The media are excited about Rachel Dolezal, who identifies as black despite apparently having at least some Caucasian heritage. This reminded me of a 1988 situation here in Boston. Here are some excerpts from a New York Times story:
Philip and Paul Malone are fair-haired, fair-complexioned identical twins who worked for the Boston Fire Department for 10 years. Last month both were dismissed when a state agency ruled that they had lied on their job applications: They had contended they were black.
In 1975, the Malone twins, now 33 years old, took the Civil Service test for firefighters and failed. But in 1976, according to their lawyer, Nicholas Foundas, their mother found a sepia-tinted photograph of their great-grandmother, who, she told them, was black. In 1977, they reapplied to take the test, contending they were black.
Philip Malone scored 69 percent and Paul Malone 57 percent, below the 82 percent standard minimum for white applicants, … The twins won appointments in 1978.
[Note that the litigation surrounding this dismissal seems to have lasted at least through 1995 (seven years), according to this appeals court decision. It would truly be an all-American story if the litigation had lasted for the same 10 years as their employment!]
I think the Rachel Dolezal situation raises the same issues as gay marriage. As I noted in this May 2015 posting, how can America be a land of equal economic opportunity if someone is denied the opportunity to profit from a divorce lawsuit merely because of sex? Much of the income that Rachel Dolezal earned was from jobs restricted to Americans who identify as “black.” Can we say that we have equal economic opportunity if not everyone who wants to be black can be black?
What do readers think? Is it unfair for Rachel Dolezal to call herself “black”? If so, is there “percentage of ancestry” test that would be an agreed-upon threshold for an American’s right to claim “black” status? How could such a law be written so as to exclude people descended from, for example, white South Africans?
The Times had an enlightening op/ed about the fact that several states have had legal tests for “whiteness.” I had no idea this was a thing. The author is a black woman, and her stance is that it’s not appropriate for a white person to identify as black until a black person can identify as white.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/opinion/rachel-dolezals-harmful-masquerade.html?_r=0
I would like to be optimistic and say that the way out of this quagmire is to stop classifying people by race in order to earmark some for special privileges and look only at “the content of their character”, but I would say that there’s no chance that will happen. Racial discrimination seems to be eternal (and as long as it exists it will be necessary to assign people to different races) – the only thing that changes is which group is at the top of the heap. In the past when being black was disadvantageous, it was not unusual for light skinned blacks to try to “pass” as white. Nowadays, when being black gets you AA and other privileges, there’s a “flight from white”.
I think this is a particularly interesting question, coming as it does on the heels of the other inescapable non-news, Bruce Jenner.
Just to make sure I understand…
If someone is born a man but decides that they feel like a woman — so they dress like a woman, and change their name, and maybe even get woman parts — that’s courageous and honest and everyone had better accept them as a woman, and let them hang out in women’s locker rooms, and so on. Anyone who doesn’t is a closed-minded bigot, not fit to inhabit our progressive coastlines.
On the other hand, if someone is born white but decides that they feel black — so they dye their hair, and get really tan, and represent themselves as black, and work (by all accounts very capably!) at an organisation that lobbies on behalf of black Americans — that’s duplicitous and evil and they should resign in shame and probably kill themselves.
Do I have that about right? Thinking Correctly is very confusing these days.
I think the traditional test is the one drop of blood test – if any of your ancestors were black then you are. Tho if this were taken seriously I think it would turn out that most Americans would have to be considered black.
The situation is even more murky for Hispanics. It is not required that you have Amerindian genes, or that you speak Spanish, or have lived in Latin America. Anyone can become Hispanic by just embracing Latin American culture.
Wally W – you are wrong about that (putting aside that EVERYONE’s remote ancestors are African). It turns out that something like 96% of white Americans (including Rachel) have not one drop of African blood, according to the results of genetic testing (organizations like 23 and Me now have vast data sets). While OTOH the average American black is something like 25% European.
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans
The reason is just because of the one-drop rule. Light skinned blacks “passing” as white was not unheard of, but it was quite rare. In order to do so, not only did you have to be white enough in appearance, speech, dress, etc. to “pass”, but you had to cut yourself off from all public contract with your visibly black relatives (and hope that your kids turned out to be as fair skinned as you were). OTOH, remaining in the black community was easy, even if you were pretty much white looking – a large range of skin tones was always accepted. This is the reason Rachel Dolezal was able to get away with her shtick to begin with, with just a little spray tan and some hair weaves.
Phil – You have caught on to the absurdity but you have to understand that absurdity is a feature, not a bug. Think of PC as a religion. Religions always have all sorts of arbitrary rules as to what goes or doesn’t – following the rules is a test of loyalty to the cause and true believers are expected to stay current on all the latest rules and not to question whether they make any sense. It’s Friday, so no eating meat if you were a Catholic. If you are Jewish, then no driving on the Sabbath. The Communist Party was the same – you had to follow the twists and turns of the Party Line wherever they took you or you were suspect. Of course the leadership will always put forth some rationalization as to why what they are mandating makes absolute perfect sense and as a true believer you are expected to totally buy into it no matter how paper thin the rationalizations are (there are plenty of them out there already explaining why Rachel is different than “Caitlyn”) and not to poke too hard at their rationales. Once those who are supposed to do our thinking for us have instructed the masses which way to go, the masses are supposed to follow. Maybe the Overton Window will shift and in a few years, transracialism will be as accepted (indeed praised) as transexualism is today (but was not just a couple of years ago) , but being out ahead of the window is just as bad as being behind. The very fact that you raising doubt as to whether the exact current position of the window this week is right and just and natural (and that having views outside of it makes you a Bad Person) means that you are ideologically suspect and maybe a Bad Person yourself.
Much of the income that Rachel Dolezal earned was from jobs restricted to Americans who identify as “black.”
This is probably not correct. I heard that her NAACP position was unpaid. Also, if you look at the website of Eastern Washington University, all four of the faculty members appear to be black. However, there are professors at similar departments at other universities who are non-black.
Vince: Being “unpaid” by the NAACP can result in a pretty good lifestyle according to the organization’s Form 990 for 2013, available from guidestar.org. Benjamin Jealous, for example, received roughly $375,000 in the preceding year. Roger Vann collected $225,000. Brenda Watkins Noel harvested about $212,000.