Saturday, June 13, 2015

Pretty Fly for a White Gal

Rachel, Rachel, I've been thinking:
Living a lie was full-time work for Rachel Dolezal, the Montana-born white woman who in recent years moved through the world as a black civil rights activist.

Dolezal, 37, head of the NAACP’s Spokane chapter since January, leaned on her two adoptive kid brothers — both African-American — to abet her long-running racial ruse.

She posted a picture of a black couple on her Facebook page, announcing them as her parents — while her real mom and pop were actually white and living in Montana.
So what's more amazing to you:

  • That people pretend to be something they're not?
  • That no one noticed that her Facebook pic came from Shutterstock?
  • That Spokane has an NAACP chapter?
In a world where Caitlyn Jenner dominates the headlines, it's difficult to get too worked up about this particular con woman. If her behavior is cool to the NAACP, or to her employer, Eastern Washington University, it should be cool for the rest of us. I will say this, however: the long-sacred notion of "authenticity" apparently no longer applies.

2 comments:

Gino said...

this is America, where you can be anything you want to be if you try hard enough.

besides, i been filling out the forms at work as 'African-American/Black' since about 1993. how dare anybody challenge my identity?

3john2 said...

"I was born a poor, black child." Steve Martin, "The Jerk", 1979.