My thoughts on the Rachel Dolezal story

Hi guys, there is a story which I have been following quite closely on social media that is the Rachel Dolezal story - for those of you who don't know, this was the 'black' American civil rights campaigner who has been 'outed' as white by her biological parents and despite her protestations that she self-identifies as black, she has been forced to resign from her role as the president of the Spokane, chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). I found that whole story kinda strange because I have lived in the UK for half my life now and have met loads of black and Asian people who are to all intents and purposes white on the inside - their cultural identity does not match their skin colour and nobody questions it. The standard response was, "oh yeah Sue may look Asian but she was born here." And we would just leave it at that and not probe any further. In fact, it does feel racist when white people expect black and Asian people to behave in a certain way. The following funny video comes to mind:

Mind you, this kind of racism can go both ways. The fact is, for all the talk about us being so enlightened, educated, liberal, modern and progressive these days, there are still those amongst us who will jump to conclusions based on skin colour. This happens not just in the West but equally in Asia as well. Oh yeah Asians can be just as hideously racist as white people. Here's another funny video that comes to mind about the expectations of some Asian people:

So it seems perfectly acceptable for an Asian person to have a white cultural identity and vice versa, so what was so objectionable in the case of Rachel Dolezal? She was just a white person acting like a black person (or more specifically, a mixed-race person given the way the label 'black' encompasses that as well) by getting a tan and getting a hairstyle that is associated with black people. But it goes further than that: Dolezal is also culturally black. She grew up with adoptive black siblings, one of whom she currently parents, and she has a biological son with her former husband, who is black. She attended a historically black college, Howard University. So this is not some white woman who decided to pass herself off as black just to trick those around her - she does have extensive experience with the American black community the same way I have had extensive experience with the white British community having spent all of my adult years in the UK. So whilst people can accept that I am an Asian person who has become very anglicized/westernized, Dolezal seems to have crossed the line by claiming to be black, rather than just a white person who feels black on the inside. I feel very uneasy about the label 'black' which they use in America - allow me to quote a paragraph from the NY Times article to explain why it makes me so uneasy: 

"The “one-drop rule,” which, for much of American history, legally defined as black anyone with a black ancestor, was used to keep black people from adopting whiteness. Ironically, it has made it easier for Ms. Dolezal to claim blackness without others questioning the assertion. If they are not themselves of a similar hue to Ms. Dolezal, many black people watching her story unfold can recognize in her features a cousin, parent or grandparent. African-Americans vary in appearance from light-skinned to coal black, straight- to curly-haired, keen- to broad-featured, and every possible combination in between. This diversity is partly a result of this one-drop rule. The original intent of it was to protect racial privilege. Sometimes, if their appearance borrowed enough from white ancestors, black Americans could “pass” in white society. But that social sleight of hand came with many dangers, such as the chance that black lineage would be outed in the skin or hair of one’s progeny. Segregation simply would not work if society was fuzzy on who got the nice drinking fountain, the front seat on the bus and the right to vote."

Dolezal today and Dolezal when she was younger (and white) : she's still the same person

It seems painfully simplistic: shoving people into two categories, black or white. It is painfully racist - the moment a white person has an African ancestor, boom he is reclassified as black, as if that was the mark of some kind of racial contamination. Let's look at some famous black people in America who self-identify as black: Beyonce may identify herself as a black musician, but she is in fact mixed with African, Native American, French, and Irish ancestry. Barrack Obama, whom everyone touts as the first black American president (according to the one-drop rule), is in fact mixed: his mother is white (mostly of English descent) and his father is Kenyan. Why don't they use the word mixed (or biracial, multiracial, mixed-race, trans-racial, trans-ethnic/multi-ethnic) instead of black to describe themselves? The obvious answer is that it is their right to self-identify as black if they wish to, so if they can, then why can't Dolezal? 

