There are at least six distinct lessons to be learned
from the Rachel Dolezal scandal.
The internet was on fire on Friday, June 12, 2015. News
broke that 37-year-old Rachel Dolezal is not black. She had presented herself
as black, and that presentation played a role in her positions as president of
the NAACP in Spokane, Washington, chair of Spokane's Office of Police Ombudsman
Commission, professor in the Africana Studies Program at Eastern Washington
University, former education director of the Human Rights Education Institute,
and licensed diversity trainer and consultant for human rights education and
inclusivity in regional schools. Dolezal's skin is café-au-lait-colored; this shade
is perhaps the product of self-tanning or other ruses. She claimed to be the
daughter of dark-skinned black man, and the mother of two dark-skinned black
boys. Dolezal is neither. Rachel Dolezal's parents went public with photos. In
fact she is naturally peaches-and-cream complexioned, blonde-haired, and green-eyed.
The two boys she tried to pass off as her sons are her adopted brothers. She
was born in Montana, and not in a teepee, as she claimed. She did not have to
use bows and arrows to hunt her own food. She had never been in South Africa,
though she claimed she was raised there. Her parents did not discipline her
with "baboon whips" similar to those used during slavery days. They
did not, as she claimed, punish her for being dark-skinned.
In November, 2013, after seeing "Twelve Years a
Slave," Dolezal posted an internet message saying, "When Patsy makes
the dolls with the braided arms…it brought back memories of when I was a little
girl and made the same [corn] husk dolls in the garden, only I braided their
hair instead of the arms." On November 9, 2013, Dolezal posted a list of
instructions for African Americans going to see "Twelve Years a
Slave." "It will take a hold on you…avoid making plans for frivolous
social obligations afterward…not the best film to take a white partner on a
first date to…sit in the top, back row" to avoid hostility from white
audience members. Dolezal tells viewers to be prepared for white people
"snickering at awkward moments" and to "get pissed off at them."
"Twelve Years a Slave" was not the only prompt
to Dolezal's racial memories. After Eric Garner died, she stated, awkwardly,
"The strangling of Eric Garner's case reminds us of our cultural memory of
the strangling through the nooses."
Dolezal had claimed herself to be the victim of numerous
hate crimes. These claims stretched back at least to 2008. She said she found a
noose hanging outside her home, that someone had left a "vulgar and threatening"
phone message alleging that she favored dark-skinned students, that a swastika
had been applied to a building where she worked, and that she received a twenty-page
hate letter. Police found no evidence to support Dolezal's claims. When Dolezal
was finally asked if she had placed the threatening letter in the mailbox
herself, she replied, "As a mother of two black sons, I would never
terrorize my children and I don't know any mother, personally who would trump
up or fabricate anything that severe that would affect her kids." In
March, 2015, after one allegation of a hate crime, Dolezal linked arms with
African Americans and a white priest, and marched through Spokane singing
"We Shall Overcome."
Rachel Dolezal is not one, isolated eccentric. She is
symptomatic of much larger problems. We can learn at least six lessons from the
Dolezal case.
1.) There is such a thing as black privilege. Dolezal got
hired at competitive jobs and received competitive funds. Her claim to be black
helped her in this. She didn't make a fortune, but she made a living. It is an
open secret that claims of African American identity help job seekers and
funding applicants in higher education, the non-profit sector, and some areas
of government. African American college applicants receive a bonus of hundreds
of points on their SAT scores. Asian Americans are penalized on their SAT scores.
It may be true that African Americans on the street or in
department stores are more often suspected of crimes when they are, in fact,
innocent. But this is also true – in many academic, government, and non-profit
settings, those in power lower their standards for truth when they believe
their interlocutor is black. Dolezal's repeated fabricated stories of hate
crimes evidence this. That mail was found in her mailbox that had not been
handled by the postal service was a giveaway that she was inventing stories. Dolezal
was extended a measure of trust, concern, and respect that a white person would
not have received under similar circumstances.
Normal and rational limits on compassion are relaxed by
those extending black privilege. Dolezal is on record as three times insisting
that she suffered in the present because of slavery: when she went to see
"Twelve Years a Slave," when her parents beat her, and when Eric
Garner died. If a white person were to say, "I feel so sad because of the
death of troops in Afghanistan because my great grandfather died in World War
II," a polite person might scratch his or her head; a less polite person
might demand, "Please explain how your ancestor's death affects you
today." No one said that to Dolezal. That social allowance is evidence of
how her narrative is privileged by others. Dolezal's suffering matters more,
needs to be treated with more compassion and more seriousness, than others'
suffering.
