{"id":41650,"date":"2015-07-06T01:20:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T01:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41650"},"modified":"2015-07-06T01:20:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-06T01:20:30","slug":"dolezal-jenner-raise-fundamental-questions-about-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41650","title":{"rendered":"Dolezal, Jenner raise fundamental questions about identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2015\/06\/16\/rachel-dolezal-caitlyn-jenner-raise-fundamental-questions-about-identity\/w8Bqjo5YBVMtmLhiPM9i4J\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\">Dolezal, Jenner raise fundamental questions about identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Boston Globe<\/a><br \/>\n2015-06-16<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/fstockman\" target=\"_blank\">Farrah Stockman<\/a><\/strong>, Globe Staff<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/spokanenaacp.com\/rachel-dolezal\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Dolezal<\/a> \u2014 the self-identified black daughter of two Caucasian parents \u2014 has spoken. And finally, she was asked a question I\u2019ve been wondering for days: When did it start?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt a very young age,\u201d she replied. \u201cAbout 5 years old, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s impossible not to be reminded of how Bruce \u2014 now <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caitlyn_Jenner\" target=\"_blank\">Caitlyn<\/a> \u2014 Jenner answered a similar question: When did you know? Jenner talked about sneaking into her mother\u2019s closet as an 8-year-old boy to dress up in her clothes.<\/p>\n<p>Comparisons between Jenner, who recently appeared on the cover of <em>Vanity Fair<\/em> as a woman, and Dolezal, who just resigned as a local leader of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/National_Association_for_the_Advancement_of_Colored_People\" target=\"_blank\">NAACP<\/a> after her parents outed her as white, have spawned a cottage industry of jokes and memes.<\/p>\n<p>But I have yet to read a real answer to the underlying challenge these two people pose to identity in America today: If we accept that gender is fluid \u2014 a reflection of some inexplicable spiritual thing inside of us \u2014 why not race? Why do we police the boundaries of blackness more rigorously than we police womanhood?<\/p>\n<p>The general consensus seems to be that as much as we want to do away with racial differences and as deeply as we believe in race as a social construct, we can\u2019t accept Dolezal as a black woman trapped in a spray-tanned blonde\u2019s body&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/opinion\/2015\/06\/16\/rachel-dolezal-caitlyn-jenner-raise-fundamental-questions-about-identity\/w8Bqjo5YBVMtmLhiPM9i4J\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dolezal, Jenner raise fundamental questions about identity The Boston Globe 2015-06-16 Farrah Stockman, Globe Staff Finally, Rachel Dolezal \u2014 the self-identified black daughter of two Caucasian parents \u2014 has spoken. And finally, she was asked a question I\u2019ve been wondering for days: When did it start? \u201cAt a very young age,\u201d she replied. \u201cAbout 5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,6462,20],"tags":[4072,20371,20257,20241,5579],"class_list":["post-41650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-boston-globe","tag-farrah-stockman","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-the-boston-globe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41650","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=41650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}