“I think I am black, therefor I am.”
When I wrote about Rachel Dolezal’s strange and provocative racial charade as my first post of the day, I had not read any other commentary on the subject. I was surprised at the degree to which the subject subsequently dominated the web, as well as the rapidity with which many, though not all, of the themes raised in my various questions were echoed elsewhere—parallels with Elizabeth Warren and Caitlyn Jenner among them. Now that there are some other reactions, as well as some statements from the active participants in this cultural mess—and it is a mess–let me add to my commentary.
1. Some commentators, like Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, appear to think the story is a joke. The tone of some of my earlier comments was intended to be ironic, but this is no joke, and the issues it forces society to deal with, or go into denial regarding, which itself is no joke, are important and perhaps represent a cultural tipping point.
2. Rachel Dolezal represents a crisis for the sloppy thinkers of the left. (There are sloppy thinkers on the Right, too, but this story doesn’t expose them.) They need to choose their words carefully, and so far, I have seen no evidence of that. Modern progressive cant is thoroughly polluted with false constructs, hypocrisy, double standards and absurd mandated beliefs regarding diversity, tolerance and fairness, and this story exposes much of it. I wonder if the progressive activists even realize the bind they are in? It is a dilemma they created themselves by assuming that the pile of contradictions they were amassing would be ignored forever if they threatened and insulted anyone who pointed to it. Dolezal just made their shallow exploration of their own truths untenable.
3. Are minority designations, protected groups and presumed victims of discrimination discreet, immutable classes deserving constant recognition and special protected status? Or are they merely “constructs” that individuals can assume or remove, like an overcoat?
4. A Facebook friend replaying to the post argued, “Gender identity and racial identity is a false equivalent.” Yes, that’s a nice retort, except that it is empty of argument. Why? If they are a false equivalent, I’d say that is because gender is a great deal more substantive than race. Why can Bruce Jenner become accepted as a woman, and the world ordered to so accept her without a smirk, but Rachel Dolezal can’t just decide that she feels black, and have that decision respected in law and culture? My friend has not offered an answer yet. I do not expect one.
5. One of those contradictions that some commentators picked up on that I did not was this: if someone can change their gender and their race at will, why can’t a gay man “choose” to be heterosexual, an option that gay activists have condemned as heresy and bigotry when it is suggested. If they can choose, and have that choice respected, like Rachel chose to be black, then why can’t there be professionals who help gays make that choice?
6. Similarly, is there a need and a demand for professionals who can school whites to get in touch with their inner-African, and thus be eligible for affirmative action benefits? Since Asian-Americans are being systematically discriminated against by university affirmative action policies, can they solve the problem without lawsuits by just declaring themselves black?
7. Slate’s Jamelle Bouie, who, if he has ever written a piece that wasn’t a parody of the worst of progeessive racialist jibberish, I missed it, offers predictably unpersuasive rationalizations to Dolezal’s act.. Highlights:
- “We don’t have a language for this kind of white-to-black ‘passing.'”
Sure we do, Jamelle. Fraud. Lying. Deception. Good and appropriate words all. And maybe even “insanity.”
- “A Nigerian immigrant might not identify with black Americans, but she’s still “black,” regardless of what she says, and if she gets pulled over by the police, that identity will matter most.”
Because, of course, all police are racists. The racist is Bouie.
- “A black American with dark skin and African features could identify as white with her friends, but in society, she’s black, regardless of how she feels.”
She doesn’t feel “white,” or think of herself as “white,” unless she’s deluded like Donezal. Presumably she can spend all her time in a white social structure, and still be able to distinguish what she sees in the mirror.
- “In her favor are key parts of her life. Dolezal has identified as black for almost 10 years.”
So what? If I identify as Napoleon Bonaparte for 10 years, that doesn’t make me Emperor of France.
- “She’s been heavily involved in the local black community, and a leader on issues important to black people.”
So have a lot of whites, none of whom actually claimed to be black, because that would be presumptuous and ridiculous. Nobody seriously argued that Bill Clinton was our first black President, just that he was the closest thing to one yet. For example, I would argue that Hillary Clinton would be the closest thing to our first weasel President, but that would not make her an actual weasel.
- “She has no apparent black ancestry—a real difference from blacks who pass—but she’s adopted a kind of black culture almost wholesale.”
So what?
- “If Walter Francis White is black, and Mordecai Wyatt Johnson is black, then why can’t Rachel Dolezal be black, even if her connections were manufactured?”
Uh, Jamelle? White and Johnson ARE black. She’s not. She just says she is, like they passed for white. That’s why.
- “She says she’s black, but we don’t know if she’s always black.”
Wait, what? She’s never black, you idiot!
- “If it’s troubling, it’s at least partly because it feels like Dolezal is adopting the culture without carrying the burdens.”
No, it’s troubling because she’s not black, and has been falsely portraying herself otherwise.
Slate does have a useful exposition of the few recorded case of white Americans claiming to be black.
8. If progressives want to die on this wall, they sure picked a bad spot. Dolezal’s brothers, the actual blacks in the family, told the Washington Post that she claimed custody over her brother, referring to her youngest adopted brother as her son, and alleged that “[Rachel] turned Izaiah kind of racist. Told Izaiah all this stuff about white people, made him really racist toward white people.” Mediaite finds that Dolezal once told the New York Times that as a multi-racial individual, she would be afraid to be around a large group of tea party members.
This all hints of mental illness, unless the theory is that if you hate and fear whites enough, that will make you black.
9. In another interview with Sky News, Dolezal expressed contempt for those questioning her racial identity, saying, “I don’t give two shits what you guys think”—at least she gives one shit— and that it’s more important for her to clarify the confusion with the black community than to “explain it to a community that I, quite frankly, don’t think really understands the definitions of race and ethnicity.”
Dolezal and her open embrace of magical thinking as reality risks should force progressives to confront other, less spectacular but equally dishonest examples of employing fantasy and denial as foundations for belief. Notable among them is the bizarre abortion mindset in which a mother who regards her unborn child as a living human being should have the life of that child fully protected by the law, yet a pregnant woman who wants to abort a fetus in the same stage of development can claim that her child isn’t a being at all, but just an inhuman parasite, and demand that the law respect her assessment. A fetus is a himan being or not, and what the mother believes is irrelevant, just a Dolezal is white, no matter what her derangement or scheme have led her to assert.
