Rachel Dolezal Tried Really Hard to Be Black—But Why?

From AlterNet:

By now, you may have heard about Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist out of Spokane, Wash., who is generating intense media scrutiny after her parents claimed she has been passing as a black woman for years.

Dolezal, who is currently president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, avoided questions about her ethnicity when contacted by the Spokesman-Review Thursday.

“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she told the newspaper. “There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”

During an interview with a local television reporter, Dolezal walked away after he asked about her ethnicity. Today, she told Sky News that she identifies as black, yet rejects the term African American.
More here.

My own personal rule is that white people should never do blackface. Under any circumstances. But then this story, in its gross spectacle, is more like Andy Kaufman's take on minstrelsy as extended performance art. It's bizarre and disturbing in about forty or fifty different ways.

I feel much safer discussing Miley Cyrus and twerking.

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