Rachel Dolezal has three sons and they are black. That’s a fact.
Curiously, this information has been omitted in the truckloads of negative media that’s surrounded the writer and artist ever since she was outed as a white woman.
And it shouldn’t have been – because, for me, that information is a game changer.
I learned this detail about Dolezal’s sons whilst watching The Rachel Divide, a documentary by Laura Brownson that’s currently streaming on Netflix.
Dolezal, a prominent civil rights activist and former head of the Spokane National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, gained international notoriety in 2015 when she was outed by a local news reporter as biologically Caucasian, despite insisting she was black.
But saying that Dolezal claimed she was black when she wasn’t is a simplification of what happened. Dolezal asserted she had African heritage on her social media accounts, even claiming that the father-figure in her life – a black man – was her biological father. Dolezal changed her hair and make up to look more ‘typically’ African – and to disguise her white reality.
It was this concerted effort to mislead that gained the ire of the black community in her hometown of Spokane, and why her story attracted so much attention.
And then we learn that Dolezal has another son – a biological one – that is also black. She is also pregnant with a third son, and gives birth to a little black cherub later in the documentary.
So why is this relevant? Why does this change my mind?
Seeing the family that Dolezal has created, everything suddenly becomes crystal clear.
Dolezal isn’t doing this just for attention. She is trying to create an identity for her family – the sense of belonging that none of them ever experienced in their childhoods – in a very confused and confusing way. But nevertheless, that is what she seems to be doing.
And as a mother of a biracial child myself, it’s something I can identify with. Because, my son, no matter how identical in personality he is to me, no matter how similar in features; because of his skin colour, people don’t think we are related.
This happens repeatedly: someone asks him where his mum is when I’m holding him at the playground. They ask if I’m the nanny. Then there was the time I lost him in Target and they wouldn’t give him back to me. It happens at airports, constantly, despite all the proper identification.
And just last week, a classmate called him a liar when he introduced me as his mother.
If you ask my son, he will tell you he is Indian. He has been raised solely by me. His loyalty is with me. No matter what anyone else tells him his identity is, according to their assessment of his skin colour.
So I know from vast personal experience, that a sense of belonging and a sure identity is vitally important to a child. And obviously, so does Dolezal.
Dolezal explains that growing up, she noticed her parents treated their adopted children as though “they had a skin condition” – never embracing their culture, but merely forcing them to assimilate to their community.
Hence, Dolezal made a huge effort to give her own sons that history and heritage – seeking the support of the black community. Which, of course, is noble and loving, and shows wonderful maternal instincts.
Does this mean I’ve ever considered pretending to be more “white” to help my son feel more secure? Definitely not. But then, I have a much more stable background than Dolezal.
And it’s for that reason I’ve found myself forgiving of her fraud.
Dolezal would have been better off saying, “Look here, I’ve got these boys and they need to know their community and heritage and can we please be part of that?” But she wasn’t capable of doing that. Her trauma has prevented it, even to this day.
Instead she chose fraud and deceit, which has only achieved isolating the family in Spokane, and, as the documentary shows, isolation within her family unit.
That’s the saddest thing for Dolezal, and even more tragic for her sons – that no matter how hard she tried to break the “social construct”, race still won.
Top Comments
Why is the left upset with this woman ? I thought they now beleive you are whatever you "feel" like. Man, woman, non binary, 4 yrs old, makes no difference what you were born as they say now it's only what you "feel" like that counts.
So why do we put up with it when men claim to "feel" female or have a female brain and then transition to "woman" - claiming transwomen ARE women. Its exactly the same thing that Dolezal is trying to claim, except it is race and not sex. We tolerate and accept (and celebrate) without question, biological males' imposing their right to identify as women and gain access to women only spaces, women's sports, women's lists, women's scholarships, women's only political lists, insisting that they are entitled to define "womanhood" and "femininity", claiming its "violence" against them to deadname or even use the correct names for biological women's anatomical body parts, and when it is questioned we are labelled the slur "TERF" and subjected to harassment, doxxing, and real violence. But when this woman claims transracialism she is immediately vilified and condemned and criticised, and told this isn't possible from a social, cultural, experiential and biological standpoint. So how can we justify the increasing pervasiveness of transgenderism if we won't accept transracialism?
This is where my thinking has been of late, too.
Interesting take.
I had the same thought, yet still felt that race was different. I think there are 2 reasons they are different.
1 - there are hormones/body chemistry differences between genders, which I understand can be a big part of the feeling a disconnect with your body. This is not the same for race.
2 - many trans people refer to themselves as trans male/female - while I know this isn’t everyone, i personally believe this is a better description - it’s acknowledging that you are living as a female, however you were not born so, and therefore don’t have the same life experiences & challenges a cis-female has experienced (although you have many challenges that are unique to the trans population). With that in mind, if she had originally recognized as a “trans-africanerican” I could almost understand - but she didn’t, she pretended to be exactly the same.
I think it’s the pretending that I can’t agree with - rather than own & acknowledges her individual life challenges (of which she definitely has), she hid & tried to adopt the issues of others.
" hormones/body chemistry differences between genders" Nope, there are between the sexes. Gender is a social construct and all trans does is reinforce gender stereotypes.