June 15, 2015

Rachel Dolezal resigns as president of the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Spokane.

The NYT reports:
“It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the N.A.A.C.P. that I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my vice president, Naima Quarles-Burnley,” Rachel A. Dolezal said in a statement that was posted to the chapter’s Facebook page.

It was not clear whether Ms. Dolezal would also give up her part-time teaching position in African-American studies at Eastern Washington University, or her membership on the Spokane police ombudsman’s commission.
Here's the Facebook post:
Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights and will do everything in my power to help and assist, whether it means stepping up or stepping down, because this is not about me. It's about justice. This is not me quitting; this is a continuum. It's about moving the cause of human rights and the Black Liberation Movement along the continuum from Resistance to Chattel Slavery to Abolition to Defiance of Jim Crow to the building of Black Wall Street to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement to the ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ movement and into a future of self-determination and empowerment.

With much love and a commitment to always fight for what is right and good in this world,

Rachel Dolezal

102 comments:

Michael K said...

Maybe the local blacks were not as supportive as she assumed. "Acting white" is anathema so maybe "acting black" is too.

tim in vermont said...

Now if we could just get Elizabeth Warren to do the same.

SociallyExtinct said...

I don't care what her racial fetishes are. I prefer to think the reason she stepped down is because she was falsely setting herself up to be the victim of non-existent hate crimes. That is her real lie.

Gahrie said...

because this is not about me.

No..this is about you. It is only about you. It is about you lying about your race for personal gain, and lying about hate crimes.

Dr.D said...

Would being jailed for fraud interfere with her duties as NAACP Presi? I don't see any conflict there. She should be locked up for a good long time, long enough for her skin to recover its natural color and possibly to get her head straight.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Isn't it more proper to say that Dolezal now self-identifies as a person who has resigned her position as president of the Spokane NAACP?

Bay Area Guy said...

Most likely, she migrated towards the black culture (which is ok) but took it too far, by obtaining her teaching position and NAACP position by falsely representing that she was black (which is not ok).

Anonymous said...

She has done a lot of work toward her cause and deserves a big hand for that.

Thanks to her, I may be able to convince my children to start claiming their Native American heritage.

The sooner we are all minorities, the sooner there are no more minorities.

rhhardin said...

It interferes with the ability to scam.

Chris said...

"With much love and a commitment to always fight for what is right and good in this world,"

Except truth and honesty. Those can go fuck themselves. - Rachel Dolezal

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I assume it's a relay race baton but it might be for conducting an orchestra or going upside someone's head.

james conrad said...

Jeez, I am beginning to think AA is a well educated doofus, LOOK OVER HERE AT THIS SHINY OTHER THING "Joshua Dolezal, 39, was charged in 2013 with four felony counts of sex abuse"
bla bla bla

CWJ said...

Huh, ain't that a hoot.

Moneyrunner said...

Isn't it time for Ann to step into the breach left by Rachel. I always suspected Ann was a differently-abled gay Black man in the body of a creature with blonde hair and female bits. She's already a teacher so there's that.

damikesc said...

#BlackLivesMatter --- apparently not when it's blacks killing other blacks. Then it's #TooFrequentToCare

Larry J said...

Bay Area Guy said...
Most likely, she migrated towards the black culture (which is ok) but took it too far, by obtaining her teaching position and NAACP position by falsely representing that she was black (which is not ok).


Someone should check her college applications to see if she falsely identified herself as African-American to gain admissions and financial aid preferences. That, too, would be wrong.

holdfast said...

I have not been to Spokane for a while, but my recollection is that it is pretty damned white. This isn't the liberal coast - it's practically Idaho. So how many people are even in this NACP chapter? 10?

rhhardin said...

Doing nothing of value is the problem.

It's a cultural thing.

MayBee said...

Will be interesting to see how she dresses, does her hair, etc in the future.

bbkingfish said...

A quite dignified letter, actually.

Her parents must be very proud.

n.n said...

She does not work to recognize individual dignity and intrinsic value, but rather to compensate and progress policies that denigrate the former and debase the latter. One step forward, two steps back.

