You Guys Are Unprofessional...

[Reginald Ret]

At least she doesn't identify as a sports-fan.

Wait, maybe she does, how would I know?

If she does identify as multiple things my opinion changes:
In that case I think she has a personality varied enough to respect her as a person.

[LMNO]

What annoys me are the people comparing her to Caitlyn Jenner.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

What annoys me are the people comparing her to Caitlyn Jenner.

Why does that bother you?

[LMNO]

Because they're using it to try to invalidate Jenner. Saying she's not "really" a woman. I feel they're separate issues.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Because they're using it to try to invalidate Jenner. Saying she's not "really" a woman. I feel they're separate issues.

I think it brings up an interesting and uncomfortable part of the conversation. Race is a social construct even more so than gender is. I honestly don't know how I feel about the idea of people identifying as a race other than those of their biological parents; however, there's also not really any getting around the fact that race is completely made the fuck up. This leads me to the uncomfortable point of having to ask myself whether, if I support acceptance of transgender people, I can in good conscience reject the validity of someone who identifies as a race that is not the one their parents identify as.

So no, not really separate issues. It would be less messy if they were.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

This is regardless of the motivations of people who are bringing up the comparison.

[LMNO]

Both very good points.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Relevant to the discussion: http://alimichael.org/blog/rachel-dolezal-syndrome/

...There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors... and my descendants. I remember deciding that I couldn't have biological children because I didn't want to propagate my privilege biologically. If I was going to pass on my privilege, I wanted to pass it on to someone who doesn't have racial privilege; so I planned to adopt. I disliked my Whiteness, but I disliked the Whiteness of other White people more. I felt like the way to really end racism was to feel guilty for it, and to make other White people feel guilty for it too. And then, like Dolezal, I wanted to take on Africanness. ...

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

Because they're using it to try to invalidate Jenner. Saying she's not "really" a woman. I feel they're separate issues.

I think it brings up an interesting and uncomfortable part of the conversation. Race is a social construct even more so than gender is. I honestly don't know how I feel about the idea of people identifying as a race other than those of their biological parents; however, there's also not really any getting around the fact that race is completely made the fuck up. This leads me to the uncomfortable point of having to ask myself whether, if I support acceptance of transgender people, I can in good conscience reject the validity of someone who identifies as a race that is not the one their parents identify as.

So no, not really separate issues. It would be less messy if they were.

The general issue isn't wholly separate, but the specifics definitely are. Rachel Dolezal fabricated her back story completely. She claimed that her biological father was black. Told stories about her childhood in Africa, and being abused with a baboon whip there. She backed up her part Native American Identity by lying about being born in a teepee. She wasn't merely identifying as black in the way that Jenner identifies as woman, she was completely inventing and selling a life that wasn't hers.

[Reginald Ret]

In these tense situations, it often pays to take a moment to reflect:

What will the consequences be if we allow this sort of thing to continue?



Bigots will get confused about who to hate, they will solve this by hating everyone. They won't immediately notice but this will make people hate them less. Since the amount of hate a bigot generates is mostly made up of the way others feel about him this will result in a net decrease in hate.

Top down positive discrimination will be abused more often and consequently either more strictly regulated or abolished.

Other than that the price of Texas Instruments calculators will stay exactly the same, the economy will go through another bubble, and Permafrost will keep melting. But that would have happened anyway.

[Roly Poly Oly-Garch]

In these tense situations, it often pays to take a moment to reflect:

What will the consequences be if we allow this sort of thing to continue?



Bigots will get confused about who to hate, they will solve this by hating everyone. They won't immediately notice but this will make people hate them less. Since the amount of hate a bigot generates is mostly made up of the way others feel about him this will result in a net decrease in hate.

Top down positive discrimination will be abused more often and consequently either more strictly regulated or abolished.

Other than that the price of Texas Instruments calculators will stay exactly the same, the economy will go through another bubble, and Permafrost will keep melting. But that would have happened anyway.

Bigots will use their now legitimized experiences with ethnic tourism to add punch to their arguments that the only barrier between the "black-born" and wealth and privilege is their character...because after all, I was black for 2 years and look at me...and besides there's nothing saying that a dark-skinned black person can't be white, after all.

[Faust]

Yeah I dont see how deception comes in to the jenner thing.

And for cultural aspects, I'm sure there is a great troll to be had equating Transgenderism to cultural appropriation, but the target audience of such a troll yield screeching for far less, so the effort would be wasted.

[Reginald Ret]

In these tense situations, it often pays to take a moment to reflect:

What will the consequences be if we allow this sort of thing to continue?



Bigots will get confused about who to hate, they will solve this by hating everyone. They won't immediately notice but this will make people hate them less. Since the amount of hate a bigot generates is mostly made up of the way others feel about him this will result in a net decrease in hate.