10. Though Spokane is investigating the apparent scam, as it should, since the city appointed Dolezal believing they were appointing a black woman—ah, how simple this would be if governments didn’t make color or race a qualification for anything!—the NAACP responded with evasive double-talk, saying,
“For 106 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has held a long and proud tradition of receiving support from people of all faiths, races, colors and creeds. NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter. One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership. The NAACP Alaska-Oregon-Washington State Conference stands behind Ms. Dolezal’s advocacy record. In every corner of this country, the NAACP remains committed to securing political, educational, and economic justice for all people, and we encourage Americans of all stripes to become members and serve as leaders in our organization.”
The issue isn’t whether a white woman can be an advocate for civil rights, and the NAACP knows it. That’s a straw man. The issue is that a high-ranking NAACP official is a fabulist and a liar, and this raises questions about her credibility and that of every organization that employs her or allows her to speak for it. It seems that the NAACP cannot mature to the point where it will be honest about misconduct by its members. This is sad, and it also is destructive.
Ethics Alarms 
If she gets fired, doesn’t she have a discrimination claim on her hands?
I would like to see that fight.
-Jut
Yes I actually had a case like this about seven years ago. Racial passing is not that uncommon though it usually works in reverse — my case involved a light-skinned African-American.
Mr. Marshall;
# 5 is a doozie, or a Dolezal if you prefer.
#6? The next big thing will be “Racial Reassignment,” even if it doesn’t allow you to hit from the red tees.
Would that this were a tipping point. Who knows, maybe Bruce Jenner was as well? I do like the idea that “I am whatever I think I am regardless of biology” might get some further attention and investigation.
Progressivism carries within itself a refutation of all hypocrisy. It might seem that what was wrong yesterday is right today, but that’s because new information has been added, so now we know better. And what we learn by tomorrow will override what was right today.
“I would argue that Hillary Clinton would be the closest thing to our first weasel President, but that would not make her an actual weasel.”
That made me literally laugh out loud, thank you Jack
Among other things, it’s a total insult to weasel’s. You had to know this was coming.
I think that the fairest way to describe the difference between transexuality, and ‘transraciality’ is that just about no one, ever, in a million years of human history, pretended to be the opposite gender for personal gain.
By “pretended”, I exclude short term frauds, or heroic counter examples. Mulan, for instance, pretended to be a man, but that was only to fight for her nation. Similarly, homosexuals “pretended” to be straight not too long ago to serve in the military.
I am referring more to the distressed group of individuals who feel so uncomfortable in their bodies, they turn to black market hormones and butcher surgeons to feel relief. These individuals willingly place themselves into a cast of public scorn, because the alternative was so unbearable. No body here pretended to be the opposite gender because it improved their social status.
Jenner is a difficult case to understand, because she comes from such extreme privilege, relative to the vast majority of trans and even so called “cis” (non-trans) individuals. If her account is to be taken at face value, then SHE pretended to be a man for 60+ years for extreme personal gain (and a particularly fecund man at that). This reverses the usually roles.
I would argue that gender is an infinitely more objective a “construct” than race; and also an infinitely more complex one. In pure terms of breeding, one party must produce a sperm containing a Y-chromosome (or at least an X-chromosome carrying a critical gene usually on the Y…), and the other party must provide an X-chromosome. But there is so much room for ambiguity! The human body defaults to developing a female form in utero, and it is only critical piece of Y-genes that, if properly activated, develop the external and internal male form. Exposure to external hormones can influence results, as can allergy and rejection of internal hormones.
With so many known factors affecting objective primary and secondary sexual traits, it is perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that unknown factors may influence objective gender identity in the brain, even despite any physical ambiguity.
Bruce as a three-time married, prolific breeder with the means to support his offspring, publicly identifying as always having been attracted to women, would certainly fall into the apparently unambiguously male criteria. Still, the stigma could plausibly have been too strong to publicly identify with his counter intuitive true gender. Would a 1980’s cross-dressing Olympic champion be a hero who earns millions, or a freak who looses everything?
With race, however, there is literally no genetic component, aside from a few skin pigments and body shape. Two white (XY) men will never produce a child, nor will two (XX) black women. The genetics of gender clearly make a difference! But an (XY) black man and an (XX) Asian women? Nothing preventing the ordinary conception of a child. Race means nothing genetically.
Further, since genetically, Race is no more than a few bits of inherited tertiary characteristics, there is simply no mechanism to being born the wrong race! Culturally, however, Race is defined as the culture one inherits from one’s parents and community.
I will concede that it might be possible to be born feeling you have the wrong skin color, hair color, even breast size, etc (the existence of the cosmetics industry proves this). Everybody should have the right to feel comfortable in their own skin. Claiming racial heritage, when there is none, is fraud. One could be white, but feel more comfortable wearing discreet dark toned make up. One might even be drawn towards the culture of the black community….
Race, however, is too subjective a construct to claim to be objectively born into the wrong one.
“With so many known factors affecting objective primary and secondary sexual traits, it is perfectly reasonable to hypothesize that unknown factors may influence objective gender identity in the brain, even despite any physical ambiguity.”
Hypothesizing that unknown factors do things? How about fairies? That’s not how science works. A hypothesis is supposed to be testable. If the behavior is a result of biology, then it is testable. You would also have to explain how this brain anomaly is healthy and not pathological; otherwise it can fairly be described and treated as such.
Your criticism is extremely misguided. Having discussed known factors that effect and complicate biological gender expression, I posit that there very well maybe a physiological process that underlies the transgendered phenomenon. Such factors might include exposure to testosterone or estrogen in utero, which might effect brain development, leading the individual to feel gender dysphoria. Brain scans of transgendered individuals have, in fact, shown activity patterns more similar to the opposite gender than their outwardly apparent gender. Whether these brain patterns are a cause or symptom of gender dysphoria remains unknown.
