Issue 642 Transracial July 27, 2015

Is it possible to be born white, but believe you are black?  Rachel Dolezal former NAACP president was born white, but identifies as black, even going so far as to change her hairstyle, and skin color to match.  Is this something bad?  Or is it a step in the right direction?

Transracial:  For Dolezal, she felt she was black when her adopted black son said that he felt she was his natural born mom.  Thus, she apparently felt the need to be black for him (though this was not the start of her racial identification).  But can someone identify as a different "race".  It is possible when you look at it from the context of adopting a type of culture.  For instance, Irish Americans that were born in the United States are not ethnically Irish, but have adopted a part of the culture here in the States.  Therefore, if you do not identify as Irish, despite your heritage, then you are not Irish.  Likewise, Black Americans have their own unique culture in the United States, and thus it may be possible to identify as a Black American despite not being Black in any form.  In short, culture and how we identify ourselves is something flexible irrespective of skin color.  Also, if you believe it is ok to alter your body, or to be a hyphenated anything, then you must accept that people of different heritage could and will identify as a race as opposed to an ethnicity.

As to whether this is a step in the right direction is subject to perspective.  By not viewing oneself as an ethnicity, it lends people to looking at themselves in a larger cross country context (especially as there are far less races than ethnicities).  But on the other hand, if anyone can be any race, then what happens to the culture and spirit when wannabe black, or Asian etc. try to become part of that group.  It blurs the lines between us further, and purists will fear it, while it slowly blends every culture together and makes race into a tribal thing as opposed to a genetic thing.  So people born as a race may lose their racial identity overtime and therefore the traditional separations we know of and create disappear.

Conclusion:  Now whether Dolezal is crazy or not I do not know.  But if this is a turning point with respect to racial identification, then many things will change, hopefully for the better.  People will possibly see themselves as just that, people first and adopt aspects of the various parts or sub cultures that make up the larger global community.  As such, race ceases to exist as a boundary.  But this may not occur as like I said, the woman may simply be nuts.  Only time will tell.