Top down positive discrimination will be abused more often and consequently either more strictly regulated or abolished.

Other than that the price of Texas Instruments calculators will stay exactly the same, the economy will go through another bubble, and Permafrost will keep melting. But that would have happened anyway.

Bigots will use their now legitimized experiences with ethnic tourism to add punch to their arguments that the only barrier between the "black-born" and wealth and privilege is their character...because after all, I was black for 2 years and look at me...and besides there's nothing saying that a dark-skinned black person can't be white, after all.

You are aware that i just steered the discussion and gave you a position to defend, right?
You have just defended the position opposite of mine: The one where people should get locked up for pretending to be of a different race than their parents are.
Unless you know of a way to not allow things without involving The Law, you are effectively strengthening the idea that your race is a thing the government needs to know.

What would a police race-check look like? Will everyone have to practice stereotypical behaviour daily so they can give a convincing show when they are pulled over?

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

A lot of people are talking about this woman as if she simply lied and took advantage of the system by claiming to be black.

I think that it would take at least a 300-page book to really discuss the complexities of what's going on there. For example, if one can take advantage of the system by claiming to be black, that implies (strongly) that there are privileges that come along with being black that are greater than the privileges that come with being white; enough so that renouncing whiteness can open more doors than simply being white.

As a person who has been told (by my white ex-husband) that I am "culturally white", and (by my white mother) that by identifying as black I am "pretending to be someone I'm not" (which apparently ONLY applies to the African part of my mixed Black and Native American father's ancestry, since she actively encouraged my Native identity throughout my upbringing) I have lots and lots of crazy conflicting feelz about this situation. For one thing, I am happy about the conversation because it makes people actually talk about what race is, in the first place. Is race a social construct, or a biological reality? Can someone raised with black siblings (or by black parents) legitimately identify as black even if they have no immediate Aftrican ancestry? How does that concept apply to Native American or other communities? What actually makes someone white?

I honestly don't know enough about the situation to know whether she lied. Is it a lie to check the "black" box if you identify publicly, socially, and personally, as black? When is it wrong to identify as black? When is it wrong to identify as white? My entire life I have been taught that what matters is what you self-identify as, not blood quantum or appearance. So when does that cease to be the case, and for whom?

So, I wanted to talk about the bolded bit. It seems to me like there is an element of playing the system here, where she got to take advantage of a lot of white privilege, and then took advantage of the systems designed to compensate for white privilege, while still getting to take advantage of being lighter skinned even as she identified herself publicly as mixed-race black. Had she "stayed in her lane" she would have had (potentially) fewer opportunities overall than she got. It's like the cyclist thing, where some assholes on bikes pretend to be pedestrians or traffic depending on which set of rules suits them best at that moment.

But even that's not all of it, because my kneejerk "fuck her" is also grounded in my own resentment that I have to check "white" on the box and not something "more interesting" and then the crazy internal racism that lays bare when I am forced to admit my head still thinks of white as the "default" and everything else as "exotic." And fuck me, I still don't know where the "stop being unconsciously racist" button is. It's embarrassing and I don't even know how to start working on it, and it sucks that this problem is harder to deal with than the internal transphobia, and maybe that's a sign of internal racism, too, because most of the trans folks I've met are white.

And that's not enough either, because mixed race folks should be front and center in talking about this, because whatever the cultural consensus on this whole mess ends up being, they're the ones who are going to be affected by it the most, so while I have a place in talking about white girl problems, I have to figure out how to shut up and listen to the people who are potentially going to be hurt by the discussion.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Because they're using it to try to invalidate Jenner. Saying she's not "really" a woman. I feel they're separate issues.

I think it brings up an interesting and uncomfortable part of the conversation. Race is a social construct even more so than gender is. I honestly don't know how I feel about the idea of people identifying as a race other than those of their biological parents; however, there's also not really any getting around the fact that race is completely made the fuck up. This leads me to the uncomfortable point of having to ask myself whether, if I support acceptance of transgender people, I can in good conscience reject the validity of someone who identifies as a race that is not the one their parents identify as.

So no, not really separate issues. It would be less messy if they were.

The general issue isn't wholly separate, but the specifics definitely are. Rachel Dolezal fabricated her back story completely. She claimed that her biological father was black. Told stories about her childhood in Africa, and being abused with a baboon whip there. She backed up her part Native American Identity by lying about being born in a teepee. She wasn't merely identifying as black in the way that Jenner identifies as woman, she was completely inventing and selling a life that wasn't hers.

Those aspects I was completely unaware of, because I really just haven't had time to read up on her story beyond skimming an article or two. I am very leery of most news articles these days, because the tendency to misinterpret, exaggerate, and generally extremize as much as possible is so rampant. Do you have a good article or two that you can recommend?