{"id":92343,"date":"2017-05-04T18:47:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T16:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/rachel-dolezal-why-ignoring-the-painful-past-of-passing-is-indefensible-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:47:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T16:47:39","slug":"rachel-dolezal-why-ignoring-the-painful-past-of-passing-is-indefensible-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/rachel-dolezal-why-ignoring-the-painful-past-of-passing-is-indefensible-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Dolezal: why ignoring the painful past of “passing” is indefensible | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Dolezal: why ignoring the painful past of “passing” is indefensible<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Civil rights advocate Rachel Dolezal has been accused of falsely claiming she is African-American.<\/span> Stephanie Keith\/Reuters<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2015, American Rachel Dolezal captured the public imagination when the media discovered that she was white and had been passing as black for nearly a decade. <\/p>\n

Dolezal, who has had white ancestors for over three centuries, checked boxes like \u201cblack\u201d and \u201cAfrican-American\u201d on application forms, darkened her skin, and began to wear her hair in African-American styles. She lied about her past and family, and attempted to sue her alma mater, historically black Howard University for reverse racism. <\/p>\n

\u201cBlack\u201d Dolezal was a lecturer in Africana studies and president of her local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP. <\/p>\n

She recently visited South Africa to discuss non-racialism, but received resistance against her self-identification as \u201ctrans-black\u201d and her claim to an authentic, internal black identity. This isn\u2019t surprising given the brutality of the country\u2019s racial past.<\/p>\n

Painful history<\/h2>\n

In both the US and South Africa, \u201cpassing\u201d as another race has a long and painful history. For a very long time this was a highly guarded secret in many families out of necessity.<\/p>\n

South African poet Michael Chapman\u2019s stark \u201cConcrete Poem\u201d (1986) illustrates it powerfully:<\/p>\n

\n

The Chameleon Dance<\/p>\n

The Minister of Home Affairs, Mr Stoffel Botha, has now disclosed that during 1985:<\/p>\n

\u25cf 702 coloured people turned white;<\/p>\n

\u25cf 19 whites became coloured;<\/p>\n

\u25cf One Indian became white;<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

\u25cf Eight Malays became coloured;<\/p>\n

\u25cf Three blacks were classified as Malay.<\/p>\n

No blacks became white, and no whites became black.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The form of \u201cConcrete Poem\u2019s\u201d cold, official bullet list shows a sharp divide from the social and emotional gravity of its content. Racial passing under apartheid did not simply entail a quick visit to the Department of Home Affairs, followed by popping champagne to celebrate one\u2019s new life. It typically included a traumatic separation from family, community and an initial subjectivity raced in a particular way. <\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s Population Registration Act of 1950 drew the boundaries of race in a move that both proscribed and enabled the act of passing:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cwhite person\u201d means a person who in appearance obviously is, or who is generally accepted as a white person, but does not include a person who, although in appearance obviously a white person, is generally accepted as a coloured person.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The same act described \u201ccoloureds\u201d as \u201cneither white nor \u2018native\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a coloured person to pass as white and reap the benefits of a racist society, they had to become \u201cgenerally accepted\u201d as a white person. That\u2019s what Marion Campbell\u2019s parents do in Zo\u00eb Wicomb\u2018s 2006 novel \u201cPlaying in the Light\u201d. <\/p>\n

Marion, an Afrikaner in her late thirties, discovers that her racist white parents were \u201cplay-whites\u201d. It was a local term for coloured people who \u201cpassed\u201d as white. Her parents removed from their lives anything that could reveal any connection to their coloured families, in order to \u201craise the child without the burden of history\u201d.<\/p>\n

In fear of their secret being discovered, they raised Marion strictly, not only without history but also without free play, friends, family and cousins, family photos, trinkets from her parents\u2019 childhoods \u2013 things of culture and tradition that are so linked with race. Marion\u2019s father breaks down after confessing to her that as a younger man, he had disowned his tight-knit coloured family and deprived Marion of cousins, uncles and an aunt. <\/p>\n

\n

He is racked with dry sobbing. Things became so complicated in the country, so political, he croaks, that they agreed to stop seeing him; he was excluded from [his sister] Elsie\u2019s dinners. Marion cradles his head in her arms. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This scene resonates with the ideas of American race scholar Alysson Hobbs, who says, \u201cwriting a history of passing is writing a history of loss\u201d. <\/p>\n

