NAACP: We stand behind Rachel Dolezal

On the one hand, what else could they say? “We don’t condone white people supporting our cause”?

On the other hand, this is going to … complicate progressive attacks on Dolezal as a privileged white poseur who could never hope to understand black authenticity.

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”One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership,” wrote Michelle Nealy, a spokeswoman for the national chapter in Baltimore, Maryland.

”For 106 years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has held a long and proud tradition of receiving support from people of all faiths, races, colors and creeds,” she wrote in a statement Friday morning. ”NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her privacy in this matter.”

Right, but the reason Dolezal’s famous this morning isn’t because she’s a white woman who led a chapter of the NAACP, it’s because she perpetrated a bizarre fraud about her racial identity. Maybe she did that for inscrutable psychological reasons, maybe she did it because she felt she might not be taken as seriously as an activist for African-American concerns if she didn’t look the part. Either way, the NAACP has nothing to say about it. In the great looming debate over whether “transracialism” is a thing, I’m tentatively adding them to the “yes” column. Or should that be the “no” column? The gist of their statement is that Dolezal is white, whatever she may imagine her own race to be.

Speaking of which, if you’re following the Dolezal insanity on Twitter today, the place you want to be is the hashtag #wrongskin. USA Today is especially intrigued by this tweet:

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https://twitter.com/GodfreyElfwick/status/609267943050997760

Godfrey Elfwick is actually an expert troll known for goofing on progressive identity politics with humor so dry that he’s fooled the BBC into treating him as a serious commentator. He’s basically a living, breathing Sokal hoax. One of these days, though, he’s going to hit so close to the mark that one of his jokes will take off as a real thing. Gotta say: After the last few weeks of Jennermania, I’m not totally comfortable with the thought of #wrongskin floating around out there where malefactors might harness it and make it their own. It’s like Stuxnet for SJW morons.

Exit quotation: “Vanilla Ice was the first #transblack man.”

Update: A lesson emerges.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 21, 2024
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