Choosing to Be Black Is the Epitome of White Privilege
Written by Errin Whack, this article was published on Politico's website on June 17th.
“Are you African-American?” For Rachel Dolezal, the question seemed almost rhetorical. The now embattled former president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP, dodged answering when asked the four words by a reporter last week.
“It’s a little more complex,” Dolezal said, by which she meant that even though she was born white, she publicly identifies as black. She’s changed her hairstyle. She’s raising two black children. She’s appropriated African-American culture. And as for her skin, well, “I certainly don’t stay out of the sun,” she told Today Show host Matt Lauer when asked to explain her café au lait complexion.
Just weeks after Bruce Jenner announced his transition to Caitlyn Jenner, why shouldn’t Rachel Dolezal, white woman, be able to announce her transition to Rachel Dolezal, black woman?
I’ll tell you why not: Staying out of the sun doesn’t make me less black. For Dolezal to be able to “opt in” suggests that those of us who were born black can “opt out.”
Being black is not a lifestyle or a choice. One can no more choose to be black than we can choose our age or height. Unlike my gender identity, which I could alter by cutting my hair and wearing different clothes, asking people to address me with a male pronoun or even undergoing gender reassignment surgery, I cannot change the color of my skin, the trails of my ancestors or the way that a majority-white country still very much invested in the concept of racial identity will always perceive me.
Rachel Dolezal wants it to be simple. But there is simply no such thing as one’s “preferred” race.
To be American is to be fiercely protective of our even our most trivial varied identities: Whether we are Southern or Midwestern or root for the Bears or the Packers. Race is even more emotional and personal, and unlike with some other identities, when it comes to race, fellowship is not kinship.
As African-Americans, we were brought to this country and stripped of our history. Reaching back across generations to dozens and hundreds of black ancestors—and, inevitably, some white ones—is part of what it means to have this shared experience. It is a type of black privilege—but one that was forged through centuries of the oppression of those with darker skin by those with white skin. Our country’s complex relationship to race also means that while our stories are intertwined, they also remain separate. To be black is to be able to celebrate our collective successes, but to not have a choice about bearing our collective burdens. It is inherited and cannot be earned.
Dolezal’s choice to be black allows her to willingly take on the indignities of the African-American experience while embracing the positive sides of being black as a member of the group. This could be the epitome of white privilege.
In the days after her “outing” in a local television interview that quickly went viral, Dolezal acknowledged she was born white, though at some point, she says, she made the choice to publicly “identify as black.”
There were other choices, too. Before deciding to live as a black woman, Dolezal was white as a graduate student on the campus of the historically black Howard University. In 2002, she sued the school after losing her scholarship, claiming discrimination due to her minority (read: white and privileged) status. In addressing the lawsuit in an interview, she called the incident “an injustice” and said she was told “other people needed opportunities” and that she “probably had white relatives that can help you with your tuition.” (A court found her claims were not credible and ruled against her.)
Dolezal has also chosen her family. Estranged from her parents, she publicly claims an African-American man as her father, and decided to raise as her sons two black boys previously adopted by her birth parents. Her birth mother and father are both white and have told the media that their daughter is a Caucasian woman. But on Tuesday, Dolezal tried to renounce even her DNA, telling NBC, “there’s been no biological proof” that her mother and father are actually her parents.
She chose to lead the Spokane NAACP not as a white person—which she would’ve been welcome to do in keeping with more than a century of tradition in the organization—but as a black leader.
And in the past—whether in her role as an activist or black hairdresser—she has also chosen not to correct those who assume, based on her appearance and black bonafides, that she is African-American, or at least of mixed race. Her rationale? That she has lived the “black experience” as a mother of black sons, and that her life has been “one of survival,” including the decisions she has made.
But that’s just not the case: Sewing in hair associated with black women (or any hair for that matter) doesn’t make it yours. Darker makeup is only a substitute for melanin. Teaching and knowing black history is not living it.
Dolezal’s choice to identify as black goes beyond empathy into existentialism. In doing so, she is claiming something that is not hers—an advantage I am unable to exercise because I am limited by my skin color from doing so.
Dolezal has been derided as a con-artist and opportunist. She resigned her post with the Spokane NAACP after less than a year in the role, and was fired from her teaching job. I don’t pretend to know her true motivations, but it seems that her real need to fulfill one of humanity’s most basic desires—to belong—led her to mislead people with whom she feels she shares an emotional and spiritual bond.
As a result the issues she has championed have been on the back burner for days—much to the consternation of national NAACP President Cornell Brooks, who frustratingly waded through an interview on the fallout from the Dolezal scandal on Tuesday by trying (unsuccessfully) to steer the conversation back to the social justice issues at the core of the organization’s mission.
Yes, black lives do matter, but in America, in 2015, race still matters, too. To sidestep this moment attempts to ignore just how much.
Identity is not a one-way proposition. It is as much about how you are accepted as it is about how you want to be viewed. Race in America, as writer Jelani Cobb puts it, “functions like a faith, in that the simple profession of membership is sufficient. … We are not in the business of checking membership cards.”
Maybe we should have checked Dolezal’s. We might have discovered sooner that she’s been carrying a fake ID.
Errin Whack is an Atlanta native and journalist based in Washington, D.C. who writes often on culture and politics. She is also Vice President of Print for the National Association of Black Journalists.
