Rachel Dolezal
Rachel Dolezal gives me great pause, and I cringe when people say we should look at the good she did and ignore the bad.
Rachel is a manipulative person who seeks attention and limelight, and will lie to get it.
She will tell serious lies to get it.
I do not believe Rachel did what she did for the good of society or for the NAACP, but rather it was only to further her own agenda.
She isn’t even taking responsibility for the lies she told, and goes so far as to essentially expresses that she has been treated inhumanely.
Rachel has filed many complaints with the police claiming not only hate crimes, but she also sued the university that she attended in 2002 claiming discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender. And I don’t believe at that time she was claiming to be black.
She is simply out for attention and nothing more. Don’t let her fool you.
Rachel’s many, many lies have come to light. She’s claimed discrimination, racial hate crimes, accused her brother of sexual abuse, accused her parents of racism, plagiarized artwork, all on top of her lying about her heritage. And she has the gall to play the victim!
To people like her, victimhood is a desired state. They believe that if they can claim to be a victimized person, their moral superiority cannot be questioned. The most blatant example is in many recent sexual assault accusations: the accuser is immediately surrounded by “victim’s advocates” who insist that the accusation *not be questioned*, no matter how little evidence.
She is extremely, extremely messed up and I wouldn’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth.
There are some things that blow my mind. Maybe at some point, it would have been this, but not anymore. What does get close though are peoples reactions: the sympathizers, the ones who are fooled by her, the ones that say she “made a mistake”, the ones who think this is ok. I sometimes feel the only alternative is to live and let live, because if we can’t even agree that water is wet–that things like this (deception) are wrong–then there’s nothing we can do.
The sympathisers, like me, aren’t fooled by her. We’re saying it’s cruel to attack someone for normal human weaknesses. If she wants to be black while doing good work for the NAACP, that’s nobody’s business but hers.
No one is attacking her for looking black. They are attacking her for her lies and misrepresentation, and she’s still clinging to them. If she dressed and looked exactly like she does, but never told fibs, no one would have ever cared.
I’m saying she’s harming nobody, and *everyone* lives with delusions. Having them exposed and attacked by thousands of strangers is cruel.
To get her attention, she has called the police to claim she was racially profiled many times, sued as a white women for racial discrimination too. The time and energy and TAX DOLLARS LOST is causing harm. The police, district attorney, etc. could be investigating crimes against REAL PERPETRATORS. Instead, they have had to waste precious time due to her lies!
When she decided to go on TV and be interviewed (which is several times now), she opens herself up to scrutiny. We have a right to scrutinize that behavior. End of story.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from with your stance on this story, but whatever it is, it’s causing your judgment to be blurred here. There’s likely a blind spot here for you to discover, but that’s up to you if you want to pursue it or not. It’s benign here aside from the replies you’ve gotten, but whatever this blind spot is, I can assure you it’s certain to have more profound effects in other areas of your life that actually do matter. I’m hoping you’ll be able to use that information to your benefit and growth.
And Fidget is not lying– I remember reading the story of her suing the school back when it happened too, although the name meant nothing to me and I didn’t remember that. It was pretty unusual and stood out which made it fairly newsworthy at the time.
Also, when I was reading the article I saw on my phone the other day about this, I was picking up aspects of narcissism in the descriptions too, so while only a professional working with her personally is qualified to make a legitimate diagnosis, the commenters here are not entirely off base. Particularly with regard to people needing to realize that malignant narcissists do exist and that there are warning signs that can help others to protect themselves from them. They cause an inordinate amount of chaos and damage to people’s lives. They’re one of a relatively small handful of disordered people that everyone needs to be wary around because of the damage and destruction they wreak. If you think her lies didn’t harm anyone, ask the NAACP and its supporters if they feel unharmed by them.
The NAACP already issued a statement: http://m.mic.com/articles/120598/naacp-releases-statement-supporting-rachel-dolezal
Thanks for the article reading David.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/rachel-dolezal-sued-howard-university-119024.html
I enjoy the comments section on Eyesforlies just as much as the site. And for the past year I’ve really begun to notice when you make a comment! I think you’re really smart and you explain things well. So this morning when I checked the site (I do about once a week) and I kept seeing David Blane’s comments, I was thinking “where is Keith D, why hasn’t he commented yet!!” And then there it was! I dont know how Eyes decides (there’s just so many to choose from) which story to post, but I really like the way you convey your perspective on them.
Thank you!
Liz P
You’re welcome. I haven’t been around with regularity much in the past couple months due to a few major life changes in my personal life, but I still try to check in from time to time anyway, and make comments when and where I can. It’s not to the same extent that it has been in the past right now, but it may return to that as I get settled in over the coming months. I’m still in transition right now though. I appreciate your feedback. 🙂
Keith, what about her suing her university for discrimination struck you as “pretty unusual” in 2002? It sounds like a common enough story to me, not sure it would have stuck with me.
Notice that your personal bias in this matter caused you to assume the NAACP would be against her, when in fact they are supportive. The only people against her are thousands of judgmental strangers (and her parents – obvious issues there). For someone like me, in pursuit of the truth, she’s a good cause.
I find her racial identity intriguing. However it seems to be conflated with her deceptions. In the larger frame I think these are quite different issues.
The idea of ‘race’ is almost out-of-date, there is more genetic variation within one ‘race’ than there is between different ‘races’ – that’s what the science says. So what does ‘race’ mean?
And ‘identity’ is a construction that everyone uses everyday, to some people we are this, in the presence of others we choose to identify differently, we construct our identity all the time, I have a professional identity for example but it only exists based on my and others actions and perceptions.
It’s actually the norm that people see others as they like to think of the them rather than as they actually are.
That aside, there seems to be evidence (from what I’m reading here) that her deceptions have had real consequences and that she used racial identity to power them. So she’s in the wrong.
>1. The idea of ‘race’ is almost out-of-date.
You can take the ‘almost’ out of that sentence and it will be more accurate. I find it extremely surprising that the concept of ‘race’ as we use it today is fairly recent in human history. I’ve done a lot of casual study of ancient history, and ‘race’ as we currently understand it was virtually non-existent in virtually every ancient society. It can first be found in the 1600s (approximately). Wikipedia puts it this way:
“The European concept of “race,” along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution, which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_classification)
The first book to use the idea of race in the way it is used today was published in 1684. That means ‘race’ as a concept did not exist (in our current understanding of the term) in ancient Greece or Rome, the Byzantine empire, or anywhere else, all the way up to the late 1600s.
Whatever ‘race’ means (and there’s a lot of discussion on that point), it’s fairly recent compared to the tens of thousands of years of human history.
I have not followed the Rachel Dolezal discussion very much, but whatever she takes her race to be, (or any of us, for that matter) it’s all a result of relatively recent ideas in human history.
I admire you for being so passionate! Can we hypothesize that u had a interest n American Indian history? U are a talented artist & scholar and teach classes on their cultural, paint amazing pictures of their past. It wouldn’t matter if you added the culture to ur lifestyle n attire. But, if u then said u were raised on a reservation, abused, had someone of Indian heritage pretend to be your parent, got a high level, high paying job using ur heritage as an Indian, publicly claimed threats based on this, do you think people would feel slapped?
David, I guess you missed her big fat lies, then. It’s not her racial identity that is a problem. If she only lived black, who cares? Seriously. She’s made up fantastical stories of race-based abuse and oppression. Saying she lived in africa with her parents (who she calls step-parents) and black siblings and was beat with a whip like a slave based on skin tone, when she’s never even been to Africa. There are more stories she’s made up, but that’s just one example and they’re all whoppers. How no one caught on, I haven’t a clue because they’re not exactly believable. She’s not deluded at all. She knows full well what she’s doing. She MAY have a personality disorder (histrionic) and she may well have abuse in her background. We’ll never know the truth of that from her because she’s proved she can’t tell a truth.
I haven’t missed her lies. I’m understanding of her lies. She hasn’t harmed anyone, and doesn’t deserve to be attacked.
Actually, her lies have caused a great deal of stress for people in her life, including her parents, her other family members and her ex husband who almost lost visitation rights with his son because of said lies. So yes, she has injured many. Let us also not forget that she lied about being a victim of several crimes, ones in which she stated were racially motivated, and had to be investigated by police, instead of the police investigating real crimes, with real victims.
She may not deserve to be “attacked’ as you say, but she does have to answer for wrongfully portraying herself as one person, when all along, she was entirely another.
Fidget, shall we examine how your lies have hurt the people around you?
Rachel isn’t a criminal, she’s a normal, messed up person. I recommend reading Jon Ronson on the culture of witch-hunting we have now.
When I become the leader of a national organization like the NAACP, when i create a crime in my own head and cause undo hardship on a police force, then sure, we can talk about my lies.
I don’t need to read anything to realize she’s a messed up person, but even still “messed up” people need to answer for the “messed up” things that they do.
So she’s the passed the bar for having her personal faults torn apart by strangers. Where do you draw that line, just so we know?
She is a PUBLIC person, the former leader of a PUBLIC organization, and has spoken PUBLICLY about racism (be it against both white and black) and has created PUBLIC child custody papers in a PUBLIC court and has said she is a victim of several crimes which are also PUBLICLY known and PUBLICLY false.
THAT is where I draw the line.
Okay, so anyone who does anything visible to the public is fair game.
Don’t muddy the waters here, David Blane. I’m responding to your statement which stated she didn’t hurt anyone, nor did she commit a crime and we shouldn’t “attack” her. When you’re a public person, doing very public things, and said public finds out about it, then it’s the public’s right to set things right.
It was her parents who outed her. Before that you had never heard of her. Now you think there’s some magic line of ‘publicness’ that makes it okay to pick apart a person’s personal faults, as if you have none of your own. Let’s be clear what we’re saying here.
1) I had heard of her before when she was white and sued a black school for racism because she didn’t get her own way
2) Her parents had a right to out her
3) Her behavior is NOT normal
4) Her behavior mimics narcissistic personality disorder which is a personality disorder and not a “personal fault”.
5) I can judge her since she’s made into my news feed. She can judge me when I make into hers.
6) Clear enough?
You hadn’t heard of her before, you’re lying. She clearly does not have narcissistic personality disorder. As cannedam said, if she has any personal disorder it’s histrionic. But then are we saying that a personality disorder is the line where it’s morally okay to adopt a lynch mob mentality?
LOL You don’t have any idea who I am nor what I learned of her a long time ago.
By the way, are you a psychologist? Psychiatrists?
What I’m saying is, if you lie to the public, then you deserve a lynch mob mentality when the house of cards you built comes crashing down. Period.
Yes, I know that’s what you’re saying. Let’s see where your attitude leads. On this subject I recommend Jon Ronson’s book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed”.
Histronic Personality Disorder is an Axis II, Cluster B personality disorder. It’s in the same group of disorders as Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Anti-social Personality Disorder. Many of these disorders have criteria that overlap. Whatever personality disorder she may have, Histronic is definitely a disorder to be very concerned about.
Please do not claim another poster is lying. We don’t condone that here.
I don’t believe that “everyone” lives with delusions, and besides, from everything I’ve seen, there’s no evidence that she has a delusion. IMHO, there is every evidence to support that she has been evasive and lied extensively. Lying is not evidence of a delusion.
Whatever is wrong with her is her business, not ours. The question of whether she’s consciously lying or deluded is a good one though. My impression is she’s desperately trying to find a niche for herself, not to pull off some giant hoax, but rather to fill a gap left by her obviously difficult relationship with her parents. She hasn’t done anything for publicity.
David, when u think about who she may have hurt, have considered the 2 son’s she spoke of? She said they were terrified by act’s of hate crimes against her. At least one of the boys we know isn’t hers but was asked to cover for her. That seems almost sinister, to involve them. That’s where you draw that line.
Please don’t make this personal, David. I don’t tolerate personal attacks. Asking about Fidget is pushing boundaries here.
She is criminal if she filed false complaints and it appears she did exactly that. You are not wanting to deal with the truth here. I’m sorry, David.
Her work for the NAACP and being black is not the issue here. She can be whatever she chooses to be, but she’s a fraud and a liar and used a con for personal gain. THAT is the issue that most people seem to have a problem with, and rightfully so. There was no need for her to lie and deceive. All she had to do was to be truthful and say she is a white woman who identifies as black, that’s it. Anyone who supports her in her fraud is no better than she is.
She is a liar – she told people her father was her step father and that he beat them according to the color of their skin.
like lying, deceit, trickery .. yeah ,, ok ?????
The only positive I can think may come out of the current social and public media situation is that more and more people will be exposed to malignant narcissists like this and be able to understand that there are people like this out there and will hopefully become more educated at the qualities and behaviors to look out for. (How’s that for a run-on sentence?)
Do people just use words randomly and think they’re contributing to the discourse? She isn’t a malignant (or any kind of) narcissist. She’s obviously messed up and in need of coping strategies.
How can you so vehemently say she isn’t a narcissist? She has many of the characteristics.
If you are going to assert that I’m just throwing around terms then you should provide information to back up that assertion. Contribute yourself, bud.
Only a qualified psychologist can officially diagnose her condition but I see many of the malignant narcissist’s traits.
People view things by events that have happened in their own lives, people they have known, and from the viewpoint of their own personality types. It does take a lot of live and let live to make it in this world. We would be a bunch of robots and very boring, if we all thought alike. With a lot of people we have to agree to disagree and go with what we feel is right or best in life.
The truest commentary on this to date – beyond the meta-debate on race and identity – has been: “Having a complicated interior life does not relieve you of the responsibility to be honest”. That nails it for me – she has no excuse, no justification for her deliberate deceptions, for her self-serving lack of transparency in this.
I agree!. I would like for you to listen to the parent’s interview to see what you think about their honesty. If I had to choose between Rachel and the parents, I would have to say the parents are more honest. There were a few of their comments that I am hesitant about, however. There were some hedges about answering some of the questions that concerns me.
For those following this story, I found this article about her art work, or at least a piece of her art work. It’s rather interesting, but I’m not sure if it’s considered plagiarism or not considering the original was painted in 1840.
http://www.newsweek.com/striking-resemblance-between-rachel-dolezals-art-and-jmw-turners-1840-slave-343801
The problem is that Rachel Dolezal IS representing it as her original painting and attempting to sell it for $5,100 on artpal.com (see http://www.artpal.com/?i=12713-8). This is not about “being influenced by Turner”, it’s about forgery for profit. It’s just another deception.
Well that’s just sad. It usually takes real talent & effort to forge others work’s. She really was selling herself short 🙁 I wasn’t aware of Arias plagiarizing, but that’s not surprising.
Here’s another link to her “art” work that someone in the art world has pretty much ripped apart. It’s interesting how she thought she would get away with this??
http://byhookorcrook.blogspot.com/2015/06/rachel-dolezal.html
I saw that! She basically copied an older painting!!!! To me, this is more than being confused about one’s racial identity. Although not identical in issue, the case of Jayson Blair comes to mind.
Maybe she thinks her paintings are the next Andy Warhol Campbell’s soup can painting/print?
Honesty is the best policy. Dishonesty usually ends up turning on you. This woman, I think, used the masquerade of being black to push her own agendas, and it has wound up costing her dearly.
>If she were messed up, she wouldn’t be hedging and not answering questions.
If she believed she was Black, then there would be no red flags. But that’s not what happened in her case. For want of a better description, she acted consistent with people who are guilty when accused and who know they are guilty. Clearly not everyone does this, but she did, and it’s extremely notable (as Eyes phrases it!).
One example is this exchange:
“Ma’am, I was wondering if your dad really is an African-American man,” Humphrey asked.
“I don’t understand the question,” Dolezal answered. “I did tell you [that man in the picture] is my dad.”
“Are your parents white?” Humphrey asked. At that point, Dolezal removed the microphone, ended the interview and walked away.
Source: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jun/11/board-member-had-longstanding-doubts-about-truthfu/comments/
I totally agree that if she truly thought she was Black, she would state the facts as she sees them, and expect others to see them the same way. But that’s not what happened at all.
My conclusion is that she knows what she’s doing – she knows *exactly* what she is doing – and the people she’s been deceiving are the ones paying the price.
How she was actually “outed” is different than what most people realize. Awhile ago, she claimed that someone had left a package or envelope at her work, without a postmark, that was filled with a racist rants or whatnot. She turned it into the police who opened an investigation. The police questioned her parents, who told them that Rachel was white, not black. Some news agency got wind of the story and got the police documentation and noticed what her parents told the police during their active investigation. That same news source asked Rachel, who didn’t seem to “understand” the question of “are you white or are you black?” and she didn’t seem to understand the question “are your parents white?” either. Right after that, the whole world basically knew that Rachel wasn’t black as she stated and the news people went crazy.
So her parents didn’t out her. Rachel’s lie about receiving a threatening letter was what actually got her house of cards to fall.
Amazing.
Whoever mentioned Munchhausen Syndrome, I think is on the mark. Maybe she reaches a point where she’s not getting the attention she needs so she creates a situation that will bring her what she craves.
Dolezal is a typical Czech & Slovak surname. Rachel is using the masculine form of her surname which is common practice among Czech and Slovak families living abroad. The feminine form of the surname would be Dolezalova. It really beats me as to how no-one noticed her true origins earlier.