Rachel Dolezal

The story of Rachel Dolezal broke during a rather introspective period in my life. I am still in this period. It however, is not as intense as it was during the late Spring of 2015, when the Rachel Dolezal story came to light.

This was a time when I was taking an extended break from social media posting in general, taking a break from commenting on news and culture stories, and also taking a break from extending myself in many other ways as well. It was a time when I was focusing mostly on internal pursuits, my souls unraveling’s, and looking at a large number of great and powerful insights that had recently come into my consciousness—insights that seemingly required an enormous amount of processing and reflection. Eventually, it was what for me was that disturbing and grand spectacle of bullying that was Marisa Johnson and Mara Willaford’s interruption of Bernie Sanders at that rally in Seattle, WA on August 8, 2015, that challenged my self- imposed introspection so strongly that it could no longer sustain itself. However, before that incident infected my world like a rabid virus, I almost broke my silence a few months earlier as a result of the story that entered media consciousness around what we now know as, "the Rachel Dolezal story." I now feel compelled to share some of my strongest thoughts about the whole Rachel Dolezal affair—thoughts that have now had several months to marinate under a careful and a hopefully wise maturation process.

Fasten your seat belts. Its going to be a bumpy ride.

Most experts in the areas that are most pertinent to this discussion of Rachel Dolezal, believe the concept of “race” is a completely made up social construct that has no clear grounding in human biology. Further, it is a social construct largely invented by white elitist imperialists making use of extremely questionable pseudo-science in order to underpin the machinations of white colonialists who were desiring to create a white supremacist based socioeconomic structural base through which to oppress, subjugate, and discriminate against other human beings they viewed as somehow being lesser than themselves. They also didn’t want these others to benefit from this impending socioeconomic structure because of their own greed, avarice, and relative moral bankruptcy in addition to their imperialist tendencies. In other words, they desired to oppress, subjugate, and discriminate against other human beings who essentially looked like I do—and who also look like many of the people who have been the most loud and vociferous critics of Rachel Dolezal.

The huge, glaring, and extremely problematic reality of all of that—not for me but for the people who more or less look like me yet are among those loud and vociferous critics of Rachel Dolezal—is that by playing virtually every card they have played in their vocal and vociferous criticism of Dolezal, they have inadvertently placed themselves in the unenviable position of being extremely cozy bedfellows with those exact same elitist imperialists who were some of the principal architects of race (sic) to begin with, many generations ago. Those old codgers must be having a grand ole time in hell right about now with their awareness of just how fertile the divisive seeds they planted all those many years ago have indeed tuned out to be, and of all the completely unfathomable co-conspirators they would end up gathering into their far flung devilish fold.*

Let me try to break this down as simply as possible here. Significant elements of “Black Pride” consciousness, as well as the sloppy conflating of ethnicity, culture, heredity, and race that is rampant among many communities of people in America, are very problematic for many of the critics of Rachel Dolezal. Many of these people's arguments do not ring fully true. Much of this criticism however, unwittingly emboldens racist ideas because most of it relies on the exact same separation consciousness and made up divisive social constructs that those elitist imperialists who constructed the idea of race used to underpin their nefarious constructions to begin with.

So, in essence, most of the people who are criticizing Dolezal are trying to have it both ways. They tend to position themselves as being strongly anti-racist and Black Pride oriented yet they are essentially using racist constructions to undergird their vilification of a woman who is essentially shining a light on their own unacknowledged duplicity. It is extremely difficult to have it both ways when it comes to these type matters which is why most of Dolezal’s critics are not acknowledging the glaring problems and inherent conflicts embedded in their retrograde, flawed, and ironically incendiary rhetoric that they unsuccessfully (in my opinion) try to use against her. In addition, as if all of that wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse. Many of these same critics are also trying to tell another sovereign human being (Dolezal) what she can and cannot say or believe is her own personal experience and personal identity. That, of course, is completely presumptuous, and just plain silly. In fact it’s so silly it borders on being satirical. It probably crosses the satire border going 200 miles per hour in a flashy European sports car, crashing through that border crossing between that which should be taken seriously and that which is rightfully satire, without even stopping. And I can’t even begin to imagine how outraged most of these same people would very likely be if someone tried to tell them how they should identify and define themselves.

The literary scholar, journalist, Emmy Award winning filmmaker, and the current Alphonse Fletcher Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, and esteemed historian Louis Henry "Skip" Gates, Jr. “looks black.” I believe this is what most people would say at least. Here is a picture of him. 

