{"id":56401,"date":"2018-05-18T15:32:30","date_gmt":"2018-05-18T15:32:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56401"},"modified":"2018-05-21T15:09:24","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T15:09:24","slug":"passing-or-transracial-authority-race-and-sex-in-the-rachel-dolezal-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56401","title":{"rendered":"Passing or Transracial?: Authority, Race, and Sex in the Rachel Dolezal Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Passing or Transracial?: Authority, Race, and Sex in the Rachel Dolezal Documentary<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Beacon Broadside: A Project of Beacon Press<\/a>
\n2018-05-10<\/p>\n

Lisa Page<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing
\nGeorge Washington University, Washington, D.C.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rachel<\/a>
\nPhoto credit: YouTube\/Dr. Phil<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

For some of us, racial identity is elastic. We can pass<\/a>. For white, for black, for Middle Eastern. For Latinx. I am one of those people. I know what it is to assimilate to a group you identify with, because I did it myself, against my white mother\u2019s wishes. She hated me calling myself black.<\/p>\n

For this reason, my response to The Rachel Divide<\/em><\/a>, Laura Brownson\u2019s<\/a> new documentary about Rachel Dolezal<\/a>, is complicated. Dolezal famously passed for black, for years, before her white parents outed her in 2015. I feel two ways about this. I completely get the outrage that followed the reveal. But I also have sympathy for Dolezal. I know what it\u2019s like to turn your back on the white side of your family.<\/p>\n

The film opens with clips of Dolezal\u2019s activism, as president of the Spokane NAACP<\/a>, which came to a screeching halt once she was revealed to be a white woman who darkened her complexion and wore a weave.<\/p>\n

Dolezal doesn\u2019t call that passing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s the gatekeeper for blackness?\u201d she asks, near the beginning of the film. \u201cDo we have the right to live exactly how we feel?\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

But I also have sympathy for Dolezal. I know what it\u2019s like to turn your back on the white side of your family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,8413,8,6462,20],"tags":[6579,28644,4729,20241],"class_list":["post-56401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-beacon-broadside","tag-beacon-broadside-a-project-of-beacon-press","tag-lisa-page","tag-rachel-dolezal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56401","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=56401"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56457,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56401\/revisions\/56457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}