{"id":53025,"date":"2017-03-28T18:45:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T18:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53025"},"modified":"2017-03-29T01:50:14","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T01:50:14","slug":"when-saying-youre-black-and-being-black-are-two-different-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=53025","title":{"rendered":"When saying you\u2019re black and being black are two different things"},"content":{"rendered":"

When saying you\u2019re black and being black are two different things<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2017-03-24<\/p>\n

Baz Dreisinger<\/strong><\/a>, Associate\u00a0Professor of English
\nJohn Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nRachel Dolezal<\/a> faced a backlash when it was revealed in 2015 that the NAACP<\/a> and Black Lives Matter<\/a> activist was not black, as she presented herself to be, but in fact white. (Colin Mulvany\/Associated Press)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Baz Dreisinger, a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is the author of \u201cNear Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture<\/a>\u201d and \u201cIncarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World<\/a>.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Back in 2015, I was fascinated by the scandal that swirled around Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, the NAACP<\/a> and Black Lives Matter<\/a> activist who turned out to be a once-blonde white woman from Montana <\/a>passing herself off as black<\/a>. Dolezal went further than that: She said she wasn\u2019t posing as black but actually was black \u2014 because she feels black. I made the rounds on the talk shows at the time, having published a book about the cultural history of such reverse racial passing, and avidly tried to explain notions of transraciality.<\/p>\n

Now Dolezal has published a memoir, \u201cIn Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World<\/a>.\u201d I hesitated to review it. Expending intellectual energy on one woman\u2019s racial hoax seems a luxury of the pre-Trump<\/a> era. And Dolezal\u2019s increasingly bizarre story seems more tabloid fodder than a subject for serious analysis. But then I read her book, and the educator in me felt compelled to speak out. Dolezal has written an important book, one that belongs on syllabi as a case study in the mechanisms of white liberal racism. She has provided a teachable moment to expose the dodgy ideologies she may not even realize she\u2019s espousing…<\/p>\n

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

Dolezal has written an important book, one that belongs on syllabi as a case study in the mechanisms of white liberal racism. She has provided a teachable moment to expose the dodgy ideologies she may not even realize she\u2019s espousing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8,6462,23674,20],"tags":[2710,20241,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-53025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-baz-dreisinger","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53025","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=53025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53049,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53025\/revisions\/53049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}