Rachel Dolezal's pathological privilege

[Solly Mack]

161. noire, I just don't know what to make of it all.

I go through life with white skin. Doesn't matter that my mom was brown skinned. Doesn't matter what my niece and nephew look like. Doesn't matter what my cousins look like. Or my maternal grandfather's heritage nor my paternal grandmother's heritage. Or my great aunts and uncles. I go through life with white skin.

I've been mistaken for African-American. I've been seen as African-American by my African-American students. Some of my white students saw me as white, some didn't. The look of confusion on their small faces was a sight to behold because neither could understand what the other one was seeing.

I go through life with white skin - and all the privilege that comes with it. White people feel free to say anything to me because they see me as one of them. Never once assuming that I might not be like them.

But I go through life with white skin.

Doesn't matter my DNA or that I dated African-American men or that my childhood schools were mostly African-American.

I go through life with white skin.

I'm white at first sight. Not all white - but to society, what they see is a white woman.

I have long since checked "other" or "prefer not say" when asked my race.

I'm a Heinz 57 and I like that about me. I don't want to have to pick a label for myself to make others feel comfortable.

Still - I go through life with white skin. That makes me white to the world. In that sense, doesn't matter how I see myself.

My white skin changes how I'm treated and viewed - it shaped my experiences while growing up and it continues to influence my life...and that makes a huge difference between me and how my cousins and nephew and niece will be treated and viewed.

They could be killed for merely existing with black skin.

I don't think she's unstable for wanting to embrace a black identity but I do think there is something there for wanting to distance herself from her parents. I think she should step down, if for no other reason than because she lied. She didn't need to lie to be a champion of civil rights and she has to have knocked her friends for a loop. That's a betrayal they'll feel to their core.