and supporting Dolezal's right to self-identify. These are two different things.

I think her approach was destructive, but that doesn't mean I don't support her right to honest express herself and self-identify -- she should have simply had the courage to always be upfront and honest about her history and who she has become. At the same time, I wasn't surprised. Why? People who "pass" and are perceived as either white or black in transient race theory almost always lie.

What's interesting is that based on her appearance, almost everybody just assumed that she was black -- because she said she was and because (as many have noted) - there's a wide acceptance and desire to identify with blackness amongst people of all shades of skin, whether they are comprised of 5% or 95% shared lineage. That's one of the beautiful facets of black culture.

>I think that covers both transrace and transgender
>conversions.
>
>I believe in that freedom, but also that white-to-black
>transracials may undermine the black liberation movement.

how so? Has Rachel Dolezal undermined the black liberation movement in your estimation?

Also, do you believe that man-to-woman transgenders undermine the women's liberation movement?

>In this case, we also feel (unnecessarily) lied to. Black
>people have no problem cheering on white people who pass the
>test.

When you say "we" - are you presuming to speak for all Black people - or just for yourself? Because a number of Black intellectuals that I've read share a wide variety of opinions on this situation. Even in this post, there's a myriad of Black perspectives and opinions on the subject, so I don't see a singular aggregate Black opinion on display.

Rachel Dolezal could have been elected to the NAACP as
>an extraordinary white person. Instead, she selectively
>adopted the parts of blackness that she liked, and tried to
>ENFORCE that definition as real blackness (if you start to
>listen to the stories about her).

Definitely. I am not supporting Dolezal's decision to lie, deceive, and deceptively present herself as an empirical descendant of an African-American man (as she even had the audacity to do in a fraudulent Facebook picture). However, it is possible to denounce her decision to lie, yet still respect her autonomy and freedom to self-identify.




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