{"id":42201,"date":"2015-08-11T20:43:12","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T20:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=42201"},"modified":"2015-08-11T20:43:12","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T20:43:12","slug":"from-jenner-to-dolezal-one-trans-good-the-other-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=42201","title":{"rendered":"From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Common Dreams<\/a>
\n2015-06-15<\/p>\n

Adolph Reed Jr.<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Political Science
\nUniversity of Pennsylvania<\/em><\/p>\n

By far the most intellectually and politically interesting thing about the recent “expos\u00e9” of Spokane, WA, NAACP<\/a> activist Rachel Dolezal\u2019s<\/a> racial status is the conundrum it has posed for racial identitarians who are also committed to defense of transgender identity. The comparisons between Dolezal and Republican Jenner (I\u2019ve decided to opt for that referent because it is an identity continuous between “Bruce” and “Caitlyn” and is moreover the one most meaningful to me) began almost instantly, particularly as a flood of mass-mediated Racial Voices who support the legitimacy of transgender identity objected strenuously to suggestions that Dolezal\u2019s representation, and apparent perception, of herself as black is similar to Bruce Jenner\u2019s<\/a> perception of himself as actually Caitlyn. Their contention is that one kind of claim to an identity at odds with culturally constructed understandings of the identity appropriate to one\u2019s biology is okay but that the other is not \u2013 that it\u2019s OK to feel like a woman when you don\u2019t have the body of a woman and to act like (and even get yourself the body of) a woman but that it\u2019s wrong to feel like a black person when you\u2019re actually white and that acting like you\u2019re black and doing your best to get yourself the body of a black person is just lying.<\/p>\n

The way Zeba Blay puts it, on the Black Voices section of the HuffPo<\/em>, is by declaring how important it is to “make one thing clear: transracial identity is not a thing.” What is clear is that it\u2019s not at all clear what that statement is supposed to mean. It seems to suggest that transracial identity is not something that has been validated by public recognition, or at least that Blay has not heard of or does not recognize it. But there\u2019s an obvious problem with this contention. There was a moment, not that long ago actually, when transgender identity was not a “thing” in that sense either. Is Blay\u2019s contention that we should accept transgender identity only because it is now publicly recognized? If so, the circularity is obvious, and the lack of acceptance arguably only a matter of time.\u00a0 Transgender wasn\u2019t always a thing \u2013 just ask Christine Jorgensen.<\/p>\n

But the more serious charge is the moral one, that, as Michelle Garcia puts it, “It\u2019s pretty clear: Dolezal has lied.” But here too, it\u2019s not clear what\u2019s so clear. Is the point supposed to be that Dolezal is lying when she says she identifies as black? Or is it that being black has nothing to do with how you identify? The problem with the first claim is obvious \u2013 how do they know? And on what grounds does Jenner get to be telling the truth and Dolezal not? But the problem with the second claim is even more obvious since if you think there\u2019s some biological fact of the matter about what race people actually belong to utterly independent of what race they think they belong to, you\u2019re committed to a view of racial difference as biologically definitive in a way that\u2019s even deeper than sexual difference…<\/p>\n

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

From Jenner to Dolezal: One Trans Good, the Other Not So Much Common Dreams 2015-06-15 Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science University of Pennsylvania By far the most intellectually and politically interesting thing about the recent “expos\u00e9” of Spokane, WA, NAACP activist Rachel Dolezal\u2019s racial status is the conundrum it has posed for racial […]<\/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":[20667,20666,20669,20670,20668,20257,20241],"class_list":["post-42201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-adolph-reed","tag-adolph-reed-jr","tag-bruce-jenner","tag-caitlyn-jenner","tag-common-dreams","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42201","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=42201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42202,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42201\/revisions\/42202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}