Black Like Me

About  56 years ago, a southern white man named John Howard Griffin took pills to turn his skin dark. For some time he lived as a black man and then wrote a book about his experiences called BLACK LIKE ME. I read it at the time. In my memory, at least, no one criticized him or called him deceptive.

This week the mother and father of a white woman in Spokane outed their daughter, Rachel Dolezal, a white woman passing as an African-American, who had become a leader and spokesperson for the NAACP.  Why the parents exposed their own daughter is unclear. The behavior of the daughter has become a huge topic in the media. Generally speaking, the reactions to Dolezal have been negative. Many issues have been raised. 

1. Dolezal has been accused of misrepresenting herself and lying. A woman who passes for black or white is lying by definition. The question raised here is one of existential authenticity. 

2.  The NAACP is backing Dolezal on the grounds that the organization has always been open to people of all races.

3.  Most authorities on race will tell you that race is a social creation. We define the races any way we like, arbitrarily,  but in nature the human race is one species. Dolezal's claim challenges a changing and arbitrary definition of race; it does not challenge biology.

4. Some on the left believe that people should be free to be whatever is genuinely themselves. Bruce Jenner took medicine and had surgery to give himself breasts (keeping his penis). Many who consider Dolezal a fake and mentally disturbed praise Jenner as a brave transgender woman who has become her true inner self. The argument is that Jenner was born to be transgender. Mother Nature required Jenner to undergo surgery. Dolezal was born white and darkened her skin and is a nut and a fake.

5. The question of who is legitimately black has been raised by those who believe that blackness is matter of experience. That is, all African-Americans have the same experience of racism from birth, and Dolezal has only experienced this as an adult. But is it true that all black people have the same experiences or are some blacker than others?

6. Dolezal could pass back into the white community, not a possibility for most (but not all) African-Americans. This makes her different from most but not all black people.

7.  Terry Southern, back in the 1960s, wrote a story about a white man who loved jazz and hung out all the time with black musicians in Paris, until they kicked him out on the grounds that he was "too hip." Has Dolezal become too hip?