The opiates they are distributing to the population are poisonous to human relationships and serve to suppress integrity and conscience. They also provide cover for progressive corruption and dysfunction. Good perceptions are misleading.

ndspinelli said...

Being liberal means never having to say you're sorry.

Lewis Wetzel said...

" . . . a future of self-determination and empowerment."
How is that working for you, white girl?

Etienne said...

I didn't know that negro people were so disenfranchised in Spokane.

damikesc said...

Her parents must be very proud.

The ones she's embarrassed of because they're white?

Yeah, I bet they are quite proud of their idiot daughter.

damikesc said...

I didn't know that there were negro people in Spokane.

FTFY

pdug said...

Washington State, like Oregon, is a bit of a 'whitopia'

HoodlumDoodlum said...

Black Liberation Movement - not a phrase you run into much these days, the last I remember in mainstream Media was w/r/t Rev Wright's "Black Liberation Theology," and if I remember correctly under BLT it's ok to call white people devils, say God damn America, that kind of thing. You know, nuance.

Black Wall Street -- separate but eq...nevermind.

Hagar said...

It is not so much about Rachel Dolezal as that she made the NAACP look ridiculous, thus hurting the cause she purported to be working for.

pdug said...

Adolph Reed laughs at "Black Wall Street"

Sebastian said...

"movement along the continuum from Resistance to Chattel Slavery to Abolition to Defiance of Jim Crow to the building of Black Wall Street to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement to the ‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬ movement and into a future of self-determination and empowerment."

Ah, yes. Pseudo-black SJW all the way down. Black Power is so great whitey muscles in on it.

HoodlumDoodlum said...

My own position is that arguments over authenticity (of this sort) are pointless. When well-known folks on the Left make loud claims that Justice Thomas isn't an authentic black person, or that Sarah Palin isn't an authentic woman, etc, it's not wrong to point out to the Left the absurdity of their own arguments. According to the Left Pres. Obama is authentically black, and so is Dolezal, but Condelezza Rice is not. That, I think, deserves to be mocked, whether you believe Dolezal herself should be or not.

traditionalguy said...

Rachel, we hardly knew you.

She gave up her dreams when they told her she could never be the first Black Woman President. That is sad.

Scott said...

A lot of petards were hoisted over this controversy.

traditionalguy said...

Is she from the same area where Obama's Moma was raised at Marxist High School?

~ Gordon Pasha said...

Weasel Zippers point out that there is a strong similarity between some of her artwork (which sells in the mid 4 figures) and the works of JMW Turner.

http://www.weaselzippers.us/226486-did-racheldolezal-even-plagiarize-her-art-work/

Presidioned said...

This is pure fraud by a sick person attempting to take advantage of government subsidies designed to assuage white guilt.

Big Mike said...

Back in the day they called it "jungle fever," when a member of one race develops a fetish towards members of a different race (usually white towards black, hence the reference to "jungle"). Rachel just took it to an extreme.

Lewis Wetzel said...

I self-identify as a veteran. Do I get points when applying for a civil service job? Cuz man, a government job is where the money is at these days. I may even identify as a disabled veteran, if necessary. If the government doesn't consider me to be a "real" veteran, isn't that just a matter of documentation? Like being an undocumented immigrant?

Anonymous said...

Blogger Terry said...
I self-identify as a veteran. Do I get points when applying for a civil service job? Cuz man, a government job is where the money is at these days


As an aside, yes, you do. 10 points or 5 points depending on if you saw action.

mikee said...

I want no serial perjurer on the police commission, reviewing the actions of police officers.

This woman lied on several signed applications to get her government jobs - which pay how much per year? - and should be prosecuted for it.

The Bergall said...

I smell a reality show in the making...........

garage mahal said...

Dolezal looks better as a black woman. She should stick with it.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Dolezal in 2010: I’d Be ‘Nervous’ to Go to a Tea Party Rally Because of the All-White Crowd.

kcom said...

"Because of the All-White Crowd"

She was afraid she'd run into somebody she knew.

Anonymous said...

