Being Black Requires More Than Dark Skin

The president of the Washington NAACP chapter, Rachel Dolezal, thinks she can just tan and wear curly afros and box braids in order to be black, for her black is this intriguing fantasy full of natural hair and poetic rants on social media about the “struggle”. Well I have news for her being black is more than hair and skin color it means you share a common experience. An experience of starving and laying chained on slave ships, a loss of culture, loss of privileges, loss of family, rape, bondage, alienation and the list goes on. Before she bounds arm and arm singing a tear jerking church song mirroring some scene she had seen in a movie she needs to recognize she does not share that history. Her false cries of discrimination are unmatched to the young Freedom Riders encountering tear gas, water hoses, bullets, blood stained clothes and murder. Discrimination is being followed in a store because they feel you are not honest enough to pay just because your black or being unfairly accused.

What she fails to acknowledge is being black can literally get you killed, stories like Mike Brown, The “I Can’t Breathe” story and the most recent church shooting in South Carolina are a prime example.  She has no idea what it is to be black. Her ideas of who we are based upon fetishes and fantasy. Rachael will never be black. Throughout history we have had our rights taken away from us and our culture stolen. Not only has our music been stolen, but white women have tried to join the natural hair community and now she comes and tries to redefine who is considered black? We don’t even have a right to define who is in our own race?  Ask yourself this question if a brown skin black woman painted herself white and wore a silky wig and told you she felt white would she have the right to be called white? Umm no. Even a biracial person with one white parent cannot do that. Therefore, the fact she can slap on what is at best a costume, and that some people are actually pondering if it’s true is a prime example of privilege. The fact she can just pick a race as if it were an membership plan is not black at all it is surely white privilege.