This is perfectly testable, and could be proven wrong. There are no “fairies” involved. When discussing transgender and homosexuality, I would urge caution in blaming fairies…
“Culturally, however, Race is defined as the culture one inherits from one’s parents and community.”
Never heard this definition of ‘race’ before. Oddly, and in actual fact, many scientists, working in biological and medical fields are of the opinion that race has no taxonomic significance, pointing out, correctly, that all humans are part of the Genus/species Homo sapiens, sub-species Homo sapiens sapiens, and all so-called “races” can inter-breed.
Yes, my definition above derives from the lack of taxonomic significance of race. Since there is no underlying physiological basis for race (unlike gender), we must accept it as a purely social construct. Within this construct, race is still defined as hereditary; thus there is no basis for claiming racial dysphoria if born without a certain racial heritage.
My ultimate point, which may not have been clearly expressed before, is that there is a plausible physiological mechanism for Ms. Jenner claiming to be a women; the scientific understanding of the transgendered phenomenon is still incomplete, but has not rule out such a possibility. There is, however, no plausible mechanism for Ms. Dolezal to claim African American heritage.
What about Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in “Some Like It Hot”? Of course they were acting in a comedy but they both made a lot of money out of that movie. So there was personal gain.
Well yeah, people have played the roll of the opposite gender, but few have permanently mutilated themselves to play that roll without sincerely believing themselves to be the wrong gender. After posting, I realized I hadn’t quite made that point clear.
Their reactions to Marilyn Monroe- in and out of drag- probably didn’t require much acting!
But an XY man and an XY woman will.
Or can, sometimes.. They have done in the past,
“Y” makes “Guy”, Zoe. Isn’t it just about time you gave up this hideous fantasy and looked reality in the eye? Or are you afraid of what you might see in yourself?
Y make male. Guy is something else. Something loaded down with cultural expectations about appearance and behavior. In different times and places those expectations have been different.
Guys are people who meet enough of those exceptions.
Point taken, Valky!
*Narrows eyes* And people who subvert those expectations still retain their humanity.
Hmmm… aren’t you just negating your previous statement?
No. People remain people even when Steven Mark Pilling doesn’t like or approve of them. The thoughts in your head don’t change them, to believe otherwise is just more magical thinking.
Here, I’ll make it simple.
I like Lana Warshowski. Lana Warshowski is a person.
I don’t like Caitlyn Jenner. Caitlyn Jenner is a person.
I like kittens. Kittens are not people.
I do not like Cloud Atlas. Cloud Atlas is not a person.
I like Lana Warshowski. I don’t like Cloud Atlas.
Note how the first has nothing to do with the second.
1. I’ll take your word for it.
2. No such person.
3. Who doesn’t?
4. Who or what is Cloud Atlas??
5. Who cares?!
6. What the devil is your point???
Reality::
J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9
— A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis. —
Maybe reading this account will get the message through when dry, dusty scientific papers won’t. Even if not, it’s a stirring read about Identity.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/apr/09-the-man-who-lost-his-name-and-his-genetic-identity
More psychobabble… and from Discover magazine. I used to subscribe. That’s before it turned into a left wing fluff rag.
Is it about fluffers, written by fluffers, written for fluffers, or for fluffer enthusiasts?
Yes.
What Dragon said! Everything seems to be a spin-off of People Magazine these days. If you want hard, relevant facts, you have to dig them out on your own.
All of the above!
There was no psychobabble in the Discover article. The article simply discusses a young man’s battle with a severe form of Leukemia.
Only jokingly does it say he “lost” his gender identity, because his bone marrow contains genetic material donated from the umbilical cord of an Italian baby girl. It is simply a play on words, because in addition to fight cancer, the patient had to fight the credit bureaus to remove fraudulent loans taken out by an identify thief.
Despite being a fascinating and courageous tale, it the story is wholly irrelevant to the discussion here regarding authentic racial and gender identity. The story does not claim the man is now a women, nor that he identifies as a woman, but jokes that he could rob a bank and get away it, because his blood contains the DNA of a woman!
Thanks for making that clear, Rich.
Here’s reality, Zoe. First: Discover Magazine is a poor quality science periodical for unacquainted laymen who dig bright glossy pictures of dinosaurs and think that viewing them makes them a paleontologist. Second: You could take all those poor souls of alleged authenticity and put them in a cave in Ayers Rock with room to spare. Nature makes occasional mistakes for a variety of reasons. But (as I’ve said before) if one were to believe your nuances that such events are widespread, one would have to believe we live in the Marvel Universe; X-Men and all. Sorry. My credulity doesn’t extend that far.
Huh?
While admittedly a fascinating set of circumstances, I resorted to “XX” and “XY” only to politely avoid the tongue twisting terminology of the transgendered community. The general statement “But an XY man and an XY woman will [produce a child]” would seem to unhelpfully introduce ambiguity…
Off the top of my head, the vast majority of the small number of individuals with an XY chromosomal who develop as female are sterile. The individual in the counter example you provide seems to have had the right balance of hormones and active X chromosomal genes to overcome this hurdle. Such cases are fascinating, but should not be interjected where they add further confusion to an already complex topic.
Ah, missed this line…
Jenner is easy to understand, she’s a classic near-textbook autogynephile. what confuses you is comparing that to say a Harry Benjaman type 6. Seeking the same treatment doesn’t mean having the same motivations.
Legally and ethically I don’t see that the motivation should actually matter, only the behavior. On that count Caitlyn Jenner is a selfish entitled arse who completely lacks empathy and is oozing with male privilege and male socialization, getting off on preforming what a 65 year old male thinks women are, corsets and makeup. Nothing in her head changes the life she’s led and leads.
But if Jenner actually goes and has SRS then that’s that. Welcome in the bathroom, welcome in the locker room because that’s how this society works, innie or outie not skirt or pants.
