If Rachel Dozal is Black, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

I don't get it and neither should you. In a world where racism, remains one of the most powerful and potent social evils in the modern world, the apparent triumph of white supremacy has finally arrived in the bewildering form of Rachel Dolezal.  

Sun tan and weave make you black 

An American white woman, who rose to become Director of the Spokane Washington chapter of the NAACP and went on to become Professor of Africana Studies. She was subsequently forced to resign her NAACP post, after falsely portraying herself as an African American. 

The depths of this woman’s deep psychological deception is profound.

Born a white woman, of white parents, who adopted black children, she decided that she would lie about her ethnicity and her familial history and then falsely portray herself as black.

Ms. Dolezal’s  childhood was spent in a remote corner of northwestern Montana. Whilst employed at Eastern Washington University, she publicly declared that she had been born in a tepee and  that her mother and father had beaten her and her siblings.

She told a local news outlet, that “they would punish us by skin complexion".  

Her vicious deceptions, know no bounds and her desperation to maintain the fiction that she was black, is very reminiscent of the 1938 fictional film character Walter, portrayed in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  

And, although she is being presented by some, as being a basically ' good person', the shocking reality is, she is prepared to throw her whole family under the bus, making horrendous unfounded allegations against  them and anyone else who exposes her cruel deception. This is true to the extent that she is now insisting that her mother and father are not her 'biological parents'.  

Think about it for a hot second, if, here in Britain,  a black woman had repeatedly insisted she was white and behaved in the way Dolezal has I'm quite sure she’d be compulsory sectioned under the Mental Health Act, 

Ms. Dolezal said in a recent addition of the flagship NBC news programme  Today; 

NBC confronted her with this picture

"That at age 5, I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and the black curly hair, you know.” This is a women whose childhood pictures show a bright, blond haired child. When the NBC news reporter held up this photo of her in her teens, showing her looking like an everyday white person, it was only then that Dolezal confessed that she ' looked like a white person and that she was 'not identifying as black at that time'

Her elderly parents, her brother all of who know her intimately, have vehemently denied and rejected her many absurd claims. For example, she claims her parents beat the whole family with “baboon whips” that were “pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery.”  Such exploitation of the brutality of transatlantic slavey is reprehensible. When taken in the context of her myriad of lies, I think its a clear indication of a dangerously deluded character.  

She also falsely claimed, in police reports that local White-supremacy groups “hung nooses in her home". The police concluded these allegations were false, invented I believe to simply embellish her 'black' backstory. 

The question has to be asked, are there no lengths to which this dangerous woman will not go to further her deception?  I find it inconceivable that  'inventing’ racist incidents' can in any way be a positive contribution to the struggle against racism, 

The people who have emerged with some dignity throughout this story saga have been her  parents, who have publicly exposed her demented imaginings. Both are resolute and clear in  confirming that their daughter has lied, lied and lied again. 

She lied to her colleagues, she created a lie in which she ruthlessly used her marriage to a black man, to support her deception, then falsely accused him of sexual violence and child brutality against their son. The courts there her case out pause their for a moment, a white woman accusing a black man of sexual violence and was disbelieved? This woman is a danger even to her own family. 

Rachel Dolezal, in her psychologically deluded state, had come to the stunning conclusion that she could do a better job at being a progressive black women, than real black women.  Oh and for good measure the part  about her being a Professor ? She isn't, she has a Master's in Fine Art not a Phd.

The more we uncover, the more we discover everything about this women is a lie and yet, she is treated sympathetically by many, both black and white. This is an indication of how racism powerfully effects and impacts upon black people, it leaves some of us confused as to the real reality of racism . 

Not only that, but as we see from her recent interview on the US NBC news, she barazenly believes it's her natural God given right to 'self identify' as 'culturally black'. The most common defence of Dozeal that I hear from both black and white liberal alike is "who are we to tell he she's not black ?"  That people defend the right for a white woman to be black is a complete anathema to me. 

