False blackness and the backfiring of strategic essentialism

False blackness and the backfiring of strategic essentialism

Rachel Dolezal is a former African studies teacher and American civil rights activist. To the world, she was a black woman carrying out important and influential work for the black community. Yet shockingly, in 2015 it emerged from an interview with her parents that she is in fact, not black but of Czech and German descent. Not only did this shatter her career but it also shattered the perception of her as an ambassador for the black community.

This case cannot be discussed without unpicking how a white woman managed to convince so many people she was black for such a vast portion of her life. Firstly, is her appearance which later was revealed as being somewhat altered from her natural state as a blonde haired blue eyed child. Curly afro hair and dreadlocks have become symbols of not only blackness but also black empowerment and resistance to white norms. Not all black women sport their natural hair, with many opting for straight hair extensions, weave and hair relaxants, but in much discourse the embracing of natural hair is encouraged as a statement of racial pride. Dolezal used this in combination with tanned skin to appear as a “natural” mixed race woman.

She appeared to identify with the struggles of black women, using “our” and “we” pronouns to demonstrate her affiliation in academic papers and so on. Her identification with the black struggle rested upon her fabricated history of experiencing racism and the like. As Bell states in her analyses of Pakeha identity, ethnic consciousness is usually a result of being an ethnic minority and feeling the need for belonging. The feeling of being an ethnic minority is almost always combined with the collective experience of racism, and so Dolezal’s black identity went unquestioned until her disgruntled parents used the media as a way of outing her.

This case highlights the prominence of strategic essentialism. Strategic essentialism is a method whereby cultural flattening is used by ethnic minorities themselves, presenting heterogeneous ethnic groups as homogenous and simplifying cultural differences in order to progress socially and politically. For black communities in the West, this has been particularly useful, but the result is the absorption of essentialist ideas. Characteristics as simple as curly hair have been projected to a point where they are believed to be essential to the empowered black female thus allowing the black community themselves to be astoundingly duped.

Additionally, it appears that Rachel Dolezal truly did believe herself to be black and identified with her black image and counterparts very strongly. From here I can only leave a few important but possibly unanswerable questions to ponder on. So what does it really mean to be black? If the adoption of certain essential characteristics and the affiliation with a struggle indicate blackness, are racial barriers transforming? Is the world moving from biological and heritage denotations of race to something as simple as self- identification? And why couldn’t this individual be of assistance to the black community as her truest racial self?