Bay Area Guy said...
Most likely, she migrated towards the black culture (which is ok) but took it too far, by obtaining her teaching position and NAACP position by falsely representing that she was black (which is not ok).


agree with all that and of course the Howard Scholarship.

Beyond that, I suspect that her whole migrating toward black, pisses off that significant section of black females that can't find good husbands and hates white women who come in and skim off the best prospects.

Brando said...

"Dolezal looks better as a black woman. She should stick with it. "

I guess "blackface" is back in.

Bilwick said...

I remember when Harlem congressman (and "community spokesman") Adam Clayton Powell, in the 1960s, told either David Frost or Merv Griffin that he was actually part Amerindian and part Caucasian, and not of African descent. Then he said being Black was a state of mind. Apparently modern "liberals" (and by "liberal" I mean of course "tax-happy, coercion-addicted, power-tripping State fellator") agree with this, and define the Black state of consciousness as collectivist rather than individualist, and emotion-based rather than rational.* Thus someone such as Thomas Sowell is seen as being not REALLY Black.


(* Re the latter, see
http://graphitepublications.com/the-white-negro/)

Michael K said...

pisses off that significant section of black females that can't find good husbands and hates white women who come in and skim off the best prospects.

I'll bet that was a big part of her resignation. I have a dental hygienist who is an Ethiopian who grew up in Israel and who cannot understand American blacks. She tells me she gets hate stares from black women when she is out with her white husband shopping or at dinner.

Simon Kenton said...

Yes. Ward Churchill's art was also plagiarized. He did sometimes produce mirror images of the paintings he was stealing/homagizing.

Never understood whether the impulse to plagiarize in a very obvious way is a burp from an otherwise overstuffed conscience, or a desire to get caught and punished, or a confident certainty that the rest of us are just too dumb ever to notice and recollect; or that we possess defective internets.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Thanks for the link, Lem:
Rachel Dolezal, curator of the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, has also watched the Tea Party movement with trepidation. Though raised in a conservative family, Ms. Dolezal, who is multiracial, said she could not imagine showing her face at a Tea Party event. To her, what stands out are the all-white crowds, the crude depictions of Mr. Obama as an African witch doctor and the signs labeling him a terrorist. “It would make me nervous to be there unless I went with a big group,” she said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1
If she attended a tea party rally, the number of colored people attendance would not be increased.
The article is fantastic example of Timesian tea party paranoia, BTW. Being a liberal must be like finding your head up your own ass, over and over.

Jim in St Louis said...

William Chadwick-
Have you ever googled photos of the chairman of the congressional black caucus?

Tank said...

If Rachel is scared off by all white crowds, it's a good thing she wasn't at the Big V's big Vagina rally this weekend.

Roughcoat said...

Her story has elements of tragedy and farce. I'd like to see what the Coen brothers would do with it. They are capable of making a movie that would be very funny and also very sad.

Julie C said...

There are ways to emulate another culture without actually perpetrating a fraud. She could have chosen to dress in African clothing, for example. I've seen plenty of white people do that. White rappers often try to sound "black".

But she actually had to make an effort to look black. As I mentioned before, she didn't just wake up one morning with kinky hair. She either paid someone to weave that hair into her own, or she used an industrial strength permanent wave concoction. I'm guessing she made sure to keep her skin tanned either through a tanning booth or makeup or both. Add to that the lying about her family and you've got a full-blown fraud. Or a delusional loon.

Roughcoat said...

I live in Chicago and I recall when the Chicago Bulls won the first of their NBA titles ... and the post-game locker room celebration, broadcast live showing several of the Bulls players (black) whooping it up with their blond wives sitting on their laps. Hoo boy! That caused as much talk in Chicago as winning the title. Black women were PISSED OFF; black men were silent.

Roughcoat said...

Oh, and Dave Chappelle is a bullshitter and a coward.

Brando said...

"There are ways to emulate another culture without actually perpetrating a fraud. She could have chosen to dress in African clothing, for example. I've seen plenty of white people do that. White rappers often try to sound "black"."

