The news that the Spokane, Washington NAACP branch president, Rachel Dolezal, is a white woman passing for black, has turned the narrative of passing on its head. In past decades, it is estimated that tens of thousands of African Americans effectively resigned from the race, seeking relief from slavery, Jim Crow segregation laws, and the multitude of social and economic disadvantages associated with being black in the United States. A recent study by geneticist Kasia Bryc found that 4 percent of the nation’s 196 million white people have an African ancestor in the last six generations of their family tree. That’s about 7.8 million people who are the descendants of blacks who, one way or another, passed for white.
As hard as it was being black in the Unites States in years past, whites have consistently been eager to share in the artistic and financial fruits of black culture — from the blackface performances of minstrel artists like Al Jolson to the bitterly contested cultural appropriation of contemporary hip hop and pop stars like Iggy Azelea and Macklemore.
Somehow, Doezal, an adjunct professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University, has managed to do a mashup of cultural appropriation and passing, claiming not only African American (and Native American) ancestry, but also black victimhood as the recipient of racist hate mail. (Postal workers told Spokane police officials the package of racist messages Dolezal claims to have received in a postal box was neither timestamped nor cancelled, noting that the only way the letter could have gotten into the box was if it had been placed there by a postal worker, or by someone who had the key to the box).
If you can see past Dolezal’s tanned skin, darkened and tightly curled hair and claims of black ancestry and acts of cultural and political appropriation, her status as an avowed African American might perhaps be taken as a measure of progress. After centuries of blacks passing for white, the tide may finally be shifting the other way.
