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Towards an Ethical Whiteness the Case of Rachel Dolezal

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Towards an Ethical Whiteness the Case of Rachel Dolezal Towards an Ethical Whiteness The Case of Rachel Dolezal Sophia Seawell RMA Gender and Ethnicity Utrecht University 2015 – 2017 Acknowledgments Although I am presenting this project, and in that sense presenting it as ‘mine,’ I do not live, act or think in a bubble. This work would first and foremost not have been possible without the lifelong support and encouragement of my parents. In particular I think my father, who gave me the idea and encouraged me to apply to Ivy League universities in the first place. Had I not done so, and ultimately attended Brown University, I would not be the person, feminist or scholar that I am today. I would also like to thank all of my peers in the RMA Gender and Ethnicity. My interest in the case of Dolezal began in our first semester together in the fall of 2015, and from the beginning your feedback, questions and comments, both in the classroom and outside of it, have been a significant part of my process of developing the questions that I engage with here. I am immensely grateful to Kathrin Thiele, who has also been with me since the beginning of my academic and intellectual journey—as a teacher, resource, advisor and advocate. Thank you, Kathrin, for being the person who not only got me to sign up for a masterclass, to put myself out there and take myself seriously as a scholar, but also for being the person I could call in tears for the necessary pep-talk the day before. I would also like to thank Jamila Mascat for her feedback and guidance in the past months, for making time for me between her travels and many other appointments and knowing how to make the most of that time. Thank you for asking me the difficult questions, for pushing me to realize the potential of my aims here, for being always at once critical and supportive. I can’t imagine having a better match for this project. Finally, I would like to thank my friends: for supporting my prioritization of writing in the past few months, for being my dance partners when I needed a break, for making space to hear my doubts and concerns and struggles with this work, and for believing in my ability to pull this off. ii Table of Contents Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Approaches to Identity.................................................................................. Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 8 Identity as Truth and Choice......................................................................................................... 9 From Race to Ethnicity................................................................................................................ 13 Identity Claims as Performatives ................................................................................................ 18 The Performative Materiality of Race/Ethnicity ........................................................................... 27 Conclusion: Race/Ethnicity as Location or Position.................................................................... 33 Chapter 2: Affect and the Self/Other Relation............................................................... Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 38 Shame as a Tie to the Other....................................................................................................... 41 Not at Home in Whiteness .......................................................................................................... 45 Empathy and Love in ‘Mixed-Race’ Families .............................................................................. 53 White Racial Identity Formation.................................................................................................. 62 Conclusion: Shame as a Turning Point....................................................................................... 71 Chapter 3: The Politics of Rejecting Whiteness............................................................ Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 75 The Exotification of Blackness.................................................................................................... 76 Good White Women.................................................................................................................... 85 Rejecting the Race Traitor .......................................................................................................... 91 Conclusion: White Flight ............................................................................................................. 97 Chapter 4: Imagining an Ethical White Self-Relation.................................................... Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 99 Beyond Positivity: Putting Whiteness to Use ............................................................................ 100 Sexual Difference as an Ethical Self/Other Relation................................................................. 107 From Allyship to Alliance .......................................................................................................... 113 Conclusion: The Whiteness Question....................................................................................... 119 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................121 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 126 iii Introduction In June 2015, we found out that Rachel Dolezal was white. Until then, Dolezal had been living in relative obscurity but locally had a good reputation and was even held in high esteem. She served on the volunteer police ombudsman committee, representing community concern about police violence and racism. She had worked at the Human Rights Education Institute, beginning with directing an art series and by 2008 becoming the Director of Education. She taught courses like African American Culture, African and African- American Art History, Research Methods in Race and Culture Studies, and Black Woman and Hair at East Washington University (Dolezal, 183). In January 2015 she became president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the country’s oldest civil rights organization, founded in 1909. Dolezal, by and large, was known in her community as a prominent anti-racist activist. She was also, by and large, thought to be Black. But two summers ago, the tides turned, irreversibly, when a local reporter—who, according to Dolezal, was tipped off by a private investigator, hired by the Chief of Police, who had spoken to her parents—while interviewing Dolezal about hate crimes she had reported over the years, showed her a photo of Albert Wilkerson Jr., Dolezal’s long-time mentor and chosen family, and asked if it was her ‘dad’. She answered, “Yeah, that’s my dad.” He repeated the question, as Dolezal became increasingly tense. Finally he asked outright, “Are you African American?” to which Dolezal responded, “I don’t understand the question – I did tell you that yes, that’s my dad”.1 The interview abruptly ended as Dolezal walked away, but this local news item was just the beginning of what would become a national and international debate that continues to this day; a debate about appropriation, exotification, whiteness, Blackness, anti-Black racism, passing, race, gender, authenticity, allyship, and solidarity. A few central tensions kept resurfacing in this debate: Why did Dolezal spark such fierce backlash, particularly from 1 KXLY4. “Raw Interview with Rachel Dolezal”. Filmed June 2015. YouTube video, 8:55. Posted June 2015. Video URL. 1 the Black American 2 community, when former Olympic athlete and Kardashian stepparent Caitlyn Jenner was, around the same time, supported for ‘choosing’ her gender? If race is a social construct, on what grounds was Dolezal’s identification being rejected? Aren’t we working towards a future in which everyone is free to express who they are and choose who they want to be? These questions were the dominant overarching themes shaping the public debate and discourse around Dolezal’s controversial case, reflecting contemporary tensions around the role of history in shaping our contemporary and future society, as well as the role of the ally (particularly white allies in anti-racist solidarity or activism), and definitions of race in comparison with gender. My own research question was born out of the latter tension, between how we understand gender and race. That summer of 2015, as I tried to put into words my own reaction to Dolezal, I found myself making arguments with a logic that could potentially be used to invalidate transgender identity and expression, or at other times, arguments that assumed a thinly disguised essentialist definition of race. In trying to define race, and specifically Blackness, I was left with more questions than answers. And so I became interested in what would come to light, what could be explained, if I approached the problem from the other direction: from whiteness. That is, rather
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