I have no problem with that, any more than I would with a black guy "appropriating" Italian-American culture. Sharing culture is natural, and beneficial. Had she merely done this--worn dashikis and dreadlocked her hair--she might have gotten some mocking but this never would have blown up.

Christopher B said...

She reinforces the fact that for all practical (read 'political') purposes there are only two races in the United States - white, and not-white. And actual biology has relatively little to do with determining a person's status.

Brill said...

Well she identifies as black and she’s actively black so she must be Transblack. I guess that makes Elizabeth Warren Transindian. What?

Roughcoat said...

Three excellent books that deal with these issues, all by Thomas Sowell: Race and Culture, Migrations and Cultures, Conquests and Cultures. Known collectively as the "Cultural Trilogy." Brilliant and accessible, highly recommended.

Lewis Wetzel said...

A man sees Rachel Dolezal, Elizabeth Warren, and Hillary Clinton having lunch together at a sidewalk cafe. "Well, look at that!" He says to himself. "This is what America is all about! A black, a native American, and a Jew, all breaking bread together. Is this a great country or what?"

Larry J said...

Michael K said...
pisses off that significant section of black females that can't find good husbands and hates white women who come in and skim off the best prospects.

I'll bet that was a big part of her resignation. I have a dental hygienist who is an Ethiopian who grew up in Israel and who cannot understand American blacks. She tells me she gets hate stares from black women when she is out with her white husband shopping or at dinner.


I met my wife in college. She was a foreign student from the Philippines and hung out with many of the other foreign students. Her best friends were very, very dark-skinned people from Sierra Leone and Antigua who were discriminated against by American blacks. They didn't understand it and frankly, neither did I. This was 32 years ago at a college that was about 30% black.

damikesc said...

Dolezal in 2010: I’d Be ‘Nervous’ to Go to a Tea Party Rally Because of the All-White Crowd.

You should look at her actions as a teacher. Some of those stories are quite entertaining.

David said...

Grandiosity.

Bob Ellison said...

Terry, you're on to something, but the joke needs big names to sell.

How about: Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren walk into a bar. Obama asks for a Manischewitz, and the bartender says "How again?" and Warren says "How! Got pow-wow chow?"

Needs work. Call re-write!

MayBee said...

Via Allahpundit: The Smoking Gun:

JUNE 15--The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Rachel Dolezal, 37, who headed the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington chapter, sued Howard for discrimination in 2002, the year she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree.

richardsson said...

The trouble with telling lies is that once you tell one, you usually have to tell two more to cover the first lie, then two more for each successive lie. From everything I've read, her parents probably agree with her views on race relations, but decided to pull the plug on her act before she really got in over her head. The NAACP in Spokane is no big deal, but she would never have gotten away with her act in Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles. White people living in all white communities are quite gullible when it comes to these issue.

Michael said...

Words no longer mean what they mean so it is no wonder that people can slide back and forth between genders and races. We can't name what we see. We, not I. I can say crazy when I see crazy and this woman is crazy. I feel sorry for her and much sorrier for the culture that created her and that now struggles to explain her. We are so completely fucked.

madAsHell said...

...and what does that grinning pronunciation mark over the Z do??

MT said...

As much as I hate Internet abbreviations, I have but one message for Rachel: STFU.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Was anyone else bothered by this turn of phrase?

"I step aside from the presidency and pass the baton to my vice president, Naima Quarles-Burnley,"

"her" vice president? A black woman? Sounds pretty possesive. Did rachel buy Ms Quarles-Burnley at auction?

The sentence doesn't even scan well in a non-ownership context.


John Henry

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

Larry J said:

Someone should check her college applications to see if she falsely identified herself as African-American to gain admissions and financial aid preferences. That, too, would be wrong.

Wrong, surely.

Illegal? Not at all, unless the law has changed since the 90's. Legally we are what we say we are and cannot be questioned. Asking an applicant "You don't look black. Who were your parents?" Would get a school, employer, bank, govt employer deep in the doo-doo.

