Image from Daytime Tea Time, Youtube
Laura Browson’s 2018 documentary on Netflix chronicles the epic demise of Rachel Dolzare. Her harrowing back-story unpicks a complex web of deception, aspiration and pain. For those that don’t know of her, she is a Caucasian woman who concealed her racial identity by purporting to be African American for a more than 5 years before her dishonesty was exposed by a local TV reporter. At the height of her career in 2015 she worked as the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), an Ombudsman Commissioner for community policing and a part time professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washing University. Embroiled in a difficult legal case having accused her biological brother of historic sexual abuse, he and their parents embarked on a media campaign to discredit her to quash the trial.
Far from it being a private family feud, the ramifications of this exposé sparked fierce debate across America and beyond, it also featured on UK breakfast TV. The film threw up so many issues it is hard to attribute exactly what is responsible for Rachel’s demise. As a well known civil rights activist in Spokane, Washington, she was well known to the police and local authorities. Public distain for her appeared prevalent, yet it seemed her biggest challenge was to gain acceptance from African Americans. She said to a friend:
I have to make money. I’m hoping to mend this bridge- I’m hoping it’s like a family feud and there is a misunderstanding between some black people and me. And we’ll get over it when they come to know who I am.
Throughout the documentary Rachel was repeatedly told ‘I don’t feel you share the struggle of being a black female. I have earned the right to be called a black female typified by unfair bias treatment in stores, schools, policing and employment’.
Ironically it was evident during the filming that she faced far more extreme abuse, discrimination and death threats causing her and her sons to live an isolated anxious existence, unable to secure meaningful employment. Franklin- Rachel’s 13 year old son often struggled to get out of bed to go to school due to shire pressure, he said:
‘My life is different. I don’t have any close friends at school. I doubt that other kids have a mum that is hated across the nation.’
Courting the media in interviews Rachel found herself hemmed in by the fascination of wanting to be received as a black woman. When questioned on this she said:
Who’s the gatekeeper for blackness? Who can protect it? Define it, own it? Do we have the right to live exactly how we feel?
I think this may have been the defining issue in her downfall. It is absurd and profoundly naive given her insights and work experience in racial politics in America. Perhaps her admission to being a fantasist explains her drivers:
Creativity and imagination are fundamental in my identity and evolution of knowing who I am. I’m a creator, artist, I make things.
People from all races engage in racial appropriation, that isn’t the issue in my opinion. It was never about bronzing her skin or wearing kinky weaves. The documentary suggested this is the era of ‘trans’, transgender, trans-racial, transition and fluidity. They showed Caitlyn Jenner (a transgender female) several times in an iconic pose alongside a picture of Rachel in the same pose. It projected an openly progressive narrative in an intense public debate around white privilege, cultural appropriation, and race as not a hairstyle or affinity to music shown through news-feeds and talk show clips.
Rachel was hung out to dry because was it ever a feasible proposition they were helping her to promote by giving her a platform; can a person really choose their racial identity? Arguably transgender and trans-ration politics have different impacts on society.
For centuries racial classifications has infiltrated how systems, institutions, culture and dominant values have shaped cognitive mapping on how we think and behave. In a world of predominantly brown people, being able to transition from white to black is not an option because it would have to be both ways. This is why discourse around race never makes any traction. Race does not fit within the ‘trans’ trajectory of fluidity or freedom. Thus the Rachel Dolzare story was never anything more than an instrument to reinforce status quo division. People of colour do not own or control the social construct of Race.
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