I know what you're saying - she doesn't have a black ancestor, but I'm going to be controversial here and ask: does that really matter given how the term 'black' is already so muddled due to the one-drop rule? Take a look at someone like Mariah Carey: she is mixed, her father is black, (African-American and Afro-Venezuelan mix) - whilst there is no doubt that Mariah Carey definitely is mixed and has African ancestry, but she looks even less black than Dolezal who is supposedly white. I have uploaded a photo of Mariah Carey below for you to judge for yourself. Now there's no suggestion that Carey has done a Michael Jackson style transformation through plastic surgery to look the way she does, she has clearly inherited her features from her white mother. The passing on of DNA from mother and father to child is not an exact science. Then there's the hilarious story of Craig Cobb, the white supremacist who found out live on TV that he was 14% sub-Saharan African. Statistically, the chances of Dolezal turning out to be of 100% European ancestry are very slim, so why not just take that test once and for all if Americans are really that obsessed with percentages and statistics for prove of Dolezal's blackness?  But if it came down to Dolezal scoring a certain percentage on a DNA test before she could claim to be black, then how meaningless is that - for her blackness to boil down to a number on a sheet of paper that she (and Cobb, Carey, Beyonce, Obama etc) will have no control over? 

Wait, you're saying Mariah is black? Oh okay, if you say so.

I have had my Rachel Dolezal moment before when I discovered that I was mixed (Eurasian) in 2012 - I took a DNA test and found out that I had 15.8% European ancestry. Upon further investigation with my parents, I found out that two of my grandparents were 'sold' as children: I have a grandmother who was 'purchased' as a child bride at a young age, whilst I have a grandfather who was 'sold' into servitude at a very young age as his birth parents were just too poor to bring him up. So in fact we know virtually nothing about either grandparents' background so my European DNA could have come from either of them. I found it all very fascinating of course and it does explain a few things such as my rather large nose, which is way bigger than your average Chinese nose or my sister's rather large eyes which are so big people often wonder if she has had plastic surgery on her eyes. Then there's my dad's eyes: his eyes are not dark brown like my mother's, but is a beautiful shade of grey - I didn't inherit his eyes but my sister did.

There is a huge disconnect between my ethnic DNA and my cultural identity though: I didn't become white on the inside as a result of my European blood. Rather, it was a result of growing up in Singapore followed by spending all of my adult life in the UK. I had become white on the inside long before I took that DNA test in 2012 and whilst most people could accept that I was a very westernized Asian people, how would they react to me 'coming out' as Eurasian? I got a lot of hate, mostly from Chinese Singaporeans who went out of their way to spit their venom at me. One of them told me, "Your father is Hakka, your mother is Hokkien - so how the hell do you put the two together and get Eurasian? Are you mad?" Well, all I did was take a DNA test, it was not like I underwent loads of plastic surgery just to change my facial features to try to look more white (unlike some other bloggers in Singapore who shall not be named). And I guess the DNA test gave me more justification to be white on the inside, given that I am at least part European, but no - these Chinese Singaporeans insisted that I cannot possibly be mixed. I think they took personal offence that I didn't want to self-identify as Chinese and/or Singaporean like them, that I would now choose to use a different label, the Eurasian label to differentiate myself from them. So when they hear me self-identify as Eurasian, they think, "What's wrong with being Chinese and/or Singaporean? I'm Chinese Singaporean - if you don't want to identify yourself as Chinese-Singaporean, are you suggesting that there's something wrong or bad about being Chinese Singaporean?"

I am your Eurasian Ah Beng from Ang Mo Kio.

