Our nation is clearly in the market for some healing and understanding; into this dark, dark moment comes a familiar name: Rachel Dolezal, who is publishing her memoirs. Here is the official description of In Full Color, which is due out in March and is currently a hot release in the Amazon “sociology of social theory” category:
With In Full Color, Rachael Dolezal describes the path that led her from being a child of white evangelical parents to an NAACP chapter president and respected educator and activist who identified as black. Along the way, she’ll discuss the deep emotional bond she formed with her four adopted black siblings, the sense of belonging she felt while living in black communities in Jackson, Mississippi and Washington, D.C., and the discrimination she’s suffered while living as a black woman. Her story is nuanced and complex, and in the process of telling it, she forces us to consider race in an entirely new light—not as a biological imperative, but as a function of the experiences we have, the culture we embrace, and, ultimately, the identity we choose.
Whether you pity her or loathe her, the fact that Dolezal is able to capitalize directly on her racial identity-swapping is evidence of her inborn white privilege. Such racial re-identification only goes one way. As Rebecca Carroll wrote in her blistering piece when Dolezal first came on the scene: “I could not, at any given point in my life, despite having grown up in a White family, with no Black people within a 15-mile radius, suddenly choose to present myself as a White woman.”