A Context for Rachel Dolezal

The media discussion of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who passed and became African-American, seems largely to have overlooked the context of what she did. 

The missing context is the history of passing in the United States, which goes back several hundred years. Our definitions of race are, as you know, shifting and arbitrary. The definitions are largely fictions. In our history many thousands of women have passed from the black race to white race and--this is the part that seems almost unknown--from the white race to the black race. Rachel Dolezal is one among many.  We don't know exactly how many have passed because we don't look at this phenomenon or count the people involved.

Every woman who changed races constructed a false identity and became, in a sense, a liar. This made them uncomfortable and led them to look for justifications or rationales for their claims. For example, white women who married black men used to cut the arms of their husbands and drink their blood. Then they could claim "black blood." (By claiming they were black, these women could avoid the problems that assaulted biracial couples.)  Rachel Dolezal, raised in a different time, has claimed a kind of existential blackness, an interior quality. She believes she was, in modern terms, born black in a white body. I suspect that she also believes she was born into a family that would betray her.