BLACK LIKE……………HER?
Rachel Dolezal. (Photo: AOL).
First off, a disclaimer. With this edition of LuLac I do not want to offend anyone here. I was told to stay away from this subject because people would misunderstand. Truth be told I held off a few days but this thing is so damn tempting I can’t resist. Consider the case of Rachel Dolezal, who has posed for years as a black woman, faced tough questions about her racial identity long before her career as a civil rights advocate was derailed by this week's revelations that she grew up "Caucasian."
More than a decade ago, Howard University's lawyers questioned whether she had tried to pose as African-American when she applied for admission to the historically black college in the nation's capital.
Dolezal had sued the University, claiming among other things that she had been denied a teaching position because she was white.
I was relieved to hear Dolezal write in her college entry essay "I plunged into black history and novels, feeling the relieving release of understanding and common ground. My struggles paled as I read of the atrocities so many ancestors faced in America."
At least she realizes the struggle that black Americans went through in the 20th century. As a child Civil Rights was one of the formative issues of my youth. I could not understand why the baseball players I worshiped had to sit on a bus and get their food while the white players dined inside. I delved into books like “Black Like Me” by John Griffin, "Malcolm X Talks to Young People" and Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” through my time as a student. I understood that the struggle was one to be admired, supported but never truly understood the pain by the very virtue of my upbringing.I had empathy but not the experience of the humiliation.
To me it is akin to someone wearing a Military uniform with no record of service. Plus the thing that everyone seems to forget in the great Civil Rights struggles of our time is that people of other races died in the cause. That is the reason why I always felt there should be a Martin Luther King/Civil Rights Heroes Day”.
There are for me too many discrepancies to follow. She says one thing, the parents say another. It was revealed that her parents adopted a black son and today she reportedly said she wasn’t sure who her real parents were.
Human behavior is hard to understand and I was at a loss to even try to explain it. Somewhere along the line with her great studies of black history, her envy of her adopted brother and the fact that she is unsure of a lot of things…. something triggered this. Could have been in the past. Could have been before Howard. Maybe she caught a glimpse of this movie now outdated and undoubtedly judged by some to be politically incorrect. If that’s the case, I apologize. But this is as good of an explanation as any. Can anyone say transference?
Maybe if she wants to get a real black experience, she should talk to this guy pictured below.
