User:Polentarion/RD

The Dolezal affair, a controversy about Rachel Anne Dolezal (also spelled Doležal ; born November 12, 1977) self-identification as being black made international news  in summer 2015.

The Dolezal affair was started by an article in the Coeur d'Alene Press on June 11 2015. Dolezal had immersed herself in African American culture, networks, and institutions. Her self-identification as black became subject of controversy, after Dolezal's parents had stated that their daughter had been trying to "disguise herself" as African-American.

The case provided challenges for either side of the American political spectrum. A part of the discussion involves the (controversial) pairing of “transgender” and “transracial”, as the case was often set in relation with Caitlyn Jenner, who publicly announced her name change from Bruce to Caitlyn in a July 2015 Vanity Fair cover story. The Charleston church shooting has been said to have provided a bitter closing to the debate.

Dolezal
Dolezal is a civil rights activist, hairdresser and former Africana studies instructor. She was born in Montana, her parents were born again Christians, which had adopted four black children when Dolezal was a teenager. She was home-schooled via the Christian Liberty Academy CLASS program. Later she became legal guardian of one of her brothers. Dolezal left her native Montana to study art at Belhaven College in Mississippi, receiving her bachelor's degree in 2000. She had been part of John Perkins Voice of Calvary organization during college years. She highly identified with black culture, not presenting herself as black then.

After her college degree, Dolezal studied at (historically) black Howard University and received an MFA. Her artwork often features African-American subjects, for some years she gave courses in Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University. Dolezal was married to an African American man and had one child with him. She was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Spokane, Washington, from 2014 until June 15, 2015, when she resigned following allegations that she had lied about her racial identity and other aspects of her biography. Dolezal's self-identification as black then became the subject of controversy, after Dolezal's parents stated that their daughter had been trying to "disguise herself" as African-American. Dolezal had had white ancestors over the last four centuries, including German, Dutch, Swedish and Czech origin. Dolezal had herselve immersed in African American culture, networks, and institutions.

Background
The case of Dolezal remains challenging for either side of the American political spectrum. If the concept of race were more of an achieved status than a given characteristics, both the passing from the one to to the other identity and discrimination against the treat would be less controversial. The Dolezal affair happened - according Rogers Brubaker - in the context of a destabilization of categorical frameworks. The scope for choice and self-fashioning in the domains of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, and sexuality seemed to have widened in the years before. However, within the controversy about Dolezal (and Jenner) larger anxietes about opportunistic, contentious or fraudulent identity claims have strengthened the role of givenness, objectivity and nature. The argument that Dolezal would be allowed to identifiy as black if she did have any African ancestry, has been critized as mirroring the logic of the one-drop rule. A shift from preset to chosen identities did not happen, against theories of reflexive modernity. There was a tendency to “police” such unorthodox claims, as by Dolezal and as well efforts to defend them.

The Charleston church shooting has been said to end the affair, as according New Yorker author Jelani Cobb the existential question of who is black has been answered in the most concussive way possible by the massacre during a prayer service at a historic black church in Charleston.

If due to the cases like Dolezal's social markers as income, wealth, education, religion, and occupation were to receive more importance than race, similar as in most European countries, American platforms based on socio-economic issues would gain more importance. Gender - especially in the American context - seems still to be more of an individual choice than race. Brubaker appeals to use the transgender/transracial analogy as opportunity instead of denouncing it as fundamentally illegitimate. The Dolezal affair, according him, prompted the public to think with trans, not just about trans, but started to do so within the limitations of a logic of the trial. Introducing the categories of “cisgender” and “cisracial” has been suggested e.g. by Melissa Harris-Perry but remains contentious. Brubaker asks to investigate how identity claims and processes function, rather than rushing into what we already think we know. The case made international news, e.g. German Süddeutsche Zeitung refered to Dolezal reverting a classical passing scheme, as in passing novel examples like The Human Stain and mentioned Norman Mailer s 1957 essay The White Negro and historical cases like Grey Owl.