“autogynephile” I actually Googled this because I’d never seen it before (thank you squiggly red line)
From http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Autogynephilia#Criticism :
“Autogynephilia” (thank you squiggly red line) “is the “mental illness” described by the theory that male-to-female transsexuals who aren’t exclusively attracted to men actually have a sexual fetish for viewing themselves as females. This covers lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual transsexuals. The term translates from Greek to something like “self-woman-love,” with the intended meaning “love of oneself as a woman.” The theory was originated by Ray Blanchard and Kurt Freund in the 1980s, and endorsed by onetime celebrity psychologist J. Michael Bailey (who was later forced to resign as psychology chair at Northwestern University).”
And also:
“This leads to the biggest criticism from a scientific standpoint, in that the theory is speciously unfalsifiable. While at first, it seems like it would be possible to find a transsexual who is attracted to women, but does not erotically fantasize about having Lady Parts, the theory invites one to beg the question, and take it as fact that one is simply lying about not having such fetishes, because being attracted to women would mean you have autogynephilia.
Entirely apart from being unfalsifiable, the “autogynephilia” label is used derogatorily to separate the “genuine” from the “fake” transsexuals, a practice that has been around pretty much as long as transsexuals.[2]”
Uh… You know this whole gender identity concept isn’t falsifiable either since it relies on subjective self reporting.
Maybe you should try the academic writings of an admitted autogynephile http://www.annelawrence.com/autogynephilia.html then tell me if you’re reminded of Caitlyn Jenner.
It isn’t so much about their attraction to women as their sexual attration to the idea of themselves as women. Transvestitc-fetishism taken to the next level. It is listed in the DSM-V as a subset of 302.3 transvestitic disorder, not 302.85 which covers what used to be called Gender Identity Disorder.
All this sexual sophistry makes me GIDdy!
I see what you did there.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Become used to disappointment!
Johnny Otis, a major figure in 20th century popular music, was generally assumed to be black, although he was of Greek heritage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Otis
I’ve not seen him referred to in this brouhaha. Perhaps because, Johnny let people make assumptions as opposed to misleading them as to his race. He certainly did more than his share for American culture by helping to introduce what was then called “race music” into the popular mainstream, and contributing to the creation of Rock ‘n Roll.
Just back from Europe, picking up on this.
How is mainstream liberalism treating this? I’ve only seen your buddy Bill Maher on it, who apparently thinks she’s a wack job.
You’ve found someone on Slate to quote, but he also says “her story involves lies and misrepresentations,” and calls it bizarre. Not exactly a ringing liberal endorsement.
You ask “If progressives want to die on this wall…” I sure don’t see a lot of them lining up. We’re all pretty much in agreement, the lady has issues.
The one useful thing it does do is raise the interesting question of whether “black” is specifically a question of bloodlines (remember “quadroon?”) or whether the term has a cultural meaning? And how to differentiate the meanings. That’s a valid topic for discussion, even if raised by a wack job.
The NAACP? Lots of that argument, which is the Saint’s Excuse.
I have not seen any effort by any liberal voices to explain the contradictions I have highlighted.
HA! And now your fave and mine, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, proves my point. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/melissa-harris-perry-on-rachel-dolezal-it-is-possible-that-she-might-actually-be-black/
She doesn’t prove anything of the kind. If anything, she backs up my point, saying that “race” is more a social and cultural construct than one of bloodlines.
YOUR point seems to be that Dolezal’s an unprincipled liar for calling herself black, and that only liberals refuse to see the “obvious” fact that she’s lying.
No. Calling her a liar requires you to have a definition of ‘black’ that she lied about. Not at all clear here.
Whether Dolezal is a disturbed person is a completely different proposition.
And you prove my point too. Read the posts: if being black is just a construct, then affirmative action has no substantive basis. If anyone can become black by saying so, then an Asian student can become black, and suddenly become disadvantaged. If being black is just a name, then The Spirit Awards must give awards to any actor who announces that they are black. Your argument, and Finney’s, makes the entire progressive emphasis on race trivial and ridiculous. Of is the argument that being an anti-white racist is sufficient to be “Black”?
That’s dying on the hill, Charles. I’d be sad to see it.
Not at all.
If I move to North Dakota and live there for years, and become “practically like a native,” then am I a North Dakotan?
How about if we try it with France? Can I become French?
How about if we try it with black?
The fact that a social construct is just a social construct doesn’t mean people can’t be discriminated against on the basis of a prejudice. The entire history of racial prejudice in this country is a massive testimony to the fact that a cultural construct can be made the basis of racism.
And if you believe that getting rid of racism is a desirable objective, then you’ve only got two solutions:
1. Recognize the racism against a cultural group and try to overcome it, or
2. Pretend it never existed and try to act “as if.”
The second solution is the wishful thinking of the Roberts Court (as well as the ultimate desired outcome of social liberals). The first solution is mine and MHP’s and that of most liberals.
Your obsession with making labels have meaning (“if being black is just a name, then the Spirit Awards must be given to anyone who announces they are black”) is just that – an illogical obsession. I can declare myself what I want, but it won’t stop other people calling me something.
Remember Black Like Me? A white person underwent chemical treatment so as to appear black, with predictable consequences. A recent Key & Peele segment pokes fun at all this, with a black guy being looked at suspiciously in a white neighborhood until he pulls up his hoodie – and a picture of a white guy in profile is painted on his sweatshirt. Everyone relaxes and smiles.
The following statements are true:
1. Race is heavily a social and cultural construct (more than is gender)
2. People make prejudicial decisions based on that construct.
From those statements it does NOT FOLLOW that:
1. affirmative action has no substantive basis;( it has the same basis as the racism is it trying to counteract)
2. an Asian student can self-declare black and suddenly become disadvantaged (any school should sniff this out and reject it)
3. the entire progressive emphasis on race [is] trivial and ridiculous (tell the average black person in this country that race is ‘trivial,’ and see how much agreement you get).
4. Anyone can become black by saying so. (Not at all – anyone can call themselves black, or North Dakotan, or French – but it’s OTHER people, not themselves, who will accept or reject that self-claim; in particular, it’s other black people, other North Dakotans, and other French people.