Native Americans are the only ones who have an actual race card. If you are a registered member of a govt recognized tribe, you are a "Native American". If you do not have formal tribal membership, you are not. Not for any legal purposes.

Someone like Warren can claim bragging rights as an Indian. Can't use it on any official document.

Caveat: As I mentioned before, I looked into this extensively in the 90s and that was the law at the time. As far as I know it has not changed but I have not been paying attention so it could have.

John Henry

Charlie said...

When people say "this isn't about me", it's about them.

Bob Ellison said...

John Henry, I grew up in Arizona, and it was obvious to me even as a child that the Indians (as we said then) had more rights than I, as a native American (born in Phoenix) had.

They have property rights, sovereignty rights (mostly amounting to operating casinos in states that outlaw casinos), and tax-exclusion rights (cigarette sales).

Today it's much worse than when I was a kid. What's a white boy to think nowadays? What rights does he have?

jimbino said...

Just think: Rachel Dolezal, not being Black anymore, will be able to walk into any national park, national forest, national monument or BLM land without sticking out like a sore thumb.

buwaya said...

"Those who have less in life should have more in law"
- attributed to Ramon Magsaysay, but I think his speechwriter was quoting someone else.
Thomas Reed Powell ?

Anyway, its a good summation of the original Catholic concept of "Social Justice".

It makes some sense I suppose in the context of constant lawsuits over ambiguous property rights between large and small landowners.

In other things, its prone to unintended consequences. Even in the original context it has led to inefficiencies in agricultural production and has limited the development of downstream industries and industrial employment.

Lydia said...

Interesting piece here by Jelani Cobb in the New Yorker about this -- this stood out for me:

Nearly all of us who identify as African-American in this country, apart from some more recent immigrants, have at least some white ancestry. My own white great-grandparent is as inconsequential as the color of my palms in terms of my status as a black person in the United States. My grandparents had four children: my father and his brother, both almond-brown, with black hair and dark eyes, and two girls with reddish hair, fair skin, freckles, and gray eyes. All of them were equally black because they were equal heirs to the quirks of chance determining whether their ancestry from Europe or Africa was most apparent. Dolezal’s primary offense lies not in the silly proffering of a false biography but in knowing this ugly history and taking advantage of the reasons that she would, at least among black people, be taken at her word regarding her identity.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

@NRO: FYI: #RachelDolezal Resignation Letter Is Ridiculous
http://t.co/TqBuagHw6P http://t.co/2yPAkkWN4w

Clyde said...

I guess "flesh" is a color, or at least it used to be, in my box of crayons back in the Pleistocene. "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight..."

She did the right thing, albeit only after being forced to do so.

The lesson: BE WHO YOU ARE! DON'T TRY TO BE SOMEONE YOU AREN'T! If everyone did that, most people would probably be happier.

averagejoe said...

Good, Go away, lying bigot bitch.

walter said...

So..does the guy she held up as her black father exist?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Spokane has quite a bit of 'hood. I mean, it's not Compton 'hood but it's still 'hood. Kind of like Pasco 'hood.

walter said...

Ah so..at least a name:
http://www.independentsentinel.com/this-is-why-fake-black-naacp-president-rachel-dolezal-was-outed-by-her-parents/

"She began claiming that a family friend, Albert Wilkerson, a black man, was her father."

And..

"She began to identify more and more as black and took her brother Izaiah Dolezal to Idaho to live with her when he was a teenager, pretending he was her son."

Uh..how does that just happen? Kidnapping?

Gahrie said...

it's not Compton 'hood

Compton isn't really "Compton Hood" anymore. It's mainly Hispanic now..the gangs have run most of the Black people out.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Let's look at Rachel Dolezal another way.

Was there any honest way for her to have the career she wanted with the ancestry she was born with? Let's say she's honestly driven and passionate about African studies and civil rights activism. Could she have ever gotten the job she did or risen to head a NAACP chapter if she had been white? Reading her lawsuit against Howard in 2002 it seems to me that she concluded that her education in her chosen field would be limited by her race, and it's not hard to make the leap that her career would be, too.

