One of my favorite movies from my teenager years was “Soul Man.” The premise of the movie was that a 20-something white guy gets accepted into Harvard, but can’t afford to go when his parents cut him off financially.
He then finds out about a scholarship for African-Americans, takes some tanning pills and hilarity ensues. The movie pokes fun at the standard stereotypes and at the end of the movie the young man is exposed as white, but learns a valuable lesson about being Black.
Fast forward 30 years to Spokane, Wash. Rachel Dolezal is outted as the head of the local chapter of the NAACP for pretending/passing to be Black when in fact she is as white as Karen Carpenter and Debbie Boone. Where do I begin with this one?
First of all, being Black is not a criteria for being a member of the NAACP. But I would think that having integrity would be and by representing herself as Black when she is as white as Vanilla Ice is not helping her cause. If anything she set her cause back. I have always questioned the purpose of the NAACP in the 21st Century because frankly, I think they have outlived their usefulness and the fact that they aren’t expressing any public outrage says volumes.
But what I find most intriguing is that the people who hold up Dolezal (a fake Black person) go after folks like me because our philosophical leanings go a different direction. Because we don’t believe in blaming white people for every evil on the planet, because we believe in personal responsibility and being self-reliant, because we believe in school choice and vouchers to get kids a good education and we believe in putting criminals behind bars instead of playing “hug a thug,” we get grief and hassle.
In her Facebook statement, Dolezal said, “Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights and will do everything in my power to help and assist, whether it means stepping up or stepping down, because this is not about me. It’s about justice. This is not me quitting; this is a continuum.”
I have to laugh at people who are saying, “What difference did it make if she could still do her job.” I will have to get a copy of the NAACP application form and see where you check off lying and deception.
And what’s even more ironic about all this is that she could have accomplished all her goals by simply being honest. She could have advocated for the less fortunate, fought for racial and social justice and stood up for the poor and disenfranchised. She just would have had to put on some extra Coppertone when she went out to protest on sunny days. But instead she lied and got busted.
So what’s the moral of the story?
The moral of the story folks is that there is no need to lie, engage in deception and chicanery. Just be honest. Had Dolezal been honest, all this could have been avoided and I’d be writing about something else right now. Oh, and one other thing. If you feel a need to pass yourself off as Black, at least get a hairstyle that doesn’t make you look like Scary Spice or Sideshow Bob from “The Simpsons.”
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
