Rachel Dolezal Redemption?

Now that we know that a person can be born in the wrong body, and that one's identity trumps all external signs and facts, is it time for a revival of Rachel Dolezal?
The bigoted press and public victimized and dead named Rachel over identifying and presenting as a black woman.

The nation owes Rachel an apology for ruining her life.

www.theguardian.com...

a reply to: zosimov

I agree an apology from that group to her needs to be made. But mainly I want to see someone have this long convoluted explanation for not apologizing that boils down to "she appropriated my victim hood!"

a reply to: zosimov

I was watching a video with Matt Walsh recently, and this came up -- racial identity vs gender identity -- and I thought the guy made a really good point in that someone can be multi-racial, and find themselves identifying with one racial group more than another as a result. Especially if they were raised exclusively by one side of the family, and were estranged from the other side of the family. Or if someone is adopted into a family of a different race, they may learn to embrace their family's race while having no connection to their own race. Nature vs nurture.

But as this guy pointed out, strictly speaking, it is possible to be more than one race... it's not possible to be more than one gender, or a different gender altogether.

'Ethnic appropriation' is labeled as bad, but only for white people. A caucasian wearing large hooped earings is severly condemed, yet there is no issue with a POC bleaching their hair blond.

I remember when 'immitation is the most sincere form of flattery' was a thing.

Oh, the petty things people find (or are presented with things) to fight over. If we would all stop taking the bait the 'control system' would loose a massive amount of power over us.

a reply to: zosimov

Thank you for this revival Z. This was an interesting article with a whole lot of things to think about.

Sadly however, for me at least, it has been placed in the wrong forum. I don't find it to be of a joking, punning or pranking nature at all.

Thanks to all for the interesting comments so far.

I was hoping this would spark an interesting conversation and am not disappointed

Terry, I think you're right that I have placed this in the wrong forum, despite the sarcasm in my OP.

a reply to: Boadicea

I think this is a great point, thank you Bo!

My kids are biracial, and they may have to navigate this concept at some point.

a reply to: zosimov

I admit to being rather skeptical of this woman when I originally encountered the story when it hit the news cycle. I fell to the ''fraud'' angle which at the time was the general ''take'' on her story.

Her story as presented in this article, if it is to be believed, is not so much that she wanted to be something other than who she was but rather her journey to finding who she was and the fulfillment of herself along the way. And it's not so much that she was living a lie (maybe to the fractious world around us) but rather living and finding a way of life and expression that she felt in tune with.

We can argue that she was presenting as a ''black woman'' but it can also be argued that our society gravitates to stereo-types that make it a racial presentation rather than an associative presentation of who she was comfortable being.

It's sad that she has been ostracized by both sides of our social system that is based so much in part by nothing more than stupid stereo-types to the degree that she is now living in poverty and close to being homeless. Hopefully her book will alleviate some of that burden.

So have we decided to give Rachel a pass to identify as she pleases or no?