“It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a voting-rights case a few years ago. Indeed, it is.
The story of how Rachel Dolezal, a prominent crusader against hate crimes and the head of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington apparently “disguised” herself and passed herself off as black for years is bizarre beyond belief. Having asked the police to investigate alleged hate mail sent to her NAACP office, she now stands exposed as a fraud by her own parents, who are both of European descent.
London’s Daily Telegraph has Dolezal’s response:
Dolezal later confirmed that Larry Dolezal was her father, and said she “understood” why people may feel was guilty of misrepresentations but declined to elaborate.
“It’s more important for me to clarify that with the black community and with my executive board than it really is to explain it to a community that, quite frankly, don’t really understand the definitions of race and ethnicity,” she said in a television interview.
Somehow, I suspect that this story isn’t going to get nearly as much coverage as, say, Caitlyn Jenner’s decision to change her appearance. Dolezal is apparently part of the sordid practice of putting everything in racial terms and is willing to go to any lengths to cultivate that story line.