Rachel Dolezal, Caitlyn Jenner and My Big, Phat Black Family
I'll always remember the day my mom called me up and asked, "Will you please promise to give me a Black funeral?"
No, she wasn't in imminent danger of needing one at the time. Ma is one of the youngest 80-odd year-olds you'll ever meet. She had just been to one of to one of those interminable "coyote" funerals: the kind everyone characterizes as "lovely", but they're all trying to chew off a limb to escape before the next off-key solo. The atmosphere is as dead as the one in the coffin.
I knew exactly what she meant. She had just put on a great funeral for my step-dad a couple of years prior. The jazz band they had traveled to Portland to see on so many summer nights filled the overflowing hall with joyous gospel. The crowd joined in, singing and clapping, Amen and Hallelujah! It was a raucous community sendoff for a well-loved man.
I was a teenager when Ma married my stepdad (or, as I think of him, Dad). We went from being a typical suburban White family to an atypical mixed-race family. Loosing a Black man on the lily-white suburbs of Salem, Oregon was not without its problems. Father-daughter dinners at Girl Scouts were awkward. The local cops eventually learned he belonged in the neighborhood, but not before numerous calls about that man "casing" the neighbors' homes (apparently, White men stroll, Black men look for things to steal) or "abducting" my little sister from grade school. The ugly incidents became less frequent, but they never really stopped.
With Dad came his big Black family, new relatives we'd meet at parties. I was not only an impressionable youth, but I am a natural mimic (mimicry is an unconscious introvert survival skill. The better you blend in with the crowd, the less likely you're noticed. I cannot travel without coming home with a new accent). I quickly, but unconsciously, adopted new speech patterns and mannerisms. Years later, after finally posting a picture of myself on my blog, several of my online followers were surprised to find out that I am White.
Another thing that changed for me was developing a sense of community. The Black community is large and welcoming, like your favorite plushy aunt whose hugs are genuine and enveloping. There is always love, food and laughter.
It's easy for me to understand the attractions such a community might have for a young White woman estranged from her parents. As the details of Rachel Dolezal's life are trotted out by the Press for us to poke and ponder, it becomes less a story of fraud than of finding a place to belong. Perhaps she was jealous of the attention received by her four Black adoptive brothers. Or, perhaps she felt more at home with them than the parents with whom she was at odds. Those are matters for psychologists to debate. Whatever the case, I do understand.
But do I condone? Where is the dividing line between my unconscious mimicry and Ms. Dolezal's spray tan and box curls? Her threats to sue Howard University for discriminating against her because she was White reveal that she was very much aware of her own ethnicity. She knew each time she kinked her hair and colored her skin that she was living a lie. How could such a lie honor the people whose history and culture became a lifetime study?
The saddest part of the story is that, instead of teaching people to be accepting of their own skin, whatever color that may be, Ms. Dolezal felt she needed to hide the fact that she is White. Instead of asking for acceptance as she is, acceptance my family found in our step-relations, she felt the need to deceive.
Some people have drawn parallels between Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner. Ms. Jenner and her trans-sisters are not faking being women. They know full well that their previous male biology will always show, however unwelcome. They are women seeking to make their outsides better match their insides. There are distinct biochemical differences between males and females, key hormones that affect your life differently far beyond the profound changes of gender reassignment surgery. Trans people are not transforming their bodies in order to fit into the community of their choice, but becoming the people they truly are. The difference is a sense of genuineness: even before surgery and without spending thousands on makeup and tailored clothing, transwomen exude a real, inner femininity.
My mom has never kinked up her hair or applied tanning solution, but she can walk into a group of Black people and be accepted as Black. I've seen her do it many times. There is nothing fake or forced. It is who she is, and it's genuine.
And I promise that she will, many years from now, rest in peace beside my dad after a big, Black funeral.
No, she wasn't in imminent danger of needing one at the time. Ma is one of the youngest 80-odd year-olds you'll ever meet. She had just been to one of to one of those interminable "coyote" funerals: the kind everyone characterizes as "lovely", but they're all trying to chew off a limb to escape before the next off-key solo. The atmosphere is as dead as the one in the coffin.
I knew exactly what she meant. She had just put on a great funeral for my step-dad a couple of years prior. The jazz band they had traveled to Portland to see on so many summer nights filled the overflowing hall with joyous gospel. The crowd joined in, singing and clapping, Amen and Hallelujah! It was a raucous community sendoff for a well-loved man.
I was a teenager when Ma married my stepdad (or, as I think of him, Dad). We went from being a typical suburban White family to an atypical mixed-race family. Loosing a Black man on the lily-white suburbs of Salem, Oregon was not without its problems. Father-daughter dinners at Girl Scouts were awkward. The local cops eventually learned he belonged in the neighborhood, but not before numerous calls about that man "casing" the neighbors' homes (apparently, White men stroll, Black men look for things to steal) or "abducting" my little sister from grade school. The ugly incidents became less frequent, but they never really stopped.
With Dad came his big Black family, new relatives we'd meet at parties. I was not only an impressionable youth, but I am a natural mimic (mimicry is an unconscious introvert survival skill. The better you blend in with the crowd, the less likely you're noticed. I cannot travel without coming home with a new accent). I quickly, but unconsciously, adopted new speech patterns and mannerisms. Years later, after finally posting a picture of myself on my blog, several of my online followers were surprised to find out that I am White.
Another thing that changed for me was developing a sense of community. The Black community is large and welcoming, like your favorite plushy aunt whose hugs are genuine and enveloping. There is always love, food and laughter.
It's easy for me to understand the attractions such a community might have for a young White woman estranged from her parents. As the details of Rachel Dolezal's life are trotted out by the Press for us to poke and ponder, it becomes less a story of fraud than of finding a place to belong. Perhaps she was jealous of the attention received by her four Black adoptive brothers. Or, perhaps she felt more at home with them than the parents with whom she was at odds. Those are matters for psychologists to debate. Whatever the case, I do understand.
But do I condone? Where is the dividing line between my unconscious mimicry and Ms. Dolezal's spray tan and box curls? Her threats to sue Howard University for discriminating against her because she was White reveal that she was very much aware of her own ethnicity. She knew each time she kinked her hair and colored her skin that she was living a lie. How could such a lie honor the people whose history and culture became a lifetime study?
The saddest part of the story is that, instead of teaching people to be accepting of their own skin, whatever color that may be, Ms. Dolezal felt she needed to hide the fact that she is White. Instead of asking for acceptance as she is, acceptance my family found in our step-relations, she felt the need to deceive.
Some people have drawn parallels between Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner. Ms. Jenner and her trans-sisters are not faking being women. They know full well that their previous male biology will always show, however unwelcome. They are women seeking to make their outsides better match their insides. There are distinct biochemical differences between males and females, key hormones that affect your life differently far beyond the profound changes of gender reassignment surgery. Trans people are not transforming their bodies in order to fit into the community of their choice, but becoming the people they truly are. The difference is a sense of genuineness: even before surgery and without spending thousands on makeup and tailored clothing, transwomen exude a real, inner femininity.
My mom has never kinked up her hair or applied tanning solution, but she can walk into a group of Black people and be accepted as Black. I've seen her do it many times. There is nothing fake or forced. It is who she is, and it's genuine.
And I promise that she will, many years from now, rest in peace beside my dad after a big, Black funeral.