Black Like Her: Rachel Dolezal’s Rejection of White Skin Privilege

Black Like Her: Rachel Dolezal’s Rejection of White Skin Privilege

When I was a little boy, my parents took me to Los Angeles Valley College’s Monarch Hall to see John Howard Griffin, author of Black Like Me. Years later I saw the movie made about his life, Wikipedia on Black Like Me. Read up about John Howard Griffin on Wikipedia which begins:

John Howard Griffin (June 16, 1920 – September 9, 1980) was an American journalist and author, much of whose writing was about racial equality. He is best known for darkening his skin and journeying through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to experience segregation in the Deep South in 1959. He wrote about this experience in his 1961 book Black Like Me.

I am kind of incredulous that of all the pundits and journalists talking about Rachel Dolezal, I seem to be the only person to make the connection with John Howard Griffin. Because of that connection, this is the letter I sent to her a few days ago:

Dear Sister Dolezal:

I posted the following on my Facebook page:

She has rejected white skin privilege, going a step farther than those of us who have been NAACP members and branch officers like myself who happen to have white skin. I applaud her doing so. I respect her for doing so. It takes a lot of courage, just as John Howard Griffin — the author of “Black Like Me” did impersonating an African American man in the segregated South. My hat is off to you Rachel!

If there is one thing worse than driving while Black or driving while Brown in America, it is “DWI,” “Driving While Interracial.” My late significant other, Valerie Monroe, was a lawyer and had served as Southern California Legal Redress Chair for California NAACP State Conference. I am a prominent private investigator and served an unprecedented seven (7) terms as Chair of the Board of the world’s largest organization of private investigators.

In spite of her bar card and my PI license, the scariest thing in the world for us was being followed by a police car and it didn’t matter what the race of the cop was, we just assumed that there was a likelihood that it was a racist cop who Black or white wouldn’t appreciate us as an interracial couple.

I’ve been shot at, had swastikas daubed on my car and office, and the like throughout my career and political activities so sister, I know what you’re going through. As General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell told our troops in the darkest days of World War II, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

If I can be of any personal assistance regarding the threats you are receiving, do not hesitate to contact me.

Till Victory is Won, Jan B. Tucker

Several of the people whose opinion I find really valuable on race relations and racism have joined the fray in discussing Rachel Dolezal:

Tim Wise (who I met years ago at the Committees of Correspondence National Conference at San Francisco State University, and who is likely a distant cousin of my sister-in-law from Tennessee):

Hah, now for an extra special kicker…turns out I’ve just been informed by a friend and ally at Eastern Washington U. (who was involved in bringing me to campus to speak there last semester), that it was Rachel Dolezal who had objected to me coming, because I, as a white man, can’t speak to race issues involving black people. First, they got a dictionary at EWU where she can look up “irony?” And second, her objection is perfectly indicative of her problem. She thinks I seek to speak from authority on blackness. No, that’s not me, that’s YOU Rachel. I only seek to speak about whiteness. Her confusion on that point is the source of pretty much all this bullshit: not knowing the difference between confronting whiteness and seeking to speak for blackness.

and,

It strikes me that there is an important, and largely overlooked likely explanation for Rachel Dolezal’s deception. And it has real implications for white people seeking to work in solidarity/allyship/followership with people of color. Allyship involves, at its best, working with people of color, rather than speaking for them. And I suspect Rachel discovered, perhaps while at Howard, that “gee, ya know what, black folks don’t automatically trust me, and this proving myself stuff is hard and takes time, and allyship is messy, and I’m impatient, so…let’s cut out the middle man and just be black.” That way she didn’t have to work with or follow, she could speak for and lead. It is a horrible betrayal of what the proper role for white folks in the work is; a slap in the face to the history of solidarity, from John Brown’s family to John Fee to the Grimke sisters to Bob and Dottie Zellner and beyond. She wasn’t willing to pay her dues, to follow the lead of people of color. She didn’t want to do the hard and messy work, struggling with other white folks and challenging them (which is what SNCC told us white folks to do in 1967, and what Malcolm said shortly before his death). She wanted to be done with white folks altogether; to immerse herself in blackness, but as a white person, she knew she could never do that fully. And so, this…There is a lesson for us, for we who are white and care deeply about racial equity, justice and liberation. The lesson is this: authentic antiracist white identity is what we must cultivate. We can not shed our skin, nor our privileges; we must work in conjunction with people of color to overturn the system that bestows those privileges. But the key word is WITH people of color, not AS people of color. We must be willing to do the difficult work of finding a different way to live in this skin. THIS skin.

Scotty Reid of Black Talk Radio (http://www.blacktalkradionetwork.com/) retorts to Tim Wise:

So now Tim Wise wants to pile on that white lady…now I know I am done for the night…screw Tim Wise and any and everything he has to say about anything. An admitted racist pretending to be an anti-racist calling out another white person pretending to be black and accusing them of practicing racism is just way too much confusion for me. I’ll let yall delve into that one.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson (http://thehutchinsonreportnews.com/) said on MSNBC today that he’d delved into the record of the Spokane NAACP under Rachel Dolezal’s leadership and while he critiqued her holding herself out as being Black and extolling the virtues of “Black is Beautiful” and “Natural” hair styling as though she was Black, the record of the Spokane NAACP and her as a leader of the chapter were “spot on” on all issues.

Joe South wrote a song, Walk a Mile in My Shoes, which he recorded in Atlanta in 1969 that became a hit in 1970, which according to Wikipedia, “concerns racial tolerance and the need for perspective and compassion.” South, who was a white man born in Atlanta in 1940, along with his brother Tommy and Sister-in-Law Barbara, sang:

If I could be you, if you could be me for just one hour
If we could find a way to get inside each other’s mind, mmmm
If you could see you through my eyes instead of your ego
I believe you’d be surprised to see that you’ve been blind, mmmm

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
Hey, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes

Now your whole world you see around you is just a reflection
And the law of Karma says you’re gonna reap just what you sow
So unless you’ve lived a life of total perfection
You’d better be careful of every stone that you should throw - yeh-heh

And yet we spend the day throwin’ stones at one another
‘Cause I don’t think or wear my hair the same way you do, mmmm
Well, I may be common people but I’m your brother
And when you strike out you’re tryin’ to hurt me it’s hurtin’ you
Lord, have mercy

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
Babe, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes

And there are people on reservations and out in the ghettos
And brother, there, but for the grace of God, go you and I, yeh-heh
And if I only had wings of a little angel, well
Don’t you know, I’d fly to the top of a mountain and then I’d cry

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
Babe, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Better walk a mile in my shoes
Try before what you’re doing

Walk a mile in my shoes, walk a mile in my shoes
Oh, before you abuse, criticize and accuse
Walk a mile in my shoes…

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that “Words may show a man’s wit, actions his meaning.” Her record as Branch President of the Spokane NAACP is the truest test: her actions as Earl Ofari Hutchinson put it were SPOT ON and to that I say, RIGHT ON. Rachel Dolezal has walked many miles in a Black woman’s shoes.

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