Rachel Dolezal Is Blacker Than Bruce Jenner Is Female

Last updated on: June 15, 2015 at 4:20 pm by Nancy French

Rachel Dolezal Is Blacker Than Bruce Jenner Is Female 2015-06-15T16:20:44-05:00 Nancy French

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David has an interesting take on the Rachel Dolezal story — the woman who pretended to be black in order to be an official at the NAACP:

Ever since the Rachel Dolezal story exploded onto the Internet, the Left and some on the libertarian Right have been intent on doing their condescending, conclusory, eye-rolling best to dismiss any notion that Dolezal’s story is in any way comparable to Bruce Jenner’s. “Caitlyn” is a woman, and Dolezal is a fraud, and that’s that. Or, as the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart put it — in much-quoted Twitterspeak: “FTLOG, Caitlyn Jenner is not “pretending” to be a woman. Move along . . . ”

FTLOG, Caitlyn Jenner is not “pretending” to be a woman. Move along… https://t.co/BbWGFCSFRL

— Jonathan Capehart (@CapehartJ) June 12, 2015

I’m going to agree with the Left, to a limited extent. No, Dolezal’s story isn’t comparable to Jenner’s. Dolezal’s is, in fact, more credible. Culturally and biologically, she’s blacker than Bruce Jenner is female.

Dolezal is, for now, doubling down on the identity she’s adopted for much of her life. She told television network KREM news: “I actually don’t like the term African-American. I prefer black, and I would say that if I was asked I would definitely say that yes I do consider myself to be black.” This statement is entirely consistent with long-held Leftist notions of race as entirely a social construct, a product of longstanding efforts to draw distinctions between fellow human beings. Ta-Nehisi Coates eloquently stated the case in a May 2013 post on The Atlantic:

It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a “Southern race” and not see the Civil War, the creation of an “Irish race” and not think of Cromwell’s ethnic cleansing, the creation of a “Jewish race” and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of “whiteness” or “blackness,” not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn’t really “black” but “half-white.”

He continued:

Andrew [Sullivan] writes that liberals should stop saying “truly stupid things like race has no biological element.” I agree. Race clearly has a biological element – because we have awarded it one. Race is no more dependent on skin color today than it was on “Frankishness” in Emerson’s day.

The logic of this argument helps drive the perception and proclamations that a person can have black skin without being truly “black.” In other words, if blackness (or whiteness or any other race) is more a matter of culture, shared experiences, and — above all — labeling, then it certainly stands to reason that those who reject the dominant black culture or who haven’t lived its experience don’t truly “belong.” But what of those who embrace the dominant culture and have so fully identified with it that they’ve shared its experience for more than a decade? Do they belong?

As for biology, who really knows Dolezal’s extended family tree? Given centuries of contact between continents, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who’s “purely” anything (whatever that means). We’re all different shades of common humanity — different in degree, not kind.

But what about Bruce Jenner?

Please read the rest of David’s article on National Review here.

Photo: Rachel Dolezal is pictured in a Jan. 16, 2015, file photo at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Washington.

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