{"id":41424,"date":"2015-06-16T17:24:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T17:24:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41424"},"modified":"2015-06-16T17:24:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T17:24:59","slug":"before-rachel-dolezal-there-was-walter-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41424","title":{"rendered":"Before Rachel Dolezal, there was Walter White"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before Rachel Dolezal, there was Walter White<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Christian Science Monitor<\/a>
\n2015-06-15<\/p>\n

Randy Dotinga<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The man known as ‘Mr. NAACP’ was blonde, blue-eyed and 5\/32nd black, all of which provoked an outcry similar to that over contemporary NAACP official Rachel Dolezal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Walter White<\/a>, known as \u201cMr. NAACP,\u201d didn\u2019t look black. He had blue eyes and blonde hair, and his enemies sought to smear him as an opportunist who lied about his race and couldn\u2019t possibly understand the black experience. But the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People<\/a> persevered through much of the 20th century and left a stunning if tarnished legacy.<\/p>\n

White energized the refined halls of the NAACP, brought together literary stars of the Harlem Renaissance<\/a>, and helped craft the partial demise of segregation. He battled lynching, convinced politicians to kill the Supreme Court nomination of a racist and hobnobbed with the famous. Sixty years after his death, White is eclipsed in modern memory by other civil-rights leaders. Few know about his remarkable struggle to be seen as the genuine article by other African-Americans, and his vicious battles with fellow leaders like W. E. B. DuBois<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But this month, the ever-bubbling issue of blackness \u2013 who has it, who doesn\u2019t, and why it matters \u2013 is on tongues across the country amid the roaring debate over Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, a NAACP official in Spokane, Wash<\/a>. White\u2019s story resonates as Dolezal, who may not be black as she\u2019s claimed, faces a national storm.<\/p>\n

Here are 5 Things to Know about Walter White and Racial Identity, gleaned from his crisply written 1948 memoir A Man Called White<\/a><\/em> and author Thomas Dyja\u2019s perceptive and often-critical 2008 biography Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America<\/em><\/a>…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before Rachel Dolezal, there was Walter White The Christian Science Monitor 2015-06-15 Randy Dotinga The man known as ‘Mr. NAACP’ was blonde, blue-eyed and 5\/32nd black, all of which provoked an outcry similar to that over contemporary NAACP official Rachel Dolezal. Walter White, known as \u201cMr. NAACP,\u201d didn\u2019t look black. He had blue eyes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,1245,5,8,6462,20],"tags":[13974,899,2708,20241,20250,5666,3679,6786,1929],"class_list":["post-41424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-biography","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-christian-science-monitor","tag-naacp","tag-national-association-for-the-advancement-of-colored-people","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-randy-dotinga","tag-the-christian-science-monitor","tag-thomas-dyja","tag-walter-francis-white","tag-walter-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}