{"id":41746,"date":"2015-07-13T01:40:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T01:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41746"},"modified":"2015-07-13T01:40:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T01:40:15","slug":"dolezal-and-the-defense-of-the-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41746","title":{"rendered":"Dolezal and the Defense of the Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicseminar.org\/2015\/07\/dolezal-and-the-defense-of-the-community\" target=\"_blank\">Dolezal and the Defense of the Community<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicseminar.org\" target=\"_blank\">Public Seminar<\/a><br \/>\n2015-07-09<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicseminar.org\/author\/rkaplan\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Kaplan<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Reflections on the unique difficulties of passing from white to black in America<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It strikes me that an incredible amount of media attention and denunciation has focused on a poor, perhaps deluded woman in <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Spokane,_Washington\" target=\"_blank\">Spokane, Washington<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rachel_Dolezal\" target=\"_blank\">Rachel Dolezal\u2019s<\/a> crime was to lie and try and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">pass as black<\/a>. While the media have seen fit to celebrate <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caitlyn_Jenner\" target=\"_blank\">Caitlyn Jenner<\/a> and her exceedingly forthright bursting of the boundaries dividing male from female, in the Dolezal case, commentators seem intent on reinforcing the walls dividing black from white, creating an effective <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/demilitarized_zone\" target=\"_blank\">DMZ<\/a> one cannot pass. Perhaps Dolezal failed to pay the adequate dues and penance in trespassing the racial boundaries \u2014 unlike Jenner she didn\u2019t lay under the bright lights of the surgery chamber and submit to the cuts of the surgeon\u2019s scalpel nor withstand the prolonged glare of prior media dissection.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, it\u2019s remarkable how much media commentary seems to revolve around reinforcing the racial boundary. All the more strange since every commentator at the same time is obliged to note that race has no biological underpinnings but is culturally constructed, as evidenced by the uniquely American rule of racial classification of \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=3208\" target=\"_blank\">one drop<\/a>.\u201d Unlike the seemingly more biologically based binary of gender, indeed, we should recognize that America\u2019s bizarre rule, where even slightest trace of \u201cAfrican\u201d blood confines you in the black camp, is what allowed the very white Dolezal to pass as a very light-skinned black&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publicseminar.org\/2015\/07\/dolezal-and-the-defense-of-the-community\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dolezal and the Defense of the Community Public Seminar 2015-07-09 Richard Kaplan Reflections on the unique difficulties of passing from white to black in America It strikes me that an incredible amount of media attention and denunciation has focused on a poor, perhaps deluded woman in Spokane, Washington. Rachel Dolezal\u2019s crime was to lie and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,6462,20],"tags":[20429,20257,20241,20428],"class_list":["post-41746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-public-seminar","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-richard-kaplan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41746","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=41746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}