Today some crazy racist terrorist went into a Black church, prayed with some people then shot them. That’s real. In a state with no hate crime laws. That’s real. Will they fly their Confederate flag at half-mast? Real question. So let’s put this silly bitch to bed. I’d written it a few days ago for this website, but today it just seems silly. & I’m so tired. Here you go:
Everything’s fun and games until Rachel Dolezal gives an interview on the Today show.
Look, I had as much fun as anyone last weekend playing #AskRachel. As a black lady, I needed to laugh to keep from crying about seeing a little girl with her braids pulled, face pushed in the dirt with a cop’s knee in her back cause she wanted to swim in what was obviously the wrong neighborhood. I couldn’t even watch that video (haven’t is more accurate). Then came this silly bitch.
And that’s just it. She’s not stupid, not in the least. But race shit has driven her crazy. Well, welcome to the fucking club. Race is a terrible construct created for money, power and control. It has no redeeming features at all. It’s made up. Even my black self would be a bunch of different races based on where I am in the world. But regardless, I can’t tell anyone “I identify as white”.
But here’s the difference, I wouldn’t want to. I’ve been having my own race musings since moving to England particularly and having race conversations with my brown father in law who identifies as colored.
But what is it exactly that makes me want to choke the shit out of Rachel?
The fact that she can identify as black as much as she wants, but at any moment she can “decide” to become a white lady again.
Being black is more than a whipped do and some self-tanning cream. And her doing her social justice work is excellent, I just don’t know why she couldn’t do it in the skin she’s in.
More importantly is the fact that dumb ass Matt Lauer told her she’s begun a very important conversation on race. See, she still is in full usage of her white privilege. Blacks have been having this conversation since before Plessey, but now she get’s “outed” as white and quits her job at the NAACP. If she were really in it for social justice, she wouldn’t have put that branch of that organization in peril.
And who were the people who knew she was white and went along with her foolishness? This is where we get into socially constructed race. She looks like mothers and grandmothers of my friends (which says something else since she’s not an old woman, but lies will make your black crack, apparently). She looks like women and men I knew, in my family, all around me. My mother and I still argue about my 6th grade teacher Mrs. Jones who I say was white and mom says was black. Race is made up. And made up of the skin tones of Africans + every other person on the planet. Period.
But you know who doesn’t give a fuck about Rachel and this stupid conversation? The Dominicans of Haitian decent who are getting deported back to HAITI this week. To the girl’s family in Baltimore who doesn’t get to tell anyone what she identifies as because she was raped and murdered. To that baby who was thrown to the ground like a ragdoll by an out of control cop at the behest of some white ladies who began a fight with children over a swimming pool.
This world is nauseating. Oh, and has Nestle pulled all of the water out of California yet, or that community that needs to water their golf course, how are they doin?
But Rachel, who sued our mutual alma mater Howard University, for racial discrimination against her when she was still white (oh wait, she’s been identifying as black since she was 5…her story is a narcissistic web of lies) now gets to go on The Today Show because I helped her trend on Twitter. Here comes the book, the tour, the movie and I helped, because sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from crying. I knew this would happen, and she’s gonna do it. She’s gonna Sarah Palin her way into hearts and minds.
We laughed last weekend. Now we need to pay very special attention to this conversation, because it’s going to turn really bad, really soon. We’re talking about identity and racial identity and there are few things more fragile in the world of social media.