The Rachel Dolezal dilemma: Can you really be transracial?

I’ve been following the media coverage of Spokane, Washington’s NAACP president Rachel Dolezal closely since the story made national headlines last Friday. If you haven’t seen it online or on the news, Rachel Dolezal is allegedly a white woman who has posed as at least partially black since approximately 2007. She has been extremely active in the black community of Spokane, Washington where she was until her resignation today, the president of the local chapter of the NAACP. She is a professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University. In addition, Dolezal has spoken publicly on behalf of the black community at a variety of events, including open forum discussions about racially motivated police violence.

One school of discussion in particular has irked me about the whole situation. There are people who are saying, both in support and defense of Dolezal, that if Caitlyn Jenner can be a transgender woman, Dolezal can be a transracial woman. I have been thinking about this issue since Friday, but it has taken me several days, and finally a discussion with my dad, to boil down what I really think about this idea. I knew as soon as I saw comments about the transgender versus transracial debate that I believed Jenner to be in the right and Dolezal to be in the wrong. What it took some time to figure out, was how the concepts of being transgender and transracial different. At face value, it seems like you could logically think of them as being similar, if not related ideas. When you really think about it, however, it is clear that while being transgender should be accepted, being transracial should not.

At first when thinking logically about gender and race, I came up with mostly similarities. Both are used to discriminate against individuals, both are retained genetically, and both are something you are born with. I was wrong, though in the previous assertion. Race is not solely retained genetically, as opposed to gender. Parents can have a child that is either a girl or a boy, but they can’t have a child that is a different race than their own. While gender can be determined from your chromosomes, race is something that is shared by generations. To presume that you can change your race at will is not only naive, but it’s offensive.

When you pretend to be a different race, you are insulting the struggles, triumphs, and complexities of an entire group of people. As many people speaking out about racial tensions in this country are espousing, we should not be “colorblind”, we should be “colorkind”. This means that we should recognize and celebrate the differences between races, but treat all races equally. When you pose as another race, particularly as black in this country, you are downgrading what it means to actually be that race. You can look, dress, and act, in whatever way you choose. That is a right guaranteed in the United States, but you do not have a right to purposefully deceive a community, regardless of your intentions. Identifying with a culture other than you own is perfectly acceptable, as is feeling like that culture is the one with which you most strongly identify. Race, however, isn’t something you get to just choose. When young black men such as Treyvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Eric Garner have been killed in what so many believe to be racially motivated crimes, it would be the utmost insult to their memory to be a young white man pretending to be a black man. The same is true of Dolezal and the black community in general.

There are still complicated issues to be discussed about being transgender. Can you legally change your gender? Can transgender athletes participate in the events of their preferred sex? Can Jenner represent women? These are complex questions that it will take time and critical thinking to answer. Can you be transracial? In my opinion, no. You can identify strongly with a different race, but you can’t actually be that race, and to assume that you can is to disregard the complex nature of race in this country and around the world.

Caitlyn Jenner wanted to change her life for the better and to finally feel comfortable in her own skin. Dolezal actively deceived an entire group of people to increase her own personal gain. She should be recognized for the work she has done for the black community, but she should also be recognized as someone who lied and deceived to get what they wanted. Transgender versus transracial is something that still has the potential for discussion and debate, but what cannot be debated is what Dolezal did was wrong.

#race #racerelations #politics #unitedstates