You continue to insist on the ontological power of logical statements. But this is absurd. Saying something is so does not make it so. Someone declaring themselves to be something may or may not make others accept them as such. Which, in a roundabout way, is yet another proof of the social, rather than physical, nature of such groupings, rather than your insistence on color, genes, ancestry and biology.
Again: I’m not saying she “is” or “isn’t” black. I’m pointing out the inherent contradictions in you claiming that it’s a strictly biological question. Same point as MHP is making.
Yes, and the point you are both making is absurd, but consisten with related progressive intellectual gymnastics.
1.If I go to France, I can become a French citizen. I cannot honetyly claim French heritage, of that I am a French black, or a black female, or Edith Piaf.
2. If a Mexican illegally immigrates to the US, he or she doesn not become “an American,” having been neither born here nor being a legal resident.
3. The analogy to your French situation is Dolezal being able to say that she is a member of the NAACP. That does not make her a “colored person,” no matter what her loyalty to the group is or how much she connects to the cause.
“Dying on the hill…”
Sorry, Jack, you’re the one playing mental gymnastics.
The French may require citizenship to prove you’re a French citizen – but to be “french” is a state of mind, even for the French.
If you don’t like “North Dakotan,” then try “southern, ” or “midwestern.”
Thankfully we are past the days when it required an identity card to prove you were white (or black).
Those are distractions, as is membership in the NAACP (also not required to be considered “black” or not – ask any black person, or for that matter, ask any racist whether they inquire about NAACP membership before discriminating).
The issue being raised is whether “black” is biological/genetic or whether it’s cultural. Adding registration cards to the argument is a distraction.
“The French may require citizenship to prove you’re a French citizen – but to be “french” is a state of mind, even for the French.”
I just suddenly became French! Just like that…it came upon me like that, with no warning! And Hillary can claim, with your approval, to be a black female candidate. Or black one day, and female the next. Why not?
Don’t you realize that this is the ethics-void, “you have your truth and I have mine” relativistic BS in new clothes? I can’t believe you are falling for it, much less defending it. You are arguing for the rejection of objective truth in all things.
I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s doing. Just because something is a cultural construct doesn’t mean it is arbitrary or meaningless. Constructs are important. Language is a cultural construct, and it is a vital aspect of human existence.
You can’t simply declare yourself French because you don’t share a culture with the French. Your feelings and ideals are different from the average collective French feelings and ideals, not that I really know what those are. Cultural identity, like charlesgreen says, is defined not only by you but by your interactions with other people. Changing your cultural identity is more or less as difficult as learning another language or changing your reputation, for much the same reasons: you have to change the way you think and the way others think of you.
If I claim to be “black,” am I claiming to possess physical characteristics associated with people of more direct African descent? If so, I’m factually incorrect. Am I claiming to possess a set of experiences, feelings, preferences, reference frames, and connections with other people who on average share those experiences, feelings, preferences, and reference frames? If so, then the matter may be up for debate, but my physical form in inadmissable as evidence, unless it is logistically relevant (e.g. deaf culture.) If being subject to prejudice based on skin color is a relevant facet of “black culture,” then one may indeed have to possess darker skin for a time before one can be accepted or initiated.
What I’m trying to say is that while physical form and culture are not completely unrelated in human society, it is important to be able to separate them in our minds, and people should be able to adopt whatever culture will accept them and be taken seriously regardless of their physical form. The reason people are so confused about this issue is that “race” is sometimes used to refer to inherited physical characteristics and other times used to refer to cultural characteristics, landing us smack dab in the middle of the True Scotsman fallacy, where an empirical fact is associated with some sort of normative value. I hereby call for a rationalist taboo to be placed on the word “race” to avoid this conflation.
EC, that is a very, very well written piece. Thank you.
But the NAACP exec in question has to be judged by her own definition. She didn’t have the integrity, courage or smarts to decide that she was so four square with black culture that she was, in fact, by your definition, black. She altered her appearance to “pass.” She represented a brother as a son, and a black man as a father.
I have no problem with this analyisis: “If I claim to be “black,” am I claiming to possess physical characteristics associated with people of more direct African descent? If so, I’m factually incorrect. Am I claiming to possess a set of experiences, feelings, preferences, reference frames, and connections with other people who on average share those experiences, feelings, preferences, and reference frames? If so, then the matter may be up for debate, but my physical form is inadmissable as evidence, unless it is logistically relevant (e.g. deaf culture.)” But Dolezal is doing both, and is indistinguishable in that respect from Jenner, or a hearing person who sticks wax in his ears to claim to be deaf. MY point was that Jenner was LESS credible as a “woman” than Dolezal is as black, and the convoluted double talk in defense of one, or the ridicule of her, undermined the arguments for the other. If Dolezal has to masquerade and lie to be black by her own terms, then she isn’t.
Simple as that.
Did you know that there is yet another brand of nutcase that wants surgery to remove a limb, or to remove an eye, so that they can be disabled? Not necessarily to collect disability, either. They feel that they would be more comfortable living without (a) limb(s), or paralyzed, or partially or fully blind, and whether or not these people should be accommodated is now a topic of debate in the medical community. You can’t make this stuff up.
Heard about this on a local talk show a couple of weeks ago. Nearly wrecked the car trying to turn the radio off. Some things, I’m not MEANT to know.
At some point, I fully intend to find a piece of land somewhere very secluded; a piece of land with fertile soil, where I can grow my own food, generate my own power, build my own house and most of what’s in it. In short, I would like to be entirely off-grid, so that my family and I no longer have to witness this insanity.
I’ll bet you’re glad you never had to deal with this sort of thing in your practice.
Well, that’s one possibility: Dolezal is herself confused about the distinction between the physiological definition of “black” versus the cultural definition, probably because nobody around her knows to make the distinction, either.
Another possibility is that she wants to change her appearance and deceive others in order to fit better into the cultural image of being “black.” It’s similar to how changing one’s clothing and dialect can get you treated as a member of a different social class (e.g. My Fair Lady), except that this particular cultural group is popularly perceived as being at least partially defined by skin color, so to be treated as a member she must change her skin color. The fact that there is so much cultural baggage around this one particular group, including the baggage Dolezal herself carries, leads her to believe, with perhaps some justification, that she can’t get what she wants simply by changing her clothing and behavior, because she believes everyone around her treats people differently based on their skin color, or physical, some might say “real” “race”.
