Rachel Dolezal vs Caitlyn Jenner

 I don't think that anyone should be surprised that Caitlyn Jenner got pulled into the Rachel Dolezal controversy. On one hand we've got a man who has embraced a new gender identity, and on the other hand we've got a woman who assumed a new racial identity. Caitlyn Jenner's ascension to femaledom was celebrated but Rachel's experiment with blackhood has been trashed. She'll forever be a topic of discussion in race. There'll be a million and one essays on her blackness or lack there of. She's the new Roe vs Wade. She's been tried in the court of public opinion and found wanting, and she'll probably pay for it for the rest of her life.

I had a discussion about it over the weekend. The people I was talking to asked an important question. The said, "Why is one person being allowed to live their truth while the other isn't? And, why don't we accept that the world is made up of double standards?" That argument is flawed as only one of those stories is true. If Bruce Jenner had competed in the Olympics as a woman while actually being a man and possessing the physical advantages that being male presents then the issues would be similar. And there's the subject of honesty. In the court of public opinion all available evidence is admissible and permissible. Since the scandal broke here are a list of lies that Rachel Dolezal told to support her blackness. 

As a child, Dolezal and her family apparently hunted their food with bows and arrows.

She, her mother, her stepfather and three siblings moved to from Colorado to Capetown, South Africa.

She and her siblings were physically abused by their parents according to skin complexion. According to Rachel her mother and stepfather used to punish with a baboon whip, used to ward baboons away in South Africa and she said,  “they were pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery.”

This man is her father.

 

This lie is probably the worst because her actual parents are both the whitest people imaginable, and she wasn't fostered, or given away for adoption, so where did the new dad come from? 

She claimed that her youngest adopted brother was her son.

As if all of that weren't enough she tanned like a Jersey house wife and permed her hair like the 80s were back to stay. Are you still comparing her to Caitlyn? No matter how you look at it one of those things is clearly not like the other.



Rachel clearly knew what she was doing. The woman hasn't even been to South Africa! At the very best, she's psychotic and in serious need of mental assistance and at the worst she's a pathological liar. She played that black card well! Talk about making affirmative action work for you. She used her created blackness to obtain advantages that would have been denied the typical WASP. If she really wanted to do good for the black movement then she could have done it and still been white. Now all of the so called good that she did has been tainted by her fraudulent behaviour. As bad as all of this is it isn't even the worst part. The worst part of everything is that, by appropriating a race that she cannot legitimately claim she took white privilege to the next level. Forget about Iggy Azalea and Eminem, and bring Rachel straight to the front of the line. Chopping the small benefits of being black while chopping all the benefits of being white.

It wasn't a one time mistake. She told the lie consistently, with every braid that she got, with every truly terrible perm, and with every form that she filled. So why are we still talking about her being trans racial when all she is is a white woman who claimed that she was of black and American Indian descent somewhere and somehow? It's obviously a question for the gods.