Misrepresentation<\/h2>\n

Dolezal referenced Hobbs\u2019 work \u201cA Chosen Exile: A history of racial passing in American life\u201d, in a conversation with South African talk show host Stephen Grootes, when he provoked her on a history of race: <\/p>\n

\n

In Jim Crow America, or the time of slavery, you would never have [chosen to pass as black]; it would be disadvantageous.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dolezal retorted that it\u2019s still disadvantageous today and deflected by discussing a history of American passing and referencing Hobbs\u2019 book. However, while Hobbs\u2019 project does argue for an understanding of racial boundaries as more porous than we often assume, it chiefly examines personal accounts to see not only what was gained by passing, but what was lost: the many sacrifices, risks, secrecies, lies, exclusions and traumas entangled in the commitment to passing. <\/p>\n

In an interview with NPR, Hobbs expands on the idea of loss:<\/p>\n

\n

The family jokes, the oral history every family has, and repeats and passes down, those things are lost to people who pass.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Black and coloured people, who passed in the US and in South Africa respectively, chose to \u201cpass\u201d because of deeply unequal conditions. These put them in danger or led to the full benefits of citizenship being withheld.<\/p>\n

Dolezal, on the other hand, as white, is uncoerced by an overtly racist political order. She seems to wilfully misunderstand or ignore that she\u2019s inserting herself into a history of coerced crossings that reverberate with black peoples\u2019 loss and trauma. <\/p>\n

The exercise of power enforcing the boundaries of race \u2013 held in the past by white political orders \u2013 is the condition for subjects to be able to cross in the first place. But now black people have more say than ever about what blackness is. <\/p>\n

Scholar Stuart Hall and others do argue for many \u201cblacknesses\u201d, and against an essential black self (of hip hop, activism, basketball, corn rows, etc), while acknowledging that the central uniting factor among black people is a shared experience of racism. That\u2019s something Dolezal did not grow up with and can easily escape. <\/p>\n

Black people have fought tooth and nail for laws that regard them as equal citizens. It\u2019s not enough to be considered equal if one has to deny oneself and one\u2019s identity. For a supposedly well informed white person and lecturer of \u201cAfrican-American studies\u201d, Dolezal\u2019s use of \u201cpassing\u201d to justify her identity makes a mockery of the serious and painful experiences of loss undergone by black people in highly racist societies.<\/p>\n

Though Dolezal also underwent an experience of loss and distance from her family, she created it herself, through lies and deceit. In Wicomb\u2019s novel, historically white Marion considers how, why and if she should begin to identify herself as coloured. <\/p>\n

\n

Perhaps it\u2019s a question of time, the arrival of a moment when you cross a boundary and say: Once I was white, now I am coloured. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s a question of time for Dolezal too. I don\u2019t know if her moment will arrive in today\u2019s arena of highly contested identity politics. Right now the precious gains made by civil rights movements remain under attack in the US and South Africa via more insidious racisms than legal segregation.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s therefore understandable that black people are resistant to altering the boundaries of a racial \u201csocial construction\u201d to welcome an insensitive white woman. Someone who refuses to listen to black voices about blackness, co-opts a painful history of passing and ignores the work of civil rights movements to remove the racist socioeconomic and violent conditions that coerced black people into passing.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Londiwe H Gamedze receives funding from the National Research Foundation. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><\/small>
\n<\/p>\n

Read more on The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Join the fun:<\/strong> Add Your event<\/a> | Submit a Press Release<\/a> | Add your listing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rachel Dolezal: why ignoring the painful past of “passing” is indefensible: Civil rights advocate Rachel Dolezal has been accused of falsely claiming she is African-American. Stephanie Keith\/Reuters In 2015, American Rachel Dolezal captured the public imagination when the media discovered that she was white and had been passing as black for nearly a decade. Dolezal, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[8890,25626,19330,23540,12654,7278,5222,9204],"class_list":{"0":"post-92343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-conversation","8":"tag-dolezal","9":"tag-ignoring","10":"tag-indefensible","11":"tag-painful","12":"tag-passing","13":"tag-past","14":"tag-rachel","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}