This is why I felt nervous talking about the topic of Rachel Dolezal because I know there will be loads of black people who are going to tell me that they will never ever get away with trying to identify themselves as 'white' (well the late Michael Jackson tried and went to extraordinary lengths with plastic surgery to alter his appearances) that there was a certain amount of dishonesty and lack of integrity in Rachel Dolezal's behaviour. Okay, so she is a white person who has adopted a black identity, so how is that different from a black person who has a very white cultural identity because of his/her upbringing? Are we somehow obliged to conform to a certain set of racial stereotypes based on the colour of our skin and woe be on those who dare to defy racial stereotypes? Did I need a DNA test to feel that I had the right to even acknowledge the part of my cultural identity that is white and European? What should matter more: our DNA results on that ancestry test or the actual contents of our cultural identity? Heck, I was already very white on the inside before I even took that DNA test - nothing really changed since I got the results of my test. This is when racial politics gets very messy because people have such strong feelings about the issue.

I encountered a similar controversy of my own recently in London, although it was far lower profile than the Rachel Dolezal case. I am a member of Equity, the  union representing artists from across the entire spectrum of arts and entertainment. We have annual elections to choose representatives for various committees and one of the committees is the Minority Ethnic Members' committee. (Don't ask me why it is "Minority Ethnic" rather than "Ethnic Minority") and my friend Adam who is Polish-German decided to run to be on the committee. Adam was born in Poland, is of Polish ethnicity but brought up in Germany and now lives here in the UK. So he is as white as they come, yet culturally, he is a foreigner in the eyes of the Brits and until they come up with a different committee to represent the needs of people like him, well this committee is really the only one that he can use to fight for the rights of people who are in the same position as he is. So when Adam made his case to me and told second his nomination, I gladly agreed to do so.

That's when the hatred began. Adam and I got attacked left, right and centre in social media from other Equity members for the simple reason: Adam is as white as they come. He is European and many people (including those who are white) felt uncomfortable with the idea of a white, European person taking a place on the Minority Ethnic Members committee. Adam was under pressure to withdraw his candidacy (and I was under pressure to withdraw my secondment of his nomination) but we stuck to our guns. Equity was under pressure to bar Adam from standing for that position because he was clearly white. I thought that Adam would make a good candidate for this committee for the following reasons: somebody needs to represent the rights of the actors who were born outside the UK but work here now. Besides, it was not like Adam was joining the committee to somehow impose a form of white oppression on the committee - he has a keen understanding of the issues facing actors of ethnic minority and will fight for the rights of all actors who find themselves classed as a minority. It boiled down to the simple question: would the committee be better off with or without Adam? And my answer is yes, the committee would be better off with him.

It was an election anyway - if people didn't like the idea of having Adam on the committee, fine, then they can simply choose not to vote for him and he will not get on the committee if he doesn't get enough votes. It is a democratic process, that's how elections work: it is the ultimate popularity contest. Just let Adam run for the election and may the best man win, but don't try to bar him from running on the basis of his skin colour. And if you are black or Asian and don't want Adam to get on the committee, why not join the election, run against Adam and defeat him in the election process? As it turned out, it never even got that far because it was effectively a walkover for Adam: there were 9 places on that committee and only 8 candidates put themselves forward for the committee so Adam automatically gained a place on that committee without having to face the election. So many of the black and Asian people who protested to Adam running did not even bother putting themselves forward as candidates for the committee. Go figure.

Having experienced so much hatred over the issue of race when I 'came out' as Eurasian and in my support for Adam's candidacy, my conclusion is that I would much rather live in a colour blind society, where we are treated as individuals, where I can just be Alex and Rachel can just be Rachel and we don't have to tick a box to describe ourselves as black, white, Asian, Chinese or whatever. Our cultural identities are not just complex, but they are unique and are a sum of a lifetime's experiences: how can a simplistic label like 'black' or 'Chinese' possibly describe anyone all that accurately? I feel that it is just a lazy mechanism used by some people who are racist - they think, okay, so this person is Chinese and thus will have all these attributes that Chinese people have, I am just going to make those assumptions rather than bother to get to know this person as an individual. I hate it when people do that.

So that's it from me on this issue. How do you feel about Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black and the greater issue about ethnic/cultural identity? Please let me know your thoughts, leave a comment below. Many thanks for reading!