All I keep thinking during this Rachel Dolezal thing.

...and on top of that alleging all sorts of abuse and harassment that never happened.

Caitlyn Jenner is being nothing but honest about her past (and her present) and is truthfully representing the steps of her journey. She talks honestly about her failings as a parent when she was living as Bruce or her weaknesses of character. She is hoping that by revealing this secret she's carried that she can be a better person--more honest, open, and vulnerable. She has likened it to 'being free', I think were her words in Vanity Fair.

On the other hand, Dolezal continues to paint herself into a corner, piling lies on lies, misrepresenting how she was raised, her parents and upbringing, confusing the facts about her past, and falsifying crimes by reporting harassment that never happened (how is this not a crime in itself?). Her strength of character is decreasing, not increasing, with all her 'revelations' about her identity.

Dolezal clearly craves attention, seems to have a victim complex, and relies on stereotypes of the black experience as an excuse to make these victim situations play out for her. Her 'identity' is incredibly inauthentic--she has not--she could not--have grown up with the black experience, and any 'history' she's created is rooted in the very lie that it never actually happened to her. They are stories she has made up or cobbled together from stories she's heard around her. She seems like a narcissist who needs attention and is incapable of looking at herself as anything but a hero/victim/saint.

extra rant: I am American and biracial (not black, but other races), and the code switching and negotiating between those two groups (and the trying to fit in) that I've had to do over the years has been exhausting. Truly. It hasn't caused racism towards myself (that I know of), but it's a big question that hangs over my head and occupies my thoughts sometimes. It is a big question that hangs over EVERYONE'S heads in America whether they are white, black, latino, asian, multiracial, etc--it's a big part of our experience as a society and I understand that. The point is is that we all have to live with the concept of race--something that is precisely the thing that we CANT change about ourselves. You can identify, enjoy, hang out with a race/culture different from the one you grew up with, but you can't say that it was yours all along. That's simply not true.

I've come to the conclusion that when you simply meet other people as they are and try to downplay what group they fit into--that's when the healthiest human relationships happen. You can still talk about and share your heritage, but I truly encourage people to look past the "i'm in the ___ group" or "I identify as ____(to the exclusion of everything else)" rhetoric, because it merely boxes people into categories that are pretty arbitrary to begin with. We can see how this black-and-white thinking (no pun intended--for real) leaves no room for nuance, a reality that Rachel Dolezal is now living.

When the category that people 'belong to' starts becoming more important than the individuals themselves we have less understanding between people, and people digging into their 'party lines' and reinforcing those stereotypes--rather than thinking for themselves or trying to build a way forward.

Rachel Dolezal leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but it's probably because she's got some undiagnosed mental issues going on. I'll call it like I see it: someone who needs attention and is unable to submerge her ego. She thinks that if she believes it hard enough she can change facts--whether those are facts about her race, her family, her victimhood, or her heroism.

Sorry to rant so much, but she really gets my goat.

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