On Rachel Dolezal, Jon Stewart Says it Best

     It's very hard to know what to make of this strange case of a White woman that managed to pass herself off as Black enough to run the NAACP.

     "Jon Stewart had only a few words to spare on Tuesday about the scandal surrounding the former president of Spokane’s chapter of the NAACP, Rachel Dolezal, who was recently revealed to be white despite posing as African-American for years."

    “Whaaaaaaat!?” the host of “The Daily Show” said during his new weekly segment, “Whaaaaaaat!?”

    "He was even more taken back when it was revealed that Dolezal’s true heritage was Czech, Swedish and German."

   “Whaaaaaaat!?” Stewart repeated. “Czech, Swedish and German — is really fucking white.”

    "Stewart turned to Fox News, which laid the blame for Dolezal’s deception on liberals’ feet, and

“Well clearly liberal culture has reached its nadir,” he said in a mocking tone, “yet racism is over.”

    “All because a German lady got a weave,” he added.

     http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jon-stewart-rachel-dolezal-naacp

    The standard response to her is that in wearing Backface she demeaned real Blacks. But did she do this with the intent to do so? From what I've read, no-her estranged parents said that as a little girl she was very interested in ethnicity and diversity issues. 

    http://nypost.com/2015/06/15/why-al-sharptons-wrong-about-rachel-dolezals-parents/

    It's as if she emphasizes and identifies with victims of discrimination so closely she wants to be one herself. 

    "Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), sued Howard University for discrimination in 2002, according to court documents obtained by The Smoking Gun."

    "Dolezal alleged that the school denied her a teaching assistant post, a post-graduate instructorship, and a scholarship because she was white, according to The Smoking Gun."

    "Dolezal, who then went by Rachel Moore, claimed that the school and Howard Professor Alfred Smith discriminated against her "based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender" while she was a graduate student in fine arts, according to the Court of Appeals opinion."

     "She also claimed that the university's decision to remove some of her artwork from a student exhibition in February 2001 "was motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over Moore," according to the court opinion.

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rachel-dolesal-sued-howard-discrimination

    I read this as her really wanting to be a victim of discrimination-that's her fantasy as strange as it is. 

    Apparently there is a history of Whites passing themselves off as Blacks though it's less common than the reverse of light-skinned Blacks passing themselves off as White, which is what you'd imagine. 

   In a way it's an interesting psychological question as to why someone would want to pass off as part of a group that is discriminated against?

    I mean the desire to pass for White is more understandable-to gain White privilege. 

   Dolezal is now supposedly helping a sexual assault victim?

   "Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), has allegedly been helping the victim in a sexual assault case against Dolezal's biological older brother, the New York Daily News reported on Saturday."

    "Joshua Dolezal has been accused of four counts of felony child sexual assault in Clear Creek County, Colo., according to the Denver Post. He was arrested in March 2014 for alleged incidents dating back to July 2013, and he is scheduled to face trial in August, court documents show, according to the Denver Post."

   "It's not clear who the victim is in the case, and Rachel Dolezal declined to comment to the Daily News about the charges against her brother."

     http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rachel-dolesal-brother-sexual-assault-case

     Yeah, as Stewart put it, 'Whaaaat?!!' 

     Meanwhile I guess there is no racial diaspora-it's not possible to be a Black trapped inside a White body the way it is possible to be a woman trapped inside a man''s body.

    The Rachel Dolezal story isn’t one of modern malleable identity. She isn’t another version of Caitlyn Jenner, and it isn’t really a story about race or racism.

“Trans-ethnic” or “trans-racial” is not a thing, and Dolezal wasn’t taking a stand against racism by pretending to be something she isn’t.

     http://nypost.com/2015/06/15/why-al-sharptons-wrong-about-rachel-dolezals-parents/

    UPDATE: Actually I think Sharpton got some things very much right: there is nothing wrong with Whites being in the NAACP:

      “I think that, one, it’s not about her race.”

      “There are whites in all of our organizations and there are whites that died in the Civil Rights movement.”

    “I think the question they want to deal with is her honesty; you have to be transparent.”

    “But it’s not about whether or not she’s white or black, it’s about are you going to be honest and I think that’s the only question but her race is really irrelevant.”

    http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/344313-finally-al-sharpton-comments-rachel-dolezal-points-finger-blame/

     The comment about modern malleable identity is interesting. Often I read the whole concept of gender diaspora the same way-modern identity just becomes whatever someone wants it to be. From that standpoint you might ask if someone can decide they are the other gender why can''t someone decide they're a different race?

   What is the difference in the two cases?

   But as I understand it, what the transgender community is actually saying is not that gender is malleable-though it might seem that way. For instance, in NYC it's been the law for 10 years that gender is optional. You can be whatever gender you want. In this sense, tomorrow I as a male could decide I'm in the wrong body and become a female. 

  The only thing apparently stopping this is my own choice. This seems to make of gender just a malleable preference, which seems wrong to many folks. It seems off to me. It seems that gender is not a simple social construct-far from it. Indeed, even the left wing psychoanalysis of Zizek and Lacan counts gender as something found in nature not simply created by society in some arbitrary way. 

   Yet, in a way the point of gender diaspora is that your gender is such a deep part of who you are it transcends even your own body-gender is said to reside in the brain. 

   In a way that's the opposite of saying gender is malleable. Think about it-if it were malleable then no one would struggle with it. They'd simply accept what society says they are and be happy with it. 

   Despite my hypothetical of going to NYC-which isn't far as I live on Long Island-and 'deciding I'm a female' I don't have any desire to do that and few others do either. Which shows that this is a minority condition of people who really do feel this. Gender is an important part of our identity and no one feels it's malleable. 

   As for Dolezal I don't know if she has her own diagnosis for her condition but it seems to me she suffers from such close identification with victims of discrimination that she wants to be such a victim herself. Paradoxically she sees the underprivileged as enjoying certain privileges that she lacks. 

   Could that be a diagnosis? I don't know. She'd probably love it if it could as she'd finally have what she wants.