On Rachel Dolezal : Matters of privilege

Reaction 4: Seems I missed something. There is that part of the black community that is biased as far as what qualifies as blackness; a partial truth if ever there was one [see previous post]. Here is another and more prominent one; that blackness guarantees access to oppression no matter your class, gender, or sexuality. So, why would anyone want to appropriate that? To claim that level of oppression as part of one’s identity if it weren’t truth? I imagine it lent to the sense of legitimacy of the work Rachel was/is doing. To claim expertise becomes more valid if one has shared in the oppression being discussed. Doesn’t make it right to appropriate, in fact it seems totally crazy when one knows of the privilege one otherwise has access to. If this is a matter of playing the game and winning, then of course I’m angry. I have doubts about “playing the game” as myself, not to mention I hate playing these kinds of games because of that and not being sure I could win, let alone live a decent life. Of course it is possible that she genuinely has love for the black community enough to struggle for and with us. I don’t know the full story. It doesn’t seem right that one would feel the need to go to such lengths to do the work. Why couldn’t she have been herself? What would that have meant?

The matter of privilege is huge regardless. It is in the realm of privilege that one thinks they can do, get away with, and represent themselves as anything without a second thought. To not have to think about possible repercussions of norm violations of any scale; to assume acceptance regardless of the situation; to be given the benefit of the doubt as a default of simply being. How often has Rachel had to earnestly think about these things in her lived experience? How often has she had to consider the gendered/sexual politics within the black community? What about the colorist politics? What is the extent of privilege she has had access to? What has been her lived experience within this identity? I cannot help but think about the range of responses on this matter while also hoping no harm comes to Rachel. At the same time, I cannot help but imagine her capitalizing off this further in her memoir “Black Like Me 2: Afrocentric Boogaloo”. The privileged and white have all the “luck”.