Dolezal acquired a more important, less tangible benefit
from black identity. I am a teacher. Young people often say to me, "I wish
I had a background like black people do … I wish I could feel proud of my
country … I wish I felt that I was part of some bigger thing."
My students sound to me as if they are starving for
history, meaning, and pride. They also often say to me that they feel
overwhelming depression and cynicism as a result of what they are learning in
school. They learn that people they had thought of as heroes were actually very
bad men. Thomas Jefferson was a slave-owner, they learn. They may not learn
that he wrote the Declaration of Independence, and that that is one of the most
noteworthy documents in the entire history of the world. My students do not
know that the ideals of the Founding Fathers, as outlined in the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution, made the enormous and heroic sacrifice of
the Civil War, and the liberation of the slaves, inevitable. My students often
simply do not know that their country and their ancestors, actual or national,
did some good things.
My students do know about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther
King. They know that many African Americans have done heroic things. They know
that one must take the Civil Rights struggle seriously.
My students do know that racism is bad. The word "racist,"
in fact, has become a universal term of condemnation. If something is bad, it is
racist. If something is racist, it is bad. When I assign a low grade to a
student, I am sometimes accused of "racism" – by Caucasian students. One
Ukrainian student accused me of racism against Ukrainians. I am Polish-Slovak;
we are closely related ethnicities.
It is significant that Rachel Dolezal is an artist. Viewing
Dolezal's online gallery, one quickly gathers a few facts: Dolezal is a
talented artist, but her talent is comparable to the talent displayed by many
others. She hasn't yet developed the substance or style that might cause her to
break through. Dolezal draws heavily on African Americans and Africa. One work
depicts twigs placed in a tree in order to mimic the patterns of Ghanaian kente
cloth. Had she not entitled the work "Kente," the viewer would see
merely twigs in a tree. Victimization is a theme for Dolezal. One work,
"Pariah," depicts a sad-looking African American on a subway, with a
black panther gazing in the window. Perhaps one is meant to understand that racists
see African Americans as wild animals, and, thus, pariahs, or outcasts. A
sculpture depicts an African man in Hell. It is safe to conclude that viewers
who value the suffering that African Americans have endured imbue Dolezal's art
with a power and significance it would not have had she chosen white subjects
for the exact same images. A white man in Hell might not garner the same
response from these viewers.
2.) There is no privilege for white trash. I am
fascinated by the Rachel Dolezal story because she is Czechoslovak, as am I. My
mother was born in Czechoslovakia. I never learned about my Polish or Slovak
ancestors in school. What I did learn, through popular culture, was that many
regard all Eastern Europeans as dumb – thus the dumb Polak joke. When
researching my book "Bieganski: the Brute Polak Stereotype," I asked
people this question: "You need brain surgery. You have a choice between
Dr. Smith and Dr. Kowalski. Which doctor do you choose?" Peoples' eyes
would open wide and their mouths would gape open. They suddenly realized that
they didn't want anyone named "Kowalski" taking a scalpel to their
gray matter. They suddenly realized that they are prejudiced.
My poor, white students lack the cachet that rich whites
securely possess. Their parents work crappy jobs. They are browbeaten by the
concept of "white privilege." They attend classes part-time,
sporadically, hoping against hope that that will get them a job as a nurse,
rather than as a nurse's aide, the work they do now. They feel hollow and they
feel ashamed. Numbers confirm their disenfranchisement. According to Thomas J. Espenshade's
"No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College
Admission and Campus Life," poor whites are underrepresented on elite
college campuses. In the wider culture, poor whites are anything-goes targets. Terms
like "white trash," "trailer trash," "redneck"
and "hillbilly" are entirely acceptable terms of abuse. In my own
state, contemptuous professionals sometimes refer to residents of Sussex
County, a mostly white and rural county, as "Scussex," a combination
of "scum" and "Sussex." The idea is that only white trash
live there.
I wonder if Dolezal has ever heard of "The Good
Soldier Svejk," a brilliant Czech novel, or Janosik, a heroic Slovak
outlaw, or the Czech and Slovak freedom fighters who assassinated Holocaust
architect Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. I wonder if Dolezal has ever heard of
Lidice, the Czech village the Nazis wiped off the face of the earth in
retaliation. I wonder if Dolezal has ever heard of the Prague Spring or read
Willa Cather's "My Antoinia." In short, I don't know if Dolezal has
any idea that members of her own ethnic group have accomplished so very much
that she had no need to appropriate another ethnicity to feel the struggle, to
remember the pain, to experience transcendent pride.
