Rachel Dolezal's "natural hair" politics
But too often, as Farrell says, it has not been done with respect or proper royalties and recognition. People who feel that they have been robbed historically will cling all the more fiercely to whatever they have left -- including the art of hair braiding.
But in an interview with writer Linda Jones for the Beast, Dolezal insisted she was "not coming as a curiosity or for any controversy." She resigned from the NAACP after her outing and lost her job as an adjunct college instructor. Since then Dolezal, who once taught a course in the politics of black hair, has made her living as a hair braider.
Still, people have good reason to question her years of leading people to believe she was black. There also was that troubling episode in which she was suspected of sending a package of racial threats to her own mailbox at the NAACP. Only some postal workers, who have since been cleared, and Dolezal had keys to the box. Hmmm....
But as we have learned repeatedly in the summer of Trump, much can be forgiven and forgotten in the glare of celebrity, and Dolezal's misadventures made her a genuine headliner. She's almost finished with a memoir, she told the Beast.
That means we probably will be seeing more of her, although there's no word yet as to whether she will take what seems to be the last refuge of celebrities these days, running for president.
What intrigues me is how Dolezal's rise to prominence marks a milestone of sorts in America's racial history. There have been rare cases of whites passing for black in this country. But there have been far more examples of black people who went the other way, sometimes leaving their families and communities forever, in order to reinvent themselves into a world of white privilege.
That's why conservatives love Dolezal even as they ridicule her. She seems to confirm their argument that there's not much privilege left in being white. Indeed, she may show racial inequality to be less severe than it used to be. But I still don't see many other white folks rushing to follow her lead. It wouldn't be natural.
(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
