Rachel Dolezal (to pronounce the last name, emphasize the DOH!) is back in the news. The Spokane, Washington resident - who is white - spent years pretending that she's black, and was so successful at coloring herself up that for a while, there, she was head of the local NAACP. Well, until it emerged that the white girl only "identified" as black, at which point all hell broke loose. NAACP may not be Rayciss, but they darn sure can't have no Cracker heading up a local chapter.
So she had to leave. For a time, she did hair-dressing in Spokane, but it wasn't paying the bills. And although people laugh, she still pretends she's black, as that's what she "identifies" as. She's spent a lot of time tanning, and a lot on bronzing when the tan began to fade. Does her hair up in braids. It ain't easy being black when you're white.
Two years ago, life was going well for Dolezal. Branch president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and chair of Spokane’s police ombudsman commission, she was well known and respected for her civil rights activism. Her Eastern Washington University students adored her; her 21-year-old son was about to intern for a diversity advocacy group in Washington DC; her younger son was doing well in high school. When a local TV news crew arrived one afternoon to interview her, Dolezal thought they were there to talk about hate crimes.
“Are you,” asked the reporter, “African American?” Like a cartoon, her features froze. “I don’t understand the question.” The reporter pressed, “Are your parents white?” Dolezal turned from the camera and fled.
Footage of the confrontation flew around the world. Dolezal’s white parents released photographs of their daughter as a blonde white child, and appeared on TV to denounce her as a fraud; she had been living a lie, pretending to be black, when she was no more African American than they were. Dolezal resigned from her NAACP position, was fired by the university, lost her local newspaper column and was removed from the police ombudsman commission.
Today Dolezal is jobless, and feeding her family with food stamps. A friend helped her pay this month’s rent; next month she expects to be homeless. She has applied for more than 100 jobs, but no one will hire her, not even to stack supermarket shelves. She applied for a position at the university where she used to teach, and says she was interviewed by former colleagues who pretended to have no recollection of having met her. The only work she has been offered is reality TV, and porn.
At 39, she's not giving up on "identifying" as black. Actual blacks remain outraged around the country, as are apologists with the "transgender community". She can always go back to being a white woman, they all say.
What hurts Dolezal most is not her parents’ betrayal or white people’s mockery, but the anger of the black community.
Trans commentators have been incensed by the suggestion of parallels. “Transgender people transition out of medical necessity,” wrote one. “Dolezal’s ‘transition’ to black, on the other hand, is surrounded by layers of deception.” They argue that her colour was a choice, so cannot be analogous to their gender identity.
Um. No. Gender "identification" is no different from Dolezal's "identification". Both are signs of severe mental issues, although in point of fact, from a purely biological perspective, if you have an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, you are a male - and if you have two X chromosomes, you are a female. That's basic biology. Bruce Jenner is a guy who likes to wear dresses and wigs, who has undergone breast enhancement surgery, and who takes estrogen hormones. But he's still a guy, even though he chooses to "identify" as a woman.
The American College of Pediatricians issued a statement this week condemning gender reclassification in children by stating that transgenderism in children amounts to child abuse.
3. A person’s belief that he or she is something they are not is, at best, a sign of confused thinking. When an otherwise healthy biological boy believes he is a girl, or an otherwise healthy biological girl believes she is a boy, an objective psychological problem exists that lies in the mind not the body, and it should be treated as such.
We have a lot of nutters running around loose today.
