CELEBRITY FRIDAY (BONUS): Is Rachel Dolezal Black Simply Because She Says She Is?

Social and popular media have been going buck wild about the story of Rachel Dolezal, the  apparently white woman who has been posing publicly as a Black woman for at least the last 10 years.

NPR's Code Switch blog has a useful roundup of online coverage:

In a bizarre turn of events, a prominent civil rights leader and Africana studies professor in Spokane, Wash., has been accused of pretending to be black for personal gain. 

Rachel Dolezal, 37, heads up the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane and has apparently identified as black for several years. Dolezal's story came to light after she was accused of falsifying reports of multiple hate crimes. Local reporters contacted her parents, who made a startling claim backed up by a birth certificate and old pictures. They say their daughter's heritage is Swedish, German, Czech and a little bit Native American. But definitely not black. 

Predictably, this story has blown up all over the Internet as people try to make sense of it all: Why did she do it? Didn't anyone suspect? What's up with that hair?

As many experts have pointed out, people have been "passing" as a different race for hundreds of years. It's just that almost always this has meant that it was people who would generally be characterized as "Black" (or African-American) passing as something else, usually a racial identity which is less marginalized. What makes the Dolezal situation so unusual is that it is an example of someone voluntarily adopting a subaltern identity, presumably to garner some kind of advantage that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to if they maintained their original identity.

Some people are trying to compare the Dolezal story to the Caitlin Jenner story but that is clearly just stupid.

Dolezal engaged in such actions in order to be perceived as black, in a racialized American environment where that matters. Trans people transition in order to be the gender we feel inside and, while there may come a time when posers will appropriate trendy trans culture for profit, right now, there's no advantage to transitioning when you're not trans.

In some sense this Dolezal situation shows that there has been progress of race relations in America where it is possible for some people to actually believe that their social circumstances would improve if they were perceived as Black or African-American.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

May 17, 2014: Today Is The 60th Anniversary of Brown v Board of Education!

Today is May 17th, the 60th anniversary of the issuance of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education which ruled that "separate but equal" is inherently unequal and unconstitutional, thus ending legal segregation in public schools in the United states.

It was in important moment in civil rights history but note that changes occurred with "all deliberate speed" until right-minded people started organizing protests in earnest and actual public policy change occurred in the 1960s, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Bizarrely, 60 years after Brown many schools in the South are LESS racially diverse now than they were then as this stunning report from The Atlantic makes clear.

NAACP Endorses Marriage Equality!

Major news on marriage equality occurred this weekend which confirms my belief in the inexorable victory of the good guys in the ongoing kulturkampf over LGBT equality. The NAACP, the nation's oldest and most respected civil rights organization, has officially endorsed marriage equality.

Here's the text of the resolution which the NAACP Board of Directors passed this weekend:

The NAACP Constitution affirmatively states our objective to ensure the “political, education, social and economic equality” of all people. Therefore, the NAACP has opposed and will continue to oppose any national, state, local policy or legislative initiative that seeks to codify discrimination or hatred into the law or to remove the Constitutional rights of LGBT citizens. We support marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law provided under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Further, we strongly affirm the religious freedoms of all people as protected by the First Amendment.

It's gonna be pretty hard for heterosexual supremacists and religious extremists to continue argue that the right of everyone to marry the adult partner of their choice regardless of gender is not a civil right anymore after this. Note the reference to religious freedom, discrimination and equal protection. The text of the resolution was written by my friend Maxim Thorne and publicized via Twitter this weekend.

Nice birthday present for me! I've been a NAACP member ever since the California NAACP endorsed marriage equality way back in 2005!

NYT: Vote NO on NC's "Careless" Amendment 1

The New York Times on Sunday published an editorial entitled "Bigotry on the Ballot" opposing North Carolina's Amendment One. The anti-gay constitutional measure would ban any other "domestic legal union" except between a man and a woman from being recognized under North Carolina law. The impacts of such a law are unclear but potentially devastating. The heterosexual supremacist religious extremists who put the measure on the May 8 primary ballot intended to just prohibit marriage equality, but the wording chosen would also ban civil unions or domestic partnerships at the state level.

Protect All NC Families is the name of the umbrella group opposing the amendment and they have pointed out that if it was enacted it would prevent domestic violence survivors from accessing protective services offered by the state if the victim is not married to their abuser. Their latest ad makes this point powerfully by showing a prosecutor saying that she gets 150-200 cases a week and if Amendment 1 passes then she would not be able to prosecute any of the cases where the victim is not married to the abuser.

The Times said:

In their zeal, lawmakers got careless with the wording of the measure, known as Amendment One. It would constitutionally prohibit recognition not just of same-sex marriages, but of other legal arrangements like civil unions and domestic partnerships. That could harm all unmarried couples, imperiling some children’s health insurance benefits, along with child custody arrangements and safeguards against domestic violence. 

[...] 

Polls suggest that defeating this measure remains an uphill struggle, but at least its approval is no longer an entirely foregone conclusion. Much will depend on turnout, especially by voters on college campuses, who will need to vote in larger-than-usual numbers to defeat this declaration of officially sanctioned discrimination. 

[...] 

Opponents of marriage equality have never been able to show any evidence that any harm is caused to heterosexual marriages by granting all American adults the right to marry as they choose — because there is no such evidence. With little more than a week to go before the May 8 contest, and early voting already under way, North Carolinians need to consider whether they really want to inflict this gratuitous bigotry on their fellow citizens and their children.

One encouraging feature of the fight against Amendment One is the full-throated way that the North Carolina chapter of NAACP has come out hard and strong against the Amendment.

The head of the NC State Conference  of the NAACP president is Rev. Dr. William Barber, II and he is fierce!

"The polls and the politicians are asking the wrong questions on this discriminatory amendment, hatched in the backrooms of the extremist, rightwing think-tanks," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. "Our message is consistent: A vote on the same sex marriage amendment has nothing to do with your personal and religious opinion on same sex marriage but everything to do with whether or not you believe discrimination should be codified and legalized constitutionally. We should never seek to codify or vote discrimination into the very heart and framework of our Constitution."

Dr. Barber continued, "The real insult to the Civil Rights Movement is that the same regressive, ultra-conservative Tea Party type folks suing to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act, re-segregating and robbing our public schools of valuable resources, blocking workers' rights to organize, trying to force us all to get photo ID's to exercise our right to vote and cut back on the time and opportunities to vote, and attempting to repeal the Racial Justice Act, now somehow think the sons and daughters of the Civil Rights Movement cannot see through their Trojan Horse trick."

The latest polls show Black voters supporting the Amendment 51 Yes, 39 No, whihc is down significantly from 61 Yes, 30 No from a month ago. Early voting is going thru May 5th in North Carolina and then again on Tuesday May 8th. It would be an astonishing feat if this Amendment is defeated, but even losing by a few percentage points would be an indicator of the weakness in the anti-gay argument: polls suggested that this measure would pass by a blow-out 20-30 points at the beginning of the year.

VIDEO: Obama Calls Out Black Homophobia in NAACP Speech