If there was no honest way to get where she wanted to go, what avenue was open to her?

Is that fair?

Was she irrational? Maybe not.

William said...

She's an enigmatic figure. It's hard to tell if her story if farcical or pathetic. We all try to gain control of the narrative of our own lives, and this usually involves spreading around a judicious amount of bullshit to make the flowers bloom. But the amount of bullshit this single woman has produced is genuinely phenomenal. Not just a pile of bullshit, but a mountain of bullshit, a full mountain range of bullshit. In its way, it's quite an achievement.......I don't know if she's delusional or a scam artist. Perhaps some combination of the two. Only someone truly blessed with white privilege would have the sang froid and self confidence to pull this off.......I wonder how this story will end. She'll probably get a seven figure advance for the book rights. Perhaps she'll donate some of the money to the NAACP and it will be win win for everybody.

Peglegged Picador said...

http://www.petsadviser.com/service-animal/service-dog-fraud/

I think this dogleg nicely back to the recent transability post...

Swifty Quick said...

It doesn't take a math major to figure out if everybody is a minority, nobody is a minority. Which obviously cannot stand in today's racialized society.

fivewheels said...

Everything -- or at least everything stupid -- is just performance art now. Maybe she can get into interracial porn with Sulkowicz.

Rachel Dolezal sued Howard for racial discrimination. Because she was white.

“She may in the end come up with a beautiful and eloquent answer — this was all one big performance art piece.”

fivewheels said...

Or ... she was just obsessed with seeing herself as a victim, no matter her race. That will still serve her well as a feminist of any color.

kcom said...

"sang froid"

Your auto-correct screwed up Sigmund Freud. :)

But no space necessary.

sangfroid - composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, as shown in danger or under trying circumstances.

walter said...

Perhaps traded one religion for another:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/what_did_rachel_dolezal_do_to_her_adopted_brother_izaiah.html

Michael K said...

"If there was no honest way to get where she wanted to go, what avenue was open to her?

Is that fair?

Was she irrational? Maybe not."

If I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe, how would I go about ? What avenue ?

Delusions. I think she was more practical.

Lewis Wetzel said...

JUNE 15--The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/rachel-dolezal-discrimination-lawsuit-786451

Etienne said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Etienne said...

sang-froid - composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, as shown in danger or under trying circumstances.

singe-froid - composure or coolness, sometimes excessive, as shown in danger or under trying circumstances while being stabbed by a Monkey.

Etienne said...

I've thought about it, and I have come to the only logical conclusion that I can come up with, is that the woman is an undercover FBI agent.

Well, either that or she is mentally retarded.

madAsHell said...

Spokane has quite a bit of 'hood. I mean, it's not Compton 'hood but it's still 'hood. Kind of like Pasco 'hood.

Eastern Washington is all White, and Mexicans....and ya...they don't have that many problems.

Known Unknown said...

If I wanted to be Marilyn Monroe, how would I go about

Change your name, Norma Jean.

Carol said...

"If there was no honest way to get where she wanted to go, what avenue was open to her?
Is that fair?
Was she irrational? Maybe not."

She just acted out what a lot of people have thought about: I could qualify for this school or that job if only I were a minority. She knew she could pull it off back in Whitopia.

Lewis Wetzel said...

This is probably known to those of you who have been to liberal arts colleges, but-
The "grievance studies" classes teach students that virtually every personal problem they have is due to white privilege, especially white male privilege, and colonialism. Capitalism is the enabling economic structure that fuels the whole oppressive mess. The capitalists have taken the power over your life that is a human right. The way you get what is rightfully yours is to take it back from the capitalists, e.g. the rich, the whites, and the white men.
This is not a position that is open to negotiation. You do not compromise from this position. This the reality of people like Rachel Donazel. You can argue about proven differences between men and women, the pathological state of the Black family, and the undeniable fact that billions live a better life because of capitalism, the rule of law, and property rights. It will be like speaking Chinese to an Eskimo. They hate you, you are the source of every pain they ever experienced, and they want your stuff. If they get your stuff, and their world turns to shit, that is your fault, too.