely on this unsupported assertion.