If you would have asked me a few years ago if it was possible to see how the twistedness of a family under the influence of self-anointed scions of abusive fundamentalist child rearing could somehow take down an NAACP chapter leadership, I'd have been a bit baffled at trying to get my hands around that. But since we know that it's possible for an allegedly "Christian" diet group to become a mind controlling cult and command national media attention for it's "successes", I would have to regrettably agree since people are just so .. uh, funny.
And boy has it ever. The strange tale of the white civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal's bid to be accepted as a black woman and therefore head up the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has all of the elements of the above, and apparently, so much more.
Her parents Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal and an adoptive brother mounted a media campaign to "out" her, that is to say, to expose her true identity as actually not quite Negroid. It would seem that they wanted "the truth told" about her Caucasian past and an apparent mental instability that deeply concerned them. This flies in the face of her breezily self-assured conviction that she indeed is African American and that her family really aren't her family. This is symptomatic of a calculating and ruthlessly intentional effort to reject her racial reality and by default her own past itself.
Dolezal's personal life, in keeping with the script for outing as written by social media engineers, been spilled over all the internet to show the quirks of an apparently very complex persona. By her own testimony she is bisexual, a claimed victim of marital domestic abuse involving sex tapes and assault which a divorce court didn't buy, and a liberated woman who felt she needed to do a nude photo shoot in which she exposed a lot of apparently spray-tanned flesh. She also felt white activists and Latinos could not speak on racism involving blacks and gained another Kodak moment for herself by inciting violence among the protesters in the recent racial unrest in Baltimore. Being how her extracurricular activities concerning racial social justice seemed to be all good, not a lot of attention got drawn to her decidedly questionable activity - until her family seemingly wanted the truth told.
But in checking their own past and history, what looked like a time for clarity and resolution has gotten a lot murkier and far more darker (no pun intended) than what can be believed.
Why would an idealistic 37 year old woman launch herself into a campaign of self-serving deception for a supposedly greater good? What led her to so identify with a minority that she ditched her own personal history and past? As the meme above suggests, something in her past personal experience turned her focus away from her own undeniable personal reality into a fantasy she thought was justifiable personal transformation so she could serve others. This well intended farce becomes a tragedy when that something well may have involve a family dynamic mediated by and influenced by a highly controversial and I might add pretty dangerously imbalanced Christian subculture which their family was conversant with and lived by.
A good review of that grotesque side of the Dolezal story is found here at our dear friend Cindy Kunsman's blog and specifically, a good overview of the fatal results that came about which involved the very influence the Dolezals came under, that of Christian teachers Michael and Debi Pearl can be read here and viewed in a 2013 CNN report here.
More twists and turns than what you'd find at a convention of Chubby Checker fans are likely ahead. It's enough for us to note once more the old but true saw how there is no right way to do the wrong thing: as Dolezal's ex-husband Kevin Moore, a supposedly devout Christian, well said ..“Rachel, you may not believe in God but that does not mean that he does not exist,” he wrote to his ex-wife in an email that was included in court documents. “God has seen everything you have done and He continues to watch.”After listening to Dolezal's windy dismissal of direct questions about her racial identity on the NBC video clip above, I don't know how much more of this I care to actually watch. It makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth.
But this Latino knows he's Latino and doesn't need monthly spray tans to prove it. Here's a pic of me from 1986 after a summer of outdoor landscaping employment taking a break with lily white Sheila Walsh at Cornerstone 86 -- and as best as I know, she's still claiming to be white.
Perhaps
it was simply coincidence that a reporter approached Rachel’s parents
now, and perhaps if he hadn’t they still wouldn’t have said anything.
But I have to say, the timing is concerning. Did Rachel’s parents
out her as white simply because they care about the truth? Or were they
also motivated bya desire to discredit her so that they can, by
association, discredit the victim she is supporting, and thereby protect
their son from the sexual abuse charges that have been levied against
him? Did Rachel act inexcusably in lying and deceiving people? Oh, hell yes. But elevating her parents heroes or truth-tellers while ignoring this troubling context is worrisome.
And perhaps that’s what’s bothering me about this story. Rachel’s parents have been paraded and lauded across the media, their words taken at face value, despite the fact that they have been (successfully) accused of abuse and despite the fact that they are defending their adult son against accusations of child sexual abuse. And as someone familiar with the dynamics of abuse, this makes me really uncomfortable.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/lets-talk-about-rachel-dolezals-parents.html#sthash.z3PP93tI.dpuf
And perhaps that’s what’s bothering me about this story. Rachel’s parents have been paraded and lauded across the media, their words taken at face value, despite the fact that they have been (successfully) accused of abuse and despite the fact that they are defending their adult son against accusations of child sexual abuse. And as someone familiar with the dynamics of abuse, this makes me really uncomfortable.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/lets-talk-about-rachel-dolezals-parents.html#sthash.z3PP93tI.dpuf
Perhaps
it was simply coincidence that a reporter approached Rachel’s parents
now, and perhaps if he hadn’t they still wouldn’t have said anything.
But I have to say, the timing is concerning. Did Rachel’s parents
out her as white simply because they care about the truth? Or were they
also motivated bya desire to discredit her so that they can, by
association, discredit the victim she is supporting, and thereby protect
their son from the sexual abuse charges that have been levied against
him? Did Rachel act inexcusably in lying and deceiving people? Oh, hell yes. But elevating her parents heroes or truth-tellers while ignoring this troubling context is worrisome.
And perhaps that’s what’s bothering me about this story. Rachel’s parents have been paraded and lauded across the media, their words taken at face value, despite the fact that they have been (successfully) accused of abuse and despite the fact that they are defending their adult son against accusations of child sexual abuse. And as someone familiar with the dynamics of abuse, this makes me really uncomfortable.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/lets-talk-about-rachel-dolezals-parents.html#sthash.z3PP93tI.dpuf
And perhaps that’s what’s bothering me about this story. Rachel’s parents have been paraded and lauded across the media, their words taken at face value, despite the fact that they have been (successfully) accused of abuse and despite the fact that they are defending their adult son against accusations of child sexual abuse. And as someone familiar with the dynamics of abuse, this makes me really uncomfortable.
- See more at: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/06/lets-talk-about-rachel-dolezals-parents.html#sthash.z3PP93tI.dpuf
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