I believe these two are connected. By identifying as black she doesn't just mean having dark skin. She means that she "understands the black experience" as is she was born to black parents and grew up as a black person in America. And that is a ridiculous, foolish, and ignorant statement. She has no idea what it means to be truly black. She grew up in Montana in a white family in a white town. Her heritage is Czech, Swedish, and German. As Jon Stewart exclaimed, "That's really f-ing white!". A large number of black women are truly and deeply offended and insulted. And rightfully so. They see Dolezal as a 21st century, black-face, minstrel, clown show. Why does she deny her true heritage? The question I would ask her would be "Are you ashamed of your true heritage?" :think:
This brilliant article brings up several major and key points as to why Dolezal's lies hurt the black community. Dolezal's appropriating black culture is is many ways similar to white supremacists denigrate black culture.
How Rachel Dolezal’s lies hurt black people
Some key points:
If Rachel Dolezal really, truly cared about the black community, then she would have known (especially as a professor of African-American studies) how inappropriate it is as a white woman to try to speak for black people. She would have known that Blackness is more than skin-deep. She would have stayed in her Whiteness and done the hard and necessary work that white allies need to do. She would have used her privilege to make changes in the white community. She would have worked to dismantle the system of privilege that apparently had made Whiteness so unattractive to her.
But instead she fled. And in fleeing into Blackness and claiming it for her own, she did what so many defenders of white supremacy have done — she simplified Blackness to skin tone and hair texture. She divorced the best of black culture from the struggle that it was born from. She claimed the community, the platform, the music, the clothing, the hairstyle — all without a minute of the fear, oppression and discrimination that black Americans have faced for centuries, and still face to this day.
Rachel Dolezal can get a tan and a perm and pass for black in a world that views Blackness simply as anything darker and nappier than white. Black women can’t go a shade or two lighter and become white, they would have to find a way to remove all of their Blackness in order to pass. In a world where anybody can be this one dimensional definition of black, only the privileged few can be white. Blackness disappears, Whiteness remains untouched.
Excellent, in-depth response. :thumb: