Passin' in Reverse – The Rachel Dolezal Story

Shhh! I’ve got a secret. You want to know what it is? I am fascinated by Rachel Dolezal. I've followed her story since she was outed for passing as Black. There are those who think (including her) that what she did wasn't a big deal, and that it shouldn't over shadow the work she did. It shouldn't. My biggest problem with Rachel is her not owning that what she did was wrong. In the interviews I’ve seen, she is as slippery as a bar of wet soap. When asked if she lied while talking with the BBC, she said how can you lie about a lie.  Rachel continues to argue that race is a social construct even though we already know this. So, why lie about a lie? Does that make it less of a lie?

I was gifted her book, In Full Color, and I'm reading now. I want to understand. But it's like watching a train wreck, having gapers' block. It is for me what reality TV or Maury is for others. 

The book does provide insight into who she is, but it doesn't change what she did. Truth be told: I really don't care how she self identifies. I just want her to stop blaming other people for the situation she finds herself in now when she’s the one who lied about the lie and brought us all to this place. 

So captivated by Rachel that she inspired me to pen a poem.  It’s featured in my coming up book--Unzipped—Exposing the Naked Truth which I co authored with Rick Allison--the irony of that! Listen to her interview. Read my poem. And tell me what you think about this white woman passin’ for Black.

 

Playing the White Card

When I first heard the story

 of a White woman passin’ for Black

I must admit, I was taken aback

I mean siding with the oppressed

 instead of the oppressor

Who in her right mind does that?

So as I learned about this White Chick

Whose hair required a pick

Who darkened her skin

And tried to fit in

She masqueraded in Black face

Trying to steal a place

In the Black race

Thought if she wore a costume

We’d all assume

That she was down

Because she’s light brown

So, yea at first I was like what’s the big deal?

So, what if she ain’t Black for real

If she wants the burden let her have it

Til I rolled it around in my mind a bit

And thought to myself ain’t this some ish

After watching a couple of interviews

I shook my head thinking,

This woman must think we’re some fools

Yes, she was an activist

And an African-American studies teacher too,

But the real struggles of Black womanhood

She doesn’t have a clue

For us, it’s more than a costume

Since birth, these roles we’ve assumed

You see the legacy of our ancestors

Is in our DNA

And this Rachel Dolezal wants to play?

To have felt the master’s whip on her back

And lived a life of hardship and pain

And have to pick herself up again and again

Rachel had a 10-year fantasy—

That’s all

Because when it comes to being a real

Black woman

She dropped the ball

She has no clue

What it’s really like to stand in our shoes

You know what they say:

Once you go Black you never go back

But for Rachel, if life gets too hard

Unlike us, she has an option of playing

 The White Card

Self Defining Moment

How do you define yourself? Are you a title? A talent? A skill set? Material possessions? Are you self defining, defined by others or a combination of the two? The ways in which we define ourselves has been marinating in my mind recently. I’ve been wondering what happens when we fall outside of the ways in which we are defined.

I recently finished listening to the audio book, The Year of Yes –How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. It’s the story of how an introverted television writer thrust into the limelight decides to say yes to the things that scare her. It’s a good read. In the book, Rhimes references the Wonder Woman pose. I was a fan of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman because she looked like me. She was curvy and had bigger than average breasts. I tuned in every week to watch her work her magic and fight crime. So, I wanted to learn more about this Wonder Woman Pose.

I looked up the Wonder Woman Pose and discovered that in the world of body language, this is a power pose. This led me to a Ted Talk by Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Cuddy says that our non verbal cues determine how we think and feel about ourselves. Cuddy says that she identified as smart. As a child she was labeled gifted. Because she was smart, Cuddy set her sights on attending Ivy League University. 

 At 19, Cuddy was in an accident in which she was thrown from a car and experienced severe head trauma. She had to withdraw from school, and was told that she would never finish college. She was devastated. She said that her core identity—being smart had been taken from her. And she had to work really hard to reclaim that part of herself. Though she went to Princeton, she felt like she was an imposter, and that she didn’t belong there. It was not until Cuddy was working at Harvard that she met a student whose thoughts mirrored her own—the student felt like she was an imposter and was not supposed to be at Harvard. It was in that moment that Cuddy, realized that she had not felt that way in a long time. She didn’t fake it until she made it; she faked it until she became it. And that was the advice that Cuddy gave to her student.

I found this talk so relatable in general, but particularly at this phase of my life. I have been an educator for more than 20 years.  I am considered a good teacher. My evaluations have supported this. But being a super teacher is becoming harder. There are pockets of kryptonite everywhere it seems. In the country. In the district. In my school.  Within myself.  This year has been particularly challenging, and I have felt off kilter more days than I’d like to admit. Every teacher has a year(s) that they wish they could erase or do over. This is one of mine. 

 

So, this year for the first time in a 20+ career as an educator, my evaluation was average—subpar for me, and even though I know that I have not been my best, it was initially hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of being average.  Unlikely, Cuddy, I didn’t have a devastating injury that took away a big piece of my identity, but my identity s as a teacher was injured and it showed. I was rattled; anxious; withdrawn. My body language registered defeat before the evaluator even walked in the classroom.  I didn’t know how to recover at first. I was standing on the edge ready to jump. But I stepped back away from the edge. I looked at how far I had come, and I remembered how many lives I have touched.  

Being a teacher is a huge part of my identity. I recognize that I am a teacher even when I’m not in the classroom. People seek my advice and respect my counsel. It has not been a stellar year of teaching, but it has been a year of learning. And I am a better teacher for having gone through this year.  I am better than average; I’m a damned good teacher! And I’ve got my super hero cape standing in a power pose to prove it.

Have you had a self defining moment? Tell me about it in the comment   section.

Pass on the Bitch, Please!

            BITCH! Bitch, bitch, bitch BEE-ACH! No matter how long I roll it around in my mouth, and mentally chew on it, my brain simply cannot digest hearing women referred to as bitches. I think I’m bitchose intolerant because it nauseates me to hear so many of seasoning our language with this bitter condiment.

It takes me back to my childhood when my mother used to make me take a spoonful of Cod Liver Oil every day. She swore by it for warding off colds and other infectious childhood diseases. To offset the taste she would mix it with some type of juice and tell me to hold my breath and drink it. Orange, apple, cranberry—it didn’t matter. Nothing disguised the taste of the oil and I always had this queasy feeling in my stomach in the end.

Fast forward to the future. My aesthetician encourages me to drink Olive Oil or Flax Seed Oil in the morning to moisturize my skin. Like my mother, she also tells me to mix it with juice. Though I don’t think I’ll die from the concoction like I did in my childhood, the residual of oil lacing my lips  and subsequent  burps serve as  reminders that no matter what I take it down with, it just doesn’t settle well with me. Bitch is an acquired taste that I haven’t acquired.

Even when the heavy peppering of the language leaves us irritated, some of us still like to sample this unsavory appetizer. So, we try to soothe our discomfort by trying to make it taste better. It’s Ms. Bitch to you or we use the acronym Babe In Total Control of Herself. Maybe it works for some, but it just slides around in my stomach.          

 

I know that for some women, Bitch is a term of empowerment and/or endearment. I have had this conversation with friends and family, and I have had to be firm in my unwillingness to partake. Sherry Argov’s Why Men Love Bitches and Why Men Marry Bitches are popular books, and there are others. Then there is the TV show, Don’t Trust the B---- in Apt.23. Bitch seems to be on everybody’s table these days—right there next to the salt and pepper shakers, and most people sprinkle it throughout their conversation with little regard to its high level of emotional potency. The recent backlash against Beyonce for Bow Down proves that not every woman likes the taste of it.

I remember watching Queens of Comedy and trying to distinguish between the negative connotations and the positive connotations, but after a while it all sounded the same. The women the comedians liked were bitches. They called themselves bitches. And the women they didn’t like they called bitches. Try figuring that out!

For the sake of equality, we have even gotten into the habit of calling men bitches when they whine, complain or act too aggressive. These are all negative characteristics we associate with women. As another way of insulting gay men, we call them bitches, too.

Bitch is a derogatory term. It is the lowest form of debasement. Harassed by an obscene phone caller, he terminated every conversation by calling me a bitch of some sort. Failing to respond to a man’s cat call while walking down the street earned me the title of bald-headed dyke bitch. Endearing? No! Empowering? I don’t think so! How can a word that makes a woman feel like the contents of a pooper-scooper be liberating? I cannot get up from the table after having a big bowl of bitch and feel good about myself. I’ve tried to tell myself that words can only have as much power as I give them, but even as I say the word bitch to myself, it looks and feels nasty in my mouth and makes me want to spit it out.

For those that like to chew on it, I hope that it does not cause indigestion, heart burn nausea or the desire to spit it back in the face of the server. As for me, bitch is never pleasing to my palate. So, if you’re serving it up at your table, I hope you don’t mind if I pass on the bitch.

Who You Callin' A Female?

I was sitting at the table watching the manicurist meticulously paint my nails, when he said something about “females.” I sucked in my breath as the words from his tongue screeched against the chalkboard of my mind.  By the time, he uttered it the third time, my ears were burning so I said, “I don’t like being called a female.” He looked at me, paused hunched up his shoulders and resumed polishing my nails. It was quiet for a few minutes, and then he asked, “What’s wrong with female?”

And I asked him “If I am simply a female, then what separates me from a dog, a cat or cow?” He said he never really thought about it. And I’m sure he didn’t because it’s so common now. But I don’t like it, and I won’t wear it because the title “female” strips me of my humanity. I don’t want to be objectified by the v-shaped space below my navel.  If being called female is ok, then why don’t we run around calling guys males?

Female is what I check on forms to distinguish me from a male. So the only time I want to be referred to as female is for statistical and identification purposes! When I was born, the doctor said, “It’s a girl!  Time and experience groomed me into into a young woman, and the tutelage of magnificent mentors blossomed me into a lady. So, why would I settle for the façade of half-dressed femininity when I can fully wear the worldliness of a woman and/or the loveliness of a lady so much better?