ArcaMax

In this summer of raw identity politics, it is ironically appropriate that everyone's favorite fake black woman, Rachel Dolezal, is back in the news.

Dolezal, you surely recall, was the local NAACP president in Spokane who was exposed last year by a local television station and by her estranged parents as a white woman who was only passing for black.

Or, as she might put it, she has been identifying as black since 2006 in much the same was that Caitlyn Jenner identifies as a woman, despite having the same male body that she had when she was Olympic medalist Bruce Jenner.

Dolezal was back in the news with the announcement that she would be headlining a Labor Day weekend rally in Dallas called the Naturally Isis Braid-On, Economic Liberty March and Rally.

No, Naturally Isis has nothing to do with the Islamic State. The event is organized by celebrity natural hair stylist and activist Isis Brantley and, yes, hair activism is a thing.

Brantley crusaded since the mid-1990s -- which included an arrest and various legal battles -- to win passage last year of a state law to exempt Texas' hair braiders from the expensive requirement to obtain a cosmetology license. Some other states have adopted similar legislation. In the natural hair movement, the follicle is political.

But Brantley's hero status took a beating when she posted the news on her Facebook pages that one of her special guests would be Dolezal.

How, the critics asked Brantley, could a champion of an African cultural art form honor a white woman who is nationally accused of appropriating black culture?

"Don't think of her as someone who has contributed to the years of work we have done to protect this cultural art form," Pamela Ferrell, the co-founder of the American Hairbraiders and Natural Haircare Association, told The Daily Beast. "I see it as an opportunity for a white woman to steal this African cultural art form, become an expert and then get opportunities that we have been denied. I've seen it happen over and over again."

Yes, in an ideal world, we African-Americans might well be flattered to be imitated so often by people from other races and cultures, particularly in music and other performing arts. Cultural appropriation is an inseparable part of this nation's creative and innovative dynamism.

...continued

(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.