CNN WASHINGTON - RACHEL DOLEZAL IDENTIFIES AS BLACK
As a genealogist, I have to look at documents and depend on them but I also have to know that sometimes documents are incorrect and can be incorrect for many reasons. That includes census records that record the same person as White one year, Black ten years later, because that was the perception of one census taker or another.
Birth certificates can be incorrect because they are often a recording of testimony. Women can have identified the wrong man as the father on them. (Such was the case with Marilyn Monroe, whose mother identified a husband she had just divorced as Marilyn's father, when it was another man.)
Although I know that some people are asked to provide their birth certificate for certain jobs or governmental benefits, I've always thought that a social security number is enough. These days, and we have the Internet and Genealogy Databases that provide free personal information, including information on the living, for rampant privacy invasion. It's as if nothing is left that is personal. But if Rachel Dolezal had been asked to provide her birth certificate, as a documentation that she is Black, if the NAACP required that she be Black to be employed by them, that would have been racist of them. You do not have to BE Black genetically to do a good job advancing the cause of equality.
Rachel Dolezal, who has been working for the NAACP (National Association of the Advancement of COLORED PEOPLE) turns out to be White. So says her parents, who also raised four of her siblings, adopted, who are visibly Black (or African American.) Rachel SELF IDENTIFIES as Black. She probably did as far back as she remembers her Black siblings but maybe it's more than that. Rachel is saying something about her INNER LIFE not her appearance, though yes she does like to wear hair styles that might be thought of as Black.
That is why she sought out the job she did.
Frankly, I think that if she's been doing a good job, that's all that should matter. If I were her I would have told her not to resign.
You see, lots of people self identify with the ONE ETHNICITY of many that they have rights to, the one that they feel the most comfortable with or are most proud of. Many "Heinz Variety 57" people in the United States will declare their ethnicity to be that of their surname, even if they are now only 1/8th or 1/16th Scottish or Irish or whatever. They may even have a tartan kilt, but be mostly Polish.
A person who carries a Hungarian surname but is mostly English and other than Hungarian is the actor Richard Gere.
I think Rachel Dolezal should take a DNA test that may locate some COLORED PEOPLE as ancestors. I'm using this now outdated term because I happen to think the terms White and Black are oppositional, setting up conflict, and that we are all COLORED, but OK... some ancestors who tie her in with the African continent, in fairly recent history when it comes to genes, since we apparently ALL can trace back to Africa.
I also wish she, and everyone else, would read a book called ONE DROP by Bliss Broyard, which I read and reviewed for this blog some time ago. In Bliss's case, her father, who passed as White, on his near deathbed, admitted he was Black and so then were his children, but actually, he wasn't 100% Black and neither was she. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to pass. The book is about Bliss' family history search and wrangle with how Black she is or isn't. It only take ONE DROP of Black Blood (or Jewish Blood or whatever) for a person to be considered so, or so some people think.
But is DNA the point? Not when it comes to SELF IDENTITY.
I had a friend who, while not saying she was BLACK, had one ancestor who was a Black and free woman, and who married an Irish servant when he was emancipated from his long service contract. Though blond haired, blue eyed, and as WHITE as one could appear, all these generations later, she also SELF IDENTIFIED with BLACK CULTURE. She knew all about African art. She loved Black men. She even said things that could be thought of as Anti-White racist. She had "one drop" of Black blood, and in her case, she so depended on it.
Likewise, I've had a friend who self identified as NATIVE AMERICAN, who didn't look it and had one grandfather who refused to talk about his heritage, which was suspected to be Native American. She didn't have to prove anything to head up a local Native American interest group. She felt tied to the world of the Native Americans. I started her on a genealogy quest so that she could learn more about her heritage while circumventing her uncooperative grandfather.
Along with the DNA testing, I also think it's time for Rachel to do her genealogy, to be surprised by what she may find, as so may be her parents.
Finally, it's time for Rachel to be regressed hypnotically in search of this life and past life experiences that help her SELF IDENTIFY as BLACK. I suspect that she has had a life in which she was a slave, if having four siblings who are visibility Black is not enough to be Black, or if meeting people in this life, or exposure to another culture than the one born into isn't enough.
Here is my point: How is this different than say, BRUCE JENNER, the male Olympic Athlete of fame who has been married to women three times, and fathered, SELF IDENTIFYING AS A WOMAN? Despite his recent Vanity Fair cover, which was the result of some experts in hair, makeup, costuming, and photography, making him appear a woman, and despite any cosmetic procedures he may have had, Bruce cannot change his DNA. He is a man this life, but I'll bet that if he is hypnotically regressed, he will find that he has been a woman in many lives or in his most recent past life!
If we can accept (and the American public seems to have, wholeheartedly,) that Bruce Jenner is a WOMAN, we can accept that Rachel Dolezal is BLACK!
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