Double scare quotes there because I try to just treat people as individuals, based on my impressions of how they want to be treated, which I develop from a first impression and then gradually modify until the first impression is gone and my personal experiences with them are the entire basis of my interactions. Therefore, I find the whole nebulous concept of “race,” and “gender” for that matter, to be rather useless, correlation between biological sex and personality notwithstanding. If I want to deal with a person, I’ll read their personality for myself. That said, I do find it scary how eager people often are to be offended by me, and so if my first impression of a person is that they will leap to take offense, I will tend to avoid personalizing my interactions with them, and they won’t get the chance to see much of my true visage, lest their fragile minds be rent asunder, and fragile-minded society turn against me.
For what it’s worth, my mother emigrated from France in the 1930s partly because she found the French very unaccepting of her as a member of an Irish immigrant family. It’s not just an issue of assimilating French culture but also of having that accepted as a valid assimilation by the French themselves, which cannot be done unilaterally by anyone who chooses to attempt it. But making people French was part of what French colonialism aimed at.
Perhaps Harris-Perry’s perspective is just what’s need here.
She’s proven her mettle by establishing the new…um…demographic of the “White African American.”
http://www.duhprogressive.com/index.php/515-msnbc-says-black-cops-charged-in-freddie-gray-s-death-are-actually-white-african-americans
The primary objective there was to denigrate further and inspire more scorn for these particular Black cops, how better than to add a dash of “White?”
In the case of Dolezal, a new classification to inspire sympathy and compassion; howse about the “African American White?”
That’s hardly a new demographic. Charlize Theron has been one for a long time, to name but one.
The cynic in me suspects Harris-Perry’s context for “White African-American” and the intent supported by her own words (“If they weren’t part ‘white’ I seriously doubt the fatal injuries that were done to Mr. Gray would have occurred.”) were a tad different than merely depicting a White person from Africa like Theron
Mr. Schlecht, what you are describing used to be called, by the black culture, an Oreo. Black on the outside, white on the inside. Charlize is just the opposite: white on the outside, black on the inside. Nor does she claim to BE black, or share and of the culture or history of American blacks. If she does, ever, she will be lying. She is a white Afrikaner, whose Uncle fought for the Boer’s in the Boer War.
There is nada “black” about Charlize Theron. “African” does not equal “black.” Pleas lets not have the Cleopatra argument again…
Interesting – that’s also how Keith Richards describes himself in his autobiography, words to the effect of “sometimes I think I was the soul of a southern American black man perversely born into blue collar England.”
Of course, he is probably stoned out of his mind when he thinks that.
Has he ever not been??
Yup. Three days straight back in ’86. Turns out he couldn’t play guitar worth shit sober, so Mick got him stoned again.
That must carry over into his acting career!
Jack, most of your “contradictions” are based on your binary, on-off, black-white conflation of “is” with “ought,” as neatly summarized by Extraterrestrial. You accuse her of lying about her race, saying she is black when she is not.
So – what is YOUR definition of ‘black,’ by which she is lying?
Specifically, is it anchored in parentage? Down to the old slaveholder octoroon level? Further? And if not anchored in parentage, then by what definition are you calling her a liar?
As I said, and as others have noted in these pages, the really interesting question raised here is whether and to what extent “black” is a cultural rather than a biological trait?
The analogy with gender is, like so many analogies, partially valid and partially invalid. The valid part is that increasingly we’re finding that “Male” and “Female” are covers for far greater ranges of subtlety. Nature is not familiar with Occam’s Razor. m
On the face of it, you’d think that race would be even more obviously susceptible to wide variations, as the degrees of intermarriage are infinite. But of course old prejudices die very hard, and we’ve not managed to completely disentangle ourselves from them (e.g. Native American reservations and legal rights).
My definition of black is what she’s pretending to be: someone who by any substantive definition—color, ancestry, genes, can be considered biologically black. Culture alone does not make someone ethnically black: Tom Hagen was a mobster (= civil rights advocate, in Rachel’s case), but he was not Sicilian (= “black”) and did not pose as being so, because unlike Dolezal, he had some integrity. Dolezal is the one making this “binary,” except she has nothing to make it even that. I don’t care what she is, except to the extent that she’s a fake. People shouldn’t vote for candidates because they are black, and shouldn’t make excuses for people because they are black. We should look at “blackness” as a matter of natural appearance only, like “darkness,” fairness,” and “blondeness.” Black culture, whatever it is, should be regarded an ethnic culture, and the adoption of it should not make anyone a new ethnicity.
What you are doing is what I called “dying on that Hill.” Jenner and Dolezal combined make progressive cant on identity politics look dishonest, deceptive, hypocritical and silly.
Maybe next week, she will “self-identify” as a black MAN, so we can all have an even better time talking about this nut.
Courageous!
“Dolezal and her open embrace of magical thinking as reality risks should force progressives to confront other, less spectacular but equally dishonest examples of employing fantasy and denial as foundations for belief. ” Nope. They will double-down on the insanity. I believe it’s in Rules for Radicals.
” She should cite “The Jerk” as an explanation for this cringe-worthy spectacle.
Remember when the concept of a “race change operation” was a popular joke? So was “sex change”. Once.
I can’t remember the exact times and circumstances, but I’ve read many screeds by black women on Twitter, HuffPo, Salon etc. about white women attempting to co-opt the black woman experience. They were threatening, almost violent. Where are these women now?
Wearing blonde wigs in a Walmart. See ’em all the time!
You can’t conclude by their absence from EthicsAlarms that they’re not out there.
It’s time for another Earth history lesson, as told by a space alien elementary school teacher.