This belief, in the inmate right of white people to do anything and to be anybody they choose, is the very epitome of white privilege. And lets be clear it is a privilege that is unavailable to the vast majority of black people. This 'transracial transition'  is, by and large, a one way street that ascends toward the pinnacle of racial hierarchies - white people. 

There is none so righteous than the recently converted, ask the Muslim community about Muslim converts and the conversion of Dozeal to 'black' was all to recent. In 2002 she lodged a race discrimination case against her University employer, alleging she had suffered discrimination as a pregnant white woman.  She complained that her artwork, was being ignored in an effort to 'favour African American students". 

Meet Daddy 

She has been further exposed as falsely claiming a random picture taken with an elderly black man was in fact her real father. 

The very notion, the very idea that a white woman can become black by simply marrying a black man  is ludicrous. Then to portray your black adoptive brother as your own biological child, takes this story truly into the realms of fiction. 

However the thing that has upset me most, is the fact that this issue has revealed the general and widespread confusion about the nature and dynamics of race and racism.

Time and time again, Ive heard the notion that the concept of race is a 'social construct'. I wholeheartedly agree, race is and always has been complete nonsense. The social virus of racism however is real and all ethnicities are a specific combinations of history, geography and culture, Race is a fiction, ethnicity is real and racism is beyond real, its a nightmare. 

Those who say Doleful ‘did a god job’ as NAACP Director are missing the point. The road to hell is paved with ‘good intentions’. What this woman did was vile despoilment of our struggle and a cruel deception. She denied such a position to many, many black women who would love such a to lead a NAACP chapter. If she has declared her true ethnicity she could have been an asset instead she became an enemy. 

Its an intellectual confusion that would have Franz Fanon, the black psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary author, spinning in his grave. Fanon from Martinique wrote, the now seminal text, published in 1953, Black Skins White Mask.  Here Fanon psychoanalysed the phenomena of black people seeking to annihilate their own culture and adopt the culture of the colonial invader. They became servile and compliant to white dominance and heretics of their own cultural and historical lineage. There can be no greater triumph of racism than when black people agree that white people can become black. Its a psychological propaganda war meant to destabilise the black psyche into a state of division and confusion. 

What this represents, is cultural and psychological appropriation of the worst form. Black women throughout the world will recognise, the unrestrained abuse and denigration that results in this 'transition'.  They will not be surprised or shocked, that this behaviour is thought entirely acceptable by many.

I fully expect Dolezall to write a book. I am sure in Hollywood someone somewhere is drafting the film scripts and no doubt someone will be thinking of nominating her for a Nobel Peace prize. 

This is only possible, because of the extent to which black women, remain profoundly marginalised across the world. This marginalisation has becomes absolute, when we are in effect told,  we now cannot uniquely be ourselves and that 'anybody can be you'. 

To borrow a line from a Jay Z tune, if you bought this racist psychobabble I feel sorry for you son, I got 99 problems but identity confusion aint one. 

This whole episode is a  psychological con trick of unbelievable proportions, a Black Opp's mission by sections of the white elite.  A lie, that is supported by a media eager to strip away the history of racism and our claim to it.

White privilege means white people, wake up and get to decide who they are today. 

The real shame is of course, we really do need white people in the struggle against racism. Yes, they have a role to play in supporting a black agenda for freedom, not leading our struggle but supporting. They are even more important in talking to other whites about racism and equality.  

But, lets be clear,  they can't lead our struggle and they can't co-opt our experience. 

As Chris Rock stated recently black people have struggled against racism for generations while white people remain confused, continuing to argue about what should be the first priority in seeking to tackle racism. 

Rachel Dozeall is more dangerous than a racist. She is a serial fantasist and invites the neoliberal reactionary idea that ethnic identity is self defined and that being black is all about a cultural state of mind. 

Not so Kemosabe. To use a British colloquial phrase, if Rachel Dozal is Black, then I'm a monkey's uncle.