A white NAACP leader identifies as black and, as such, has devoted her entire life to fighting for the rights of African Americans to prosper in a country that still seeks to oppress them for the color of their skin.
Flesh and its pigmentation, as we all know, does not define who a person really is nor the content of their character, yet the controversy over Spokane’s NAACP chapter head, who was outed this week as a Caucasian by her estranged family members, seems to indicate otherwise.
Rachel Dolezal, 37 and a formerly blonde and blue-eyed female, very much looks like the race she seeks not only to elevate but to emulate, and elegantly opines that, even if she isn't black per se, “we’re all from the African continent.”
That’s an astute assertion backed up by anthropology, but one she needn’t have made, quite frankly, because in a era that allows men to simply don women’s clothes and mannerisms to be considered “one of the girls,” all Dolezal has done is to keep her tan fresh and wear her hair in corn rows.
Quick-change critics, however, are fueling the backlash over her seemingly guileless disguise, calling it, in effect, “blackface.”
They believe that, just as males can’t really be females without ever experiencing the second-class constraints of girlhood and womanhood, whites as well can’t be blacks without suffering the same abuses and privations which begin at birth.
The true *identity* of the apparently well-meaning Ms. Dolezal is therefore a truly challenging issue, even in these modern times, and questions over it couldn’t be resolved merely with a DNA test, either.
As to whether professionally posing as an African American when one is actually Caucasian constitutes criminal fraud, this too is up in the air and depends entirely on her colleagues and employer to legally sort out.
One thing in this uniquely puzzling conflict is very clear though: Judging by the words of Rachel Dolezal’s harshest critics -- her very own kin -- there is some exceptionally “bad blood” between them.