Humans are often silly, and the fact that they have inherited a lot of silly words, silly ideas, and silly institutions from silly humans of the past makes it harder for them to realize they are being silly and stop. Everyone involved in this transracial situation seems to have a problem, because they appear to think that the word “black” has any importance, although many people on this site have correctly identified the problem. People inhabit bodies, and there are empirical facts about those bodies. We can use words to describe those facts. The structure of a person’s body at the time they first awaken is involuntary, independent of their choices, and therefore cannot be used to infer anything about their character. Furthermore, people are people, and their preferences and feelings should be taken into account when we figure out how best to treat them with respect. When many people have many similar preferences and feelings, we say they have a “culture.”
Many humans in the past thought that the empirical facts about people’s bodies were inextricably linked with their culture, and to make matters worse, their own cultures called on them to disrespect the cultures of others, probably a memetic holdover from when humans were competing tribes. These past humans used physical appearance as a cue to determine how they should treat others, and they used the same words to describe facts about people’s bodies that they did to describe people’s cultures and feelings, making it harder for people to think of others’ feelings independently from their physiology. Some of these false equivalences became self-fulfilling prophecies, such as when people with Appearance A were shunned by people with Appearance B because Appearance A was associated with danger. Shunned people become desperate, and desperate people become dangerous.
What the humans have been slowly learning is that other than where legitimate logistical issues become relevant, physical form does not have any direct effect on the ethics that apply to a situation. It does have an indirect effect, when physiology affects a person’s culture through the self-fulfilling prophecies imposed by the larger, silly society around them, and a person’s culture does have an effect on how best to treat them ethically and with respect. However, self-fulfilling prophecies can be subverted through effort and the individualization of interaction, also referred to as empathy. Learning the nuances of a specific person’s feelings allows one to better treat them with respect and obviates the need to refer to permanent aspects of their physiology for cues. (Small changes to physiology which indicate emotion are still relevant.) When people are treated as individuals, they can more easily change the way they feel and act.
Some people are uncomfortable with their physical forms in a wide variety of ways, for a wider variety of reasons. It is polite not to aggravate them by raising distressing details unnecessarily, but the details remain until effort is expended to remedy them. Some people, partially overlapping with the first group, want society to treat them differently than how society tends to do so. The problems arise when silly humans package together a collection of preferences and feelings (a “culture”) with a physical form, project the culture onto people with that form, and use the same word for both. Now not only does society think that the way a person should be treated is based on the person’s physiology, but the person doesn’t even know how to ask to be treated differently other than to say, “treat me like I have a different physical form,” which does sound silly, but only because humanity failed to develop the proper words to make the request. In a society without the fixation on physiology as a cultural cue, there would be no objections to a person adopting a cultural role or image that is statistically unusual for their physiology, because cultural images would not be considered refutable facts, or anything that a person could be either saddled with or forbidden from, except based on their own demonstrated character. However, in contemporary human society with the widespread culture-physiology association, sometimes a person’s discomfort with their physical form may influence their desire to be treated differently by society, or vice versa.
The danger in connecting two basic concepts with a single word and failing to have a separate word for each basic concept to clarify the distinction is vividly demonstrated in the short story “Three Worlds Collide” by Eliezer Yudkowsky. In it, one sapient species must stave off overpopulation and historically has done so by devouring their numerous young. This process is so integral to the survival of their species, that “baby-eating” is synonymous with goodness, rightness, and ethics. This conceptual conflation prevented any technology from being developed in order to prevent the painful demise of many sapient beings because it didn’t occur to any member of their species that eating babies might not be “baby-eating.”
In order for humans to stop being silly, they need analysis, which refers to critical thinking, or the differentiation of ideas, as well as synthesis, which refers to imagination, or the blending together of ideas and experiences to create new concepts and paradigms. It wouldn’t hurt for them to be less sloppy with words, either.
And now, a word from a sometimes-helpful, sometimes-dangerous agent of the deconstruction of emotion and the nullification of significance, at a time when its broken clock is right on the dot.
You say that I’m confusing, that I tie your mind in knots.
The reason that you’re dizzy’s I’m untangling your thoughts.
It’s tragically amusing, people think they’ve got such smarts,
Then they try with only “is”s to conclude so many “ought”s!”
–Barren [sic] Blauschwartz, Void Element Demon
Curses; I misspelled Yudkowsky’s surname. Apologies to him and to readers of my comment.
I’ll fix it.
Whatever this means, it’s the Comment of the Day.
Pretty sure we fleshed out this in the discussion on Culture with Charles Green, and it was actually coherent then.
I like getting perspective from all quadrants of the universe.
No, but it will get you locked up just like him.
Is Al Jolson on the list? (Ali G of “is it because I is black?” fame isn’t an American.)
By the way, you might find the history of the first NAACP president of interest (unless I’m misremembering the organisation he was in). He experienced genuine discrimination yet looked very white, all because of “one drop of blood” criteria; his existence highlights what was then the test for being suitable as a representative.
Re 4:
Call me when we find similar racial differences in the brain. When we can give an fMRI exam and determine the race of someone thereby.
Wait—someone has to think black to be black? Ah, so THAT’s why black conservatives aren’t “black.”
I often identify as Jewish-American when there’s a great deal of work that needs doing around the house. “Sweetheart, can you take out the garbage?” “Nope, sorry; It’s Passover.”
I noted with amusement that most of the Sunday shows didn’t mention this story at all…wouldn’t touch it, except for Fox. Again, I think it was a left-biased self-preservation move, because it is a looming rhetorical trap and philosophical quagmire for knee-jerk liberals.
SOME of them see the trap. Transsexuals are one of the most obvious battlegrounds: Either there’s an element of biological determination in play, or gender is a social construct. Either a man can be born with the body of a woman, or there’s no innate difference other than the plumbing in being male or female, and these people suffer from psychosis. The science generally says that biological determinism exists, but feminism is desperately trying to spin gender as a social construct, and we’re trying to get Hillary elected.
It’s funny to note though, that this divide already existed on the right… Fundamental religious organizations have called sex reassignment surgery ‘mutilations’ for years, although for different reasons. It amuses me that a similar rejection of science for different ideological reasons have drawn two groups I have very little sympathy for into a similar position.
