{"id":41735,"date":"2015-07-10T20:49:42","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T20:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41735"},"modified":"2015-07-11T21:35:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T21:35:04","slug":"from-blood-quantum-to-multiracial-bill-of-rights-dolezal-saga-ignites-talk-of-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41735","title":{"rendered":"From \u2018blood quantum\u2019 to multiracial bill of rights, Dolezal saga ignites talk of identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

From \u2018blood quantum\u2019 to multiracial bill of rights, Dolezal saga ignites talk of identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Seattle Times<\/a>
\n2015-06-17<\/p>\n

Nina Shapiro<\/strong><\/a>, Seattle Times staff reporter<\/p>\n

The endless fascination with the Rachel Dolezal story reveals our hunger to talk about racial identity in all its complexity.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Amanda Erekson<\/a> was in her early 20s, a friend introduced her to a Japanese-American woman at a party. \u201cAmanda is Japanese-American, too!\u201d her friend enthused.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe person was shocked,\u201d Erekson recalls. \u201cI know white people who look more Japanese than you,\u201d the woman said.<\/p>\n

The comment stung. Erekson, who is multiracial, identifies strongly with her Japanese-American heritage, although her appearance leads most people to assume she is simply white.<\/p>\n

This kind of skeptical reaction is one reason the 33-year-old New Yorker, president of MAVIN<\/a>, an organization devoted to the multiracial experience, bemoans the international media sensation that is Rachel Dolezal<\/a>. Because of the former Spokane NAACP<\/a> president, who resigned from her post Monday after her parents said she had been posing as black<\/a>, Erekson says \u201cit will be that much harder\u201d for people like her…<\/p>\n

…Race \u2014 or more specifically racial identity \u2014 has been Topic A in the national conversation over the past week. And it is one of the most nuanced and interesting conversations we\u2019ve ever had.<\/p>\n

People obviously have a deep need to talk about the subject, and to talk about it in complex ways, says New Jersey filmmaker Lacey Schwartz. She saw that same need in the outpouring of personal stories sparked by the making of her recent film \u201cLittle White Lie<\/a>,\u201d a documentary about growing up in a Jewish family and discovering in college that her biological father is African American…<\/p>\n

To some extent, the current conversation involves picking apart details of the Dolezal saga, which seems to get stranger by the day.<\/p>\n

Witness Dolezal\u2019s assertion Tuesday, despite a birth certificate produced by Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal, that there\u2019s no proof that the couple are her biological parents. She evinced a similar squishiness on NBC\u2019s \u201cToday\u201d show earlier in the day when she said that she \u201cidentified\u201d as black.<\/p>\n

Whatever story she has that prompts such a statement, she\u2019s not \u201cowning it\u2019 by honestly talking about it, Schwartz says. The filmmaker also objects to Dolezal\u2019s declaration on \u201cToday\u201d that she needed to present herself as black because otherwise it wouldn\u2019t be \u201cplausible\u201d to assume guardianship, as she did, of one of her adopted African-American brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a real diss,\u201d Schwartz says. \u201cMy mother is white. I know lots of white people raising children of color.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, Camille Gear Rich<\/a>, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Southern California, points out that parents who look different from their children often face incredulous questions. That intrusiveness might have pushed her into \u201cgoing too far\u201d by lying about her race, Rich says…<\/p>\n

…Backlash<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet this insistence on racial labeling faces a backlash.<\/p>\n

MAVIN arose in 1998 in response to a growing desire by multiracial people to identify themselves in ways that might differ from how they are perceived. The group looks to a landmark \u201cbill of rights for people of mixed heritage<\/a>\u201d produced by Seattle psychologist Maria P.P. Root<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some key passages: \u201cI have the right \u2026 To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify. To identify myself differently than how my parents identify me. To identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters. To identify myself differently in different situations.\u201d Also: \u201cI have the right \u2026 To change my identity over my lifetime \u2014 and more than once.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

From \u2018blood quantum\u2019 to multiracial bill of rights, Dolezal saga ignites talk of identity The Seattle Times 2015-06-17 Nina Shapiro, Seattle Times staff reporter The endless fascination with the Rachel Dolezal story reveals our hunger to talk about racial identity in all its complexity. When Amanda Erekson was in her early 20s, a friend introduced […]<\/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":[20259,8890,3602,140,6999,20413,20257,20241,9872,5408],"class_list":["post-41735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-amanda-erekson","tag-camille-gear-rich","tag-lacey-schwartz","tag-maria-p-p-root","tag-maria-primitiva-paz-root","tag-nina-shapiro","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-seattle-times","tag-the-seattle-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41735","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=41735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}