And here is my original article:
A curious story surfaced recently when the parents of American civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal revealed she is a white woman ‘passing’ as black. With racist ideology still embedded in American society, this development stoked a loaded national conversation. Is this a case of fraud and cultural appropriation or is her claim genuine and harmless? Is cultural appropriation comparable to mainstream assimilation? Does her performance of black womanhood match transgender experience? Using accounts of people belonging to the communities concerned, I will attempt to address these issues as respectfully as a white British cisgender woman can.
Legal scholar Susan Scafidi defines cultural appropriation as ‘taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artefacts from someone else's culture without permission.’ White people wearing Native American headdresses is a classic example. Members of the dominant culture “steal” aspects of a marginalised culture, removing them from their original context and warping their original values and associations. There is usually profit to be made from this – Urban Outfitters using Navajo prints, for instance. One can see how Dolezal’s actions, most noticeably wearing African American hairstyles, constitute cultural appropriation. Some have excused her because of her charitable pursuits and contributions to the African American community. Whilst these contributions are admirable, Dolezal needn’t have been black to make them. White allyship is highly effective in battling racial oppression. Moreover, Dolezal’s roles as Africana Studies professor and Spokane NAACP branch director were abused positions of trust and power within the African American community, which might have been occupied by a person of colour.
Legal scholar Susan Scafidi defines cultural appropriation as ‘taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artefacts from someone else's culture without permission.’ White people wearing Native American headdresses is a classic example. Members of the dominant culture “steal” aspects of a marginalised culture, removing them from their original context and warping their original values and associations. There is usually profit to be made from this – Urban Outfitters using Navajo prints, for instance. One can see how Dolezal’s actions, most noticeably wearing African American hairstyles, constitute cultural appropriation. Some have excused her because of her charitable pursuits and contributions to the African American community. Whilst these contributions are admirable, Dolezal needn’t have been black to make them. White allyship is highly effective in battling racial oppression. Moreover, Dolezal’s roles as Africana Studies professor and Spokane NAACP branch director were abused positions of trust and power within the African American community, which might have been occupied by a person of colour.
Some claim Dolezal’s actions shouldn’t matter since race is a social construct. Whilst it is true that the concept of races within humanity is biologically false, racism still exists and we cannot abolish racism by claiming colourblindness. Ignoring a problem is never an effective policy for ending it. Dolezal’s actions are problematic because of the history, power and social values attached to race. She did not grow up experiencing first-hand what Chauncy DeVega describes as the ‘extreme matter of life and death’ that is black existence in America today. The racism experienced by African Americans, from everyday microaggressions to murder by US police, has not been a constant barrage personally assaulting Dolezal from infancy. Moreover, she had the option at any point to denounce her “blackness” and revert to the safety of “whiteness.” In fact, her dedication to the African American community becomes dubious given the 2002 lawsuit she filed against Howard University for anti-white discrimination. With whites hierarchically fixed at the top of a racist society, one cannot justly claim “blackness” if one is white. Until white supremacy is abolished the racial fluidity proclaimed by Dolezal’s proponents is impossible.
Related to this is the claim that if celebrities like Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj can sport blonde hair, why can’t white women mimic black women? The problem here is a confusion between appropriation and assimilation, a misunderstanding of the flow of racist power. Mainstream beauty standards, particularly for women, emphasise whiteness: light skin and smooth hair, for example. This invitation or demand to assimilate contributes to the use of skin lighteners and chemical straightening in black communities. This was countered in the sixties by the “black is beautiful” movement, a celebration of cultural expressions like “natural” black hair (as mimicked by Dolezal) and West African-inspired fashion which go against the grain of white beauty standards. This defiance of mainstream values is a celebration and reinforcement of marginalised identity, an act of anti-establishment protest. Dolezal’s appropriation of this cultural property devalues it and, writes Alicia Walters, suggests ‘wearing Black Woman’ equates or is ‘even preferable’ to being a black woman.
Another area of support for Dolezal originates from incorrectly comparing her to transgender athletic champion Caitlyn Jenner, whose post-transition photoshoot was published shortly before Dolezal’s story arose. Identifying as ‘transracial’, Dolezal misuses an adoptive term for someone raised in an environment differing culturally from the one they were born into - a black child raised as culturally white by white adoptive parents, for example. It is erroneous to pronounce gender and race interchangeable. Although both are social constructs, they operate differently. Transgender woman of colour Meredith Talusan writes that gender and transgender experiences feature historically throughout human societies, whereas race is a ‘medieval European invention’ intended to condone slavery and perpetuate colonial power. Transgender people are the gender they wish to present as and/or transition to despite the terrible consequences of transphobia. On the other hand whilst Dolezal identifies as black through exposure to black culture, it isn’t a ‘fundamental attribute of her existence.’ She has been able to choose whether to use the “blackness” she identifies with or not, and has benefited politically and financially from this flexibility.
Being a white British cis woman I will never fully realise what belonging to African American and transgender communities means, regardless of the amount I read up on their experiences. The same applies for Dolezal. She may have grown up with adopted black brothers, become a professor of Africana Studies and married a black man, but she will never be an African American woman because she is white both in phenotype and upbringing. Because white supremacy exists, racial fluidity cannot. To my mind the worst outcomes of Dolezal’s actions are the communal trust she betrayed and the attention this story has stolen from more urgent consequences of racism in American society.