With all due respect, Humble, when have you ever heard of a Christian or Jewish denomination ever endorsing this kind of surgery… except for circumcision?!
I’m sure I could find one if I took a moment, but what’s your point? Mine was that a rejection of science has put feminism and religion in the same camp and it amuses me. Are you hung up on my use of ‘fundamentalist’?
I assumed that you were equating Islam with the other two faiths as “right wing”.
Oddly enough…. Transsexuals are often welcomed in Islamist societies, especially Male to Female. If I were less cynical, I’d suggest it might have something to do with weighting the scales so that polygamy is less exclusive, but regardless, in some states they’re downright encouraging, going so far as to pay for surgeries. And oddly enough, a man having sex with someone who has transitioned female does not ‘count’ as gay as far as their laws are concerned.
I guess we were already aware of just how savage, convoluted and downright insane Sharia law is.
“…why can’t a gay man “choose” to be heterosexual….”
He can. He does. The story of Michael Glatze is out:
The reason for the ferocious objection of the LBGT community as a whole to the professionals (or more commonly, self-styled “professionals” or “experts”) who for decades have “helped” gay men and women to “change” or become “normal” (inaccurate word that it is for anyone) is that the majority of the helped neither wanted nor required it in the first place. Forced renunciation had been (and is being still, to a lesser extent) coerced by the ignorance, bias, and desire for conformity or power – of family, religious groups, doctors, peers, police … and lawmakers. The resistance to that level and variety of pressure borne by isolated and vulnerable gay people itself bears witness to the power of sexual orientation in the first place; the ones who broke under the pressure were … broken, often neutered, unhappy, some described as displaying a flat affect not unlike those subjected to pre-frontal lobotomies. . Not “cured”. Not helped. Quite the contrary.
It was that intense; it is not that long ago that parents institutionalized their children as insane (and are in some areas still permitted to do so) for showing “signs” much less open declarations that they had “feelings” for others of the same gender. [sorry about all the quotation marks, but these are the words abused by those who created these and much worse cruel horrors]. Submitting to being “changed” or “cured” was the only way to go, other than suicide. Those who could get away, ran away, often to lives unsafe and uncomfortable, but preferable to not being able to live gay.
There was a smaller but, yes, viable number of gay men — I will stay with men since lesbians have an easier time of it (if you are not taken seriously in the first place, you are also more likely to be overlooked by those who would destroy you) — who did NOT find a place in the gay communities, whether because their (inflated? romanticized?) expectations of a better life were thwarted, or they had problems making social connections, who were already depressed by their pasts when they came out, might be already entrenched in an addiction that helped them survive the bullies and the disappointments, or who just became emotionally exhausted from fighting the homophobia around them, and even homesick for the straight life they’d come from, however abusive. Some of THESE men went volunarily to professionals (sometimes even gay therapists) to be helped, to CHANGE their behavior, whether the desires followed or not, in order to make life bearable. Out of this group, there were indeed some who found in their conversion (not a return) to being straight a comfortable place in the world, even a contentment. These went unnoticed and unadvertised.
In the present, the media, as usual, boils down into catchy headlines every complicated evolving situation they find into the most simple(minded) view of newsworthy items they can, scratching and poking at the most sensitive areas they can get at which, also as usual, provokes self-appointed community spokespeople to take rigid, uncompromising, extreme, and substanceless stances in reaction. Thus the loudest voices, the ones heard by the general public — not, by the way, by the communities they supposedly represent — such as Dan Savage’s –, play to the media’s motivations by polarizing every situation they can get their attention-grabbing hands on. The outcome is that dialog becomes difficult, denial appears defensive, and the exceptions (often the ones that prove the rule) appear to be deliberately hidden. They weren’t hidden, they were simply gone and, for the most part, quickly forgotten.
Well, this particular long-bagged cat is Out. Gay people are just like everybody else: different. Some know what they like and where they’re going at seven, some at seventy — most by middle age. Many date and become intimate with the opposite sex, and many more than people realize had never considered being gay, have heterosexual marriages, raise families, find themselves and their, yes, their loved ones in a bind that is a step more tangled than the average divorce for hetero-adultery. The strength of the family bonds have a lot to do with whether or not this will be a bitter tragedy or an accepted, even inevitable, move along another path in life.
Finally, it is just now becoming known that there is, in some, the opposite effect: to have lived gay and believed wholeheartedly in that identity, socially, culturally and sexually for ten, twenty, thirty years or more. There will always be people who believe that a religious conversion in others means that the converted was mistaken or sinning in the first place and is now saved, that the divorced person must have been acutely miserable and unfulfilled throughout the marriage and was now free to live, live, live {a la Agnes Gooch}, that the “reformed” gay man had never been “really” homosexual at all. The evidence says otherwise.
There are as yet no answers as to the how’s or why’s but Michael Glatze’s story is examined and the word spreads further about it — Glatze went from over a decade of dedicated and highly public gay activism while in loving partnership with another gay man to a marriage with a woman, both becoming pastors for the same fundamentalist church, having rejected his gay identity entirely — He has chosen to be heterosexual … because he IS heterosexual. Glatze’s story, told by his ex, followed up thoroughly, and so far having not a chink in its armor, should be enough to pull others out of the straight closet, voluntarily, with the help of legitimate professional therapists. Fortunately, it is not too late to stop the Savage-ness and allow yet another form of nature to take its course.
By the way, the American premiere of the movie “I Am Michael,” starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto, and based on the NYT article cited at the beginning of this post, will open the 11-day Frameline Film Festival (expecting its usual 65,000+ patrons over five venues for their 39th year of international LGBTQ presentations) this Thursday, June 18th, 2015. One wonders how many patrons of faith-based movies would attend a film festival that showcased the far more common story that twists in the other direction.
Well said. We need more nuance like this in society-wide discussions. If we continue to assert nuance and concede legitimate points without letting people act like it vindicates them, maybe they’ll realize that they can’t bat around the same simplistic assertions anymore.
Our “We need to have a conversation about race” Commander-In-Chief has been uncharacteristically yet incuriously silent about this.
Perhaps this isn’t the one he had in mind?