I cannot help but reflect on the challenges that Dolezal
would face as an artist had she created works of comparable level of technical
skill that depicted her Czechoslovak ancestry. Would a sad Czech child sitting
on a tram have drawn the same approval as the image of a sad black child on a
subway? The black child, the viewer assumes, has inherited a mighty history of
struggle and heroism. Would a viewer look at a sad Czech child and relate his
sadness to Lidice, to Red Army rapes, or to the Battle of White Mountain? The audience
would assume that the Czech child is just another recipient of white privilege.
Some are allowed to be wounded by their ancestors' suffering. Others are not.
3.) Power conceptions of black identity are more ritualized,
dogmatic performance than they are objective fact.
Dolezal is obviously not of African descent. That so many
accepted her absurd claim to have a dark-skinned father and two dark-skinned
sons informs you what those who accepted these claims are willing to certify as
black identity. They were not looking for real ancestry in Africa. They were
looking for a dogma, a ritualized performance, a narrative so beyond question
it has become religious scripture. What is a black person? A black person is
someone who receives death threats from white supremacists. A black person is
someone who makes art based on kente cloth. A black person is someone who wears
cornrows or dreadlocks. A black person is someone who marches down the street,
arms locked with others, singing "We Shall Overcome." A black person
is someone who claims actual memories of slavery, which, of course, ended one
hundred fifty years ago. A black person is someone who has built her entire
professional life around the concepts of black difference and black victimhood,
and around pervasive, threatening white people – people so threatening one
cannot go to the movies without taking precautions against them. If one does all
these things, one is black.
4.) The official concept of what a black person is has
become a prison that redefines many black people as something other than black
people.
Shelby Steele, Thomas Sowell, Mia Love, Deneen Borelli,
Allen West, Larry Elder, internet stars like Michelle A. Conry, a.k.a. "Honestly
Speaking," Kisa Jackson, Battlecat Pullum, and, indeed, Booker T. Washington
himself were and are all black. These prominent authors, soldiers, and youtube
stars do not exist in the "Africana Studies" world once inhabited by
Rachel Dolezal. Students taking an "Afrocentric" college course will
not read one word of Shelby Steele. That's because the-above listed,
authentically black people talk about personal responsibility.
It is more important for a "black" person to
adhere strictly to dogma as to what constitutes blackness – as did white Rachel
Dolezal – than it is for that person actually to have African ancestry and to
be a descendent of slaves.
5.) Real black people are not helped, and are probably
harmed, by the attitudes and systems of rewards that helped Dolezal.
I live in Paterson, NJ. Every day I walk past housing
projects that are, as far as I can tell, inhabited only by African Americans. There
is garbage in the streets and few jobs. Many of my young, male neighbors spend
their leisure time congregating on street corners, smoking marijuana, and
talking with friends. Their worlds are limited.
Fifty years ago, welfare and other programs promised to
change all that. Since that time, numbers have gone against the underclass. There
are more children born out of wedlock. There are more African Americans out of
jobs. What went wrong?
Counterintuitively, many argue that the welfare mindset
hurt, not helped, African Americans.
Rachel Dolezal was able to capitalize on the race
grievance industry. Most of the black underclass never does capitalize on that
same system of rewards. Unlike Rachel Dolezal, they do not get scholarships,
they do not make art about black people suffering, and they do not get elected
to non-profit and government positions.
6.) Rachel Dolezal is not alone.
Supporters of the NAACP will no doubt insist that Rachel
Dolezal was a freak occurrence, a one-off. In fact there are thousands of
Rachel Dolezals out there. When hiring committees satisfy themselves that skin
color alone guarantees diversity, they hire for skin color. They hire for the
photograph that appears on the university homepage. They may as well be hiring
spray-on tans. I have met so many professors and others whose connection to the
American black underclass was only as deep as the color of the epidermis. When
you hire for skin color, you don't hire for life experience, or compassion, or
innovation, or work ethic.
Years ago, I had an African American student who was
being chased by gang members. He feared for his life. The office of my
congressman, Bill Pascrell, was very helpful, and immediately so. Pascrell is
white. I went to a black man in a visible and powerful position. He was middle
class, and born in England. He declined to meet with my student. I have had
many such experiences, where the sensitivity and concern that a person is
supposed to show because he or she is the "right" race or gender or
orientation is utterly absent, and the person of the "wrong" race is
the one who comes through. Numbers show that affirmative action helps middle
class and foreign-born and first-generation black immigrant family members get
into college more than it helps the American-born black underclass. I suspect
the same is true for hiring. What does a middle class English man have in
common with a poor kid from Newark? If it's only skin color, the compassion and
dedication won't be there.
After the brouhaha over Rachel Dolezal dies down, the
issues implicated in her hiring and pubic disgrace will continue. Linking arms
and singing "We Shall Overcome" is a feel-good photo-op. What is
needed are jobs and solid families. The color of the person who can change that
for the American black underclass is immaterial.