His entire illustrious, star studded, high profile, highly respected, multi-faceted professional career has been an exact extension of his presumed and strongly glorified “blackness.” Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of “Skip” and I respect him too. I’m just pointing out what I believe are the realities of things with regard to how he is generally perceived. On his public television program African American Lives, which has a very strong African American genealogy research element to it, he has painstakingly researched his own family genealogy along with those of other well-known black celebrities. He has traced his own African and African American roots back at least seven generations, I believe. This is not an easy thing for a large number of black folks to accomplish due to many obstacles. The biggest obstacle is the history of slavery in this country and how the official and often statistically recorded lives of slaves were typically and infamously recorded much more in the manner of how livestock was recorded than how human lives were typically recorded. Yet, he has somehow accrued enormous amounts of information about his own black American and African American ancestry. He has been able to trace back some of his ancestors all the way back to slavery times in the American South. And due to relatively recent advances in genealogy technology he has even been able to trace his ancestry back to very specific parts and regions of Africa and with extremely high levels of accuracy. Most people would consider him to be “black.” Yet, when he had a highly detailed analysis of his own DNA performed, it revealed he is a whopping 50% European, DNA-wise—largely from Irish ancestry. Even the generally near completely unflappable Dr. Gates seemed rather astonished when this was revealed to him. He then traveled to Ireland, took a production team with him, met some of his very distant relatives, and recorded some of his exploits in his newly discovered homeland.

Additionally, I have had the very educational and eye opening experience of living in Southern Louisiana for a portion of my life. This is a place in the continental USA that has long been associated with both extremely rigid and extremely fluid constructions of race (sic). The very first day I visited southern Louisiana, shortly before I moved there, I met people who were considerably darker than me (I am about the complexion of photos I have seen of former professional wrestler and actor, “The Rock”), who completely and seriously identified as “white.” And I met people who were the complexion of Ronald McDonald (OK, more than a slight exaggeration there) who completely and seriously identified as “black.” Both of these realities were then and are today a totally and absolutely normal par for the course type of experience in southern Louisiana. So the way someone looks to the naked eye, as far as racial (sic) identity goes, is almost completely unreliable of course, not only in America but throughout many parts of the world--certain places in that world much more so than others.

So who really gets to decide who’s black, or not, or what exactly makes someone black or not, or what’s black enough or even white enough for that matter  for one to be considered one or the other? And when one (fallaciously) decides he or she is indeed the divinely appointed King or Queen of the realm capable of doing any or all of this, who gets to let them know they are mistaken and who they have in reality placed themselves in league with? Answer: I do, I do. Yay!

Still, I will be the first to admit that Rachel Dolezal absolutely made some tactical and strategic errors in how I believe she handled her whole “coming out.” She told some lies I don’t believe she needed to tell and that further, were very damaging to her credibility. She made some other unfortunate missteps and guffaws as well. She also compromised her integrity in ways that were also probably damaging to her credibility in some additional ways, etc.

Still, none of these mistakes and escapades into extremely poor judgement caused me to become a critic of her. My gratitude for her unmasking of several of the serious glitches in the race matrix overshadowed any tendency I might have had in that direction. Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, Rachel Dolezal has revealed that the man behind the curtain is in fact a charlatan, a straw man. In this case however, that charlatan and straw man is the construct of race itself. Through Dolezal it has also been revealed, once again, just how clever, insidious, evil, and extremely problematic of a straw man he truly is for all of us to somehow coexist with. This is especially true for those of us who also believe we are forced to position ourselves in where we are unwittingly and yet constantly trying to find ways to benefit from him too, simply because we are not willing to be truly honest with ourselves about some important truths, are too quick to judge others, are lacking in mental/emotional/spiritual spaciousness, and are perhaps overly invested in separation consciousness.

Maybe some black folks and some misguidedly overzealous people of color and white allies are just mad because Dolezal didn’t ask the black community for its approval or blessing before she decided to acknowledge that she, in her heart of hearts, identifies as black. Let me provide you members of the black community and others who may suffer from this sentiment about her with what I believe is an important and necessary wake-up call for you. She absolutely did not and does not need and will likely never need your approval nor blessing for what she believes to be her truth. And she won’t likely ever need your absolution either for continuing to not ask your permission.

Now, for all of you who have the ears that likely need to hear this, take all of that information about Rachel Dolezal not needing the approval nor absolution of the black community and allow that deep truth to set you free. Move on from there and perhaps start a personal campaign to look at the areas in your own lives that could use some attention, turn your attention there, and stop focusing on what you imagine to be the faults and flaws in others, especially those who don’t view nor understand the world in the same ways as you. Maybe decide to instead focus on some internal home improvements for a change. Perhaps that’s a 2015 Christmas present you can give to yourselves. If you do that you may find that everything in your entire world might become more beautifully grounded and tangibly sacred.

* I don't in fact believe in Hell.