#RachelDolezal:

1. 1) Tumblr’s “transracial” meme might have come to life.
2. 2) The case of this woman may get to the heart of how externally-enforced that “blackness” and “whiteness”, as polar opposites, have always been. The one-drop rule. Good hair/natural hair. Adjusting early and silently to living within the external confines and internal networks of the African-American community. To have lived the experience, known it from within, entrenched oneself within the network and its effects for so many years, advocated for the dignity of the adopted “ethnic family”, effectively ceded the societal higher ground for a platform which is still constructing itself, is an experience which is odd, complicated and ethically gray. She may have experienced racism or colorism against her person because of this, and she reacted proactively against racism by joining/leading her local NAACP chapter. That’s how deep that Ms. Dolezal was. She subverted the personal tyranny of birth and blood to live as, and experience the good and bad of, the African-American experience.
3. 3) I don’t begrudge those who actively “pass” as skin-color-related ethnicities, whether one “passes” as being of European or African descent (see Walter Francis White of the NAACP, and how he infiltrated the KKK). I just don’t like it when that pass, or even one’s advancement in social class, is used as a means for raging against the dignity of suspect class(es).
4. 4) Euro-Americans who intermarry with slave-descended African-Americans, for example, often experience a closer interaction with the ramifications of race and skin color relations, being privy to many of the interior conversations which happen within African-American families. Anti-racist activists are privy to similar levels of interior conversations. Dolezal was even more privy than that, and she lived and breathed it.
5. 5) I also disagree with Xeni Jardin (Boing Boing) in her comparison on Twitter with women who fake cancer to receive sympathy, since (a) it’s not a “disease” unless we consider the history of cultural perception of dark skin and African descent as a “problem” (b) one may consider oneself pregnant to the point of symptoms of a false pregnancy and (c) she freaking LIVED this and didn’t discard it at the end of the day. This is why I don’t call this a case of “blackface”, but of “passing”. Heck, this is the difference between drag and transgender. Do you take it off at the end of the day, or do you wake up, live your day, go to bed (or, as Diane Sawyer asked Caitlyn Jenner, “do you dream”) as the identity that you’ve crafted for yourself? And when your experience entitles you to interior conversations with people of like station in life, do you exploit those convos for personal gain while trumpeting your identity or do you pay it forward by working in their network and improving their lot in life? I’m fascinated by this experience and how people are taking it.