{"id":41430,"date":"2015-06-16T19:07:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-16T19:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41430"},"modified":"2015-06-16T19:07:05","modified_gmt":"2015-06-16T19:07:05","slug":"rachel-dolezals-passing-isnt-so-unusual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41430","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Dolezal\u2019s \u2018Passing\u2019 Isn\u2019t So Unusual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Dolezal\u2019s \u2018Passing\u2019 Isn\u2019t So Unusual<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times Magazine<\/a>
\n2015-06-15<\/p>\n

Daniel J. Sharfstein<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Law
\nVanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesee<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniel J. Sharfstein is the author of \u201cThe Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America<\/a><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do we care so much about Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, the head of the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.<\/a> who apparently misrepresented herself as African-American when, according to her parents, she is Czech, Swedish and German, with some remote Native American ancestry?<\/p>\n

In one sense, it\u2019s not at all surprising. Stories of white Americans \u201cpassing<\/a>\u201d as members of other racial and ethnic groups have often captivated the American public \u2014 though the cases that have most fascinated us have usually turned on the malicious hypocrisy of the protagonists. In 1965, The Times famously reported<\/a> that Dan Burros<\/a>, the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s Grand Dragon<\/a> in New York State<\/a> and the former national secretary of the American Nazi Party<\/a>, was once a Jew who not only was a \u201cstar\u201d bar mitzvah<\/a> student at his shul<\/a> in Queens<\/a> but also brought knishes<\/a> to white-supremacist gatherings. In 1991, an Emory University professor drew headlines by unmasking Forrest Carter<\/a>, the author of a best-selling Native American \u201cmemoir,\u201d<\/a> as Asa Earl Carter, an Alabama<\/a> Klansman<\/a> and a speechwriter for George Wallace<\/a>, the state\u2019s segregationist governor.<\/p>\n

But nowhere in the details that reporters and Internet sleuths have uncovered about Dolezal is there any inkling of personal commitment to white supremacy; her work with the N.A.A.C.P., now finished<\/a>, and as a professor of Africana studies suggests quite the opposite. Her story spins at a far lower orbit of oddity than the trajectories of Burros and Carter, yet she is attracting a similar level of attention. More puzzling still, her case has gone viral at a moment when we are learning that Rachel Dolezals have been much more common in this country\u2019s history than we once might have thought…<\/p>\n

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

Rachel Dolezal\u2019s \u2018Passing\u2019 Isn\u2019t So Unusual The New York Times Magazine 2015-06-15 Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennesee Daniel J. Sharfstein is the author of \u201cThe Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America.\u201d Why do we care so much about Rachel Dolezal, the head of the Spokane, Wash., chapter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,1467,8,6462,20],"tags":[20256,20254,2766,2767,20255,8894,20241,13109],"class_list":["post-41430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-law","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-asa-earl-carter","tag-dan-burros","tag-daniel-j-sharfstein","tag-daniel-sharfstein","tag-forrest-carter","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-the-new-york-times-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41430","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=41430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}