I’m not going to argue with you, but the fact that chromosomes come from one’s parents is not really my point. You can be (or have the potential of being) male or female no matter who your parents were or what your family history is. That’s always been true. The same isn’t true of race or ethnicity. If you were born and raised in Ireland and came from a long line of Irish people, you don’t get to claim you’re of Italian ethnicity. The same is true of a white woman with white parents pretending to be black. Gender/sex is completely different. As I said, the argument that the two are the same thing is being repeated all over the Internet as a way of ridiculing trans people, and I’m not going to give an inch on it even though that’s clearly not your intention.
I work with someone whose family identifies as Greek, follows Greek customs, the whole deal. For whatever reason, they took one of those “where are your ancestors from” DNA tests and it turns out they’re not actually Greek, they’re Turkish. Their biology says one thing; their lived experience says another.
“If you were born and raised in Ireland and came from a long line of Irish people, you don’t get to claim you’re of Italian ethnicity.”
I don’t know that I agree with you. There are lots of instances of people absorbed by nations or tribes that are overwhelmingly determined by ancestry/genetics. Black Native Americans are a great example. So are converted Jews.
I do think that the Italians need to know where the formerly Irish person came from for this to work, and Dolezal failed that test. But that doesn’t mean that no heritage group can include people who aren’t born into it, or that our understanding of the source of blackness is always going to be the same.
Hanna, it is one thing to be a converted Jew and another to claim that your family perished in the Holocaust. She isn’t saying that she identifies with the black culture or experience but that she identifies AS black. To repeat what I said in post #66 and echo Donna, one’s “blackness” isn’t influenced by hormonal conditions in utero like gender and sexuality. If you have no black ancestry and aren’t raised in an African American household or culture you can decide that you have an affinity for the culture but it doesn’t make you black. But then, unless you believe the creationists, “we’re all from the African continent.” She did not say that she was “absorbed into” the African American community she parachuted into Spokane passing as an honest to goodness black woman.
From Breitbart:
In the aftermath of the cartoonish left’s Bruce Jenner orgasm, the Rachel Dolezal story must hit like an Acme anvil dropped from the seventh story of a building. Barack Obama had a racially diverse composite girlfriend; Rachel Dolezal was the left’s composite girlfriend. She took every element of leftist stereotype – victimized woman, victimized black, international human rights crusader, diversity fighter, put-upon artist – and rolled them all into a resume. And the left rewarded her again and again: NAACP president, police oversight commission, professoriate, worshipful media attention.
And then it all came tumbling down, just because of how Rachel Dolezal decided to self-identify. We must pity her, and we must stand with her in her quest to reach self-worth via redefinition of ethnicity. After all, as President Obama said of Bruce Jenner, “It takes courage to share your story.” Even if that story is complete and utter bullshit.
The actions of this one disturbed lady have been latched on to as emblematic of everything that sticks in their craw. They have lumped their idea of Dolezal as “trans-racial” in with the transgender community and equated them both with people who believe that they are actual animals born into a human body.
I know a woman who all her life thought she was Mexican. Then she took one of those DNA tests and it came back Basque. So she self-identified as Mexican but isn’t. So is she Mexican or Basque? Until recently I had no idea Mariah Carey was black. She doesn’t look black to me, but that is how she self-identifies. Should others determine what race you are? Why? How?
Mariah Carey had a black father (passed in 2002) - that’s how she “self identifies”
I didn’t say she applied for any AA scholarships. What I was saying was that the NAACP wouldn’t be giving a pass to a white kid who applied for an AA scholarship. If she can self-identify as black then whats stopping white students from doing the same?
I think she is nuts.
I’m interested in what this story tells us about the larger significance of race in this country as it evolves. There is certainly a long history of people “passing” for white. This is one of the few high-profile cases of someone trying to “pass” as black. Historically I can understand why, 50 years ago, people wanted to “pass” as white (avoidance of discrimination, access to mainstream privileges et al.). It’s very interesting to me that we’ve gotten to the point where passing as “black” can accrue some recognition and privileges, perhaps, that identifying as “white” cannot. Dolezal built a career in the grievance industry and in academe via identity politics, which prizes “authenticity.” She’s been outed as a fraud. Personally I don’t think one needs to identify as African American to appreciate, understand. and advocate African American art forms and cultural practices, any more than one needs to be of European extraction to appreciate and practice European classical music (many of the most talented musicians in this area are Asian).
It seems to me that while identifying with the opposite gender has biological components, identifying with another race or culture or religion is 100% sociological. I don’t like seeing them compared.
Plus, that woman is just crazy!
^^^ True but she was going on about the trials of black hair and whatnot as if she actually had it naturally. This is not a European being an expert in Egyptian art or a Caucasian American student who is fixated on Japanese studies. Dolezal created a new history for herself that was false.
p.s. Mariah self-identifies as “mixed”
@DonnaL, I real you post on the other post and replied to it there. I simply do not find the argument convincing. And I fail to see why it is “incredibly offensive.” To me, that is like black people objecting to comparisons between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement on the grounds that one “chooses” one’s sexual orientation, something that I think has been thoroughly debunked. I am obviously not attacking trans people.
This woman appears to be either a fantasist or an opportunist or both. That doesn’t mean that a person could not feel that they were born into the wrong body and take steps to chance their racial appearance and live as a member of that race. As far as we know, of course, such people are vanishingly rare, unlike trans people.
Is race how you see yourself or how others see you? Is gender? Is age?
People who are equating this to being transgender are in large part saying that both this and being transgender are chosen pathologies of the mind and utterly wackadoodle. They seem to be saying that we can agree that this woman is cray cray and she has only done what Jenner has done so therefor all transgender people are cray cray. Furthermore - this woman has used the “born this way” tag to imply that she was actually born black which she isn’t. What is so hard to understand about the idea that gender and sexuality are fluid and influenced by variable developmental processes in utero? Race is just not that way. She may feel black culturally but she isn’t black and has no black ancestry unlike Mariah Carey. She didn’t say that she feels an affinity for black culture and issues she said that she is black and that her father is black. In equating her situation with transgender individuals people are diminishing the reality of what they experience.
I assume that you are referring to “people” elsewhere.
Yes . . . people like those who write commentary on the Breitbart website and other people from whom I have seen facebook comments. I have actually been surprised to hear so much of that but I think there is a segment who has been looking for a socially acceptable place to hang their hat RE discomfort with Jenner and this has come up at an opportune time for those people to draw the comparison and use it to brush aside the issue of transgender acceptance.
Exactly, Saintfan. I explained as well as I could why I think the comparison doesn’t work (regardless of whether the intention is to ridicule trans people, which clearly isn’t true here), and why I find it offensive, and I like your explanation too. I’m afraid I can’t do any better than that – except maybe to say that Rachel Dolezal is a stone liar and a fraud, and I"m not – and if anyone still doesn’t understand why I feel that way, so be it.
I also agree with saintfan. However, it would be hard not to agree with spa kitty.
Ice, Ice Baby. Remember how it went for him when his true past was revealed and that was an issue of economic status.