Black
White
Hispanic
Indian.
Female.
Male.
Straight
George Sand.
Some people say we can "self-identify." If that is true then we can self-misrepresent. That isn't bad in every case. Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin wrote under a male pen name to avoid misogyny. Rock Hudson hid his homosexuality as virtually all men did in his era to avoid Hollywood discrimination. Some women did all they could to alter their appearance to serve in the Civil War. Rachel Dolezal was raised in a multi-racial family. She came to identify with the adopted Black children in her
family. She received a full scholarship at Howard University and changed her appearance to resemble a Black woman. Jeb Bush so internalized his wife's ancestry that he convinced himself that he was Hispanic! Bruce Jenner underwent sex change operations to become Caitlyn Jenner.
Lying about one's identity is probably a sign that something is wrong somewhere but it is protective of who you really are: "If they find out who I really am they'll arrest me." Or fire me, or beat me or kill me. You are lying to others, primarily. Changing one's identity however shows that one is deeply uncomfortable with oneself. Poor Michael Jackson. So unhappy.You know who you are and you don't like that person. You want to be a different person. You are destroying who you are, killing that person. Neither lying about identity nor changing identity is a "mistake," it is a conscious decision, but changing is extreme.
Bruce Jenner was deeply uncomfortable with himself but he did not lie about his identity, he changed it. His choice! Caitlyn asks us to accept her as we did Bruce. Our choice now:
Accept:
-to give admittance or approval to
No.
-to endure without protest or reaction
Yes.
-to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable
No.
-to recognize as true : believe>refused to accept the explanation<
I don't know. That one comes at me from different directions. Do I recognize as "true" that Jenner is now a woman? Can "true" identity, in this case gender, really, "truly" be changed? It's the same human being. Caitlyn is the same one who won the gold medal in the men's decathlon in the 1976 Olympics. If we recognize Caitlyn, 2015, as true do we recognize Bruce, 1976, as true? How can we "recognize" both of those "as true?"
The example given by Merriam Webster, "believe, e.g. refused to accept the explanation," is not the same, to me, as the definition, "to recognize as true." I "accept" Jenner's "explanation" that he had a sex change and is now Caitlyn, a female. Do I "believe" that, "recognize" that "as true." I don't know. I "accept" it as a fact.
Jenner did not lie to us but (s)he is asking us to believe opposite things. That is unfair and it seems to me to be some form of misrepresentation.
Rachel Dolezal is the head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Spokane, Washington. She is colored White. She self-identified on an application as Indian as well as being Black. She is comfortable being anything other than White. The NAACP does not have any race restriction to head a local chapter and the subject of Rachel's "true" race came up in the hiring process. Her White parents were insulted that she was claiming to be Black (and Indian)
and told on her. One of her (Black) adopted siblings has said that he finds Rachel's self-identification to be a form of racism. You can self-identify with the cause of African-American advancement, many, many people do, without having black skin or being of African descent (I don't like "African-American," I don't consider any of my Black friends to be of African descent, they're of American descent to me.), but if you self-identify as Black in America then you are saying that you share in the particular history of being Black in America, of being descended from slaves, the most painful thing I can imagine; you are saying, when you self-identify as Black in America, that you are descended from Jim Crow and Bull Connor and lynchings. That you cannot do if you are White and it is an insult to what it means to be Black in America for a White American to self-identify as Black. I would be insulted, and hurt if my White daughter was passing herself off as Black (or Indian). And I would be insulted and angry if I were Black.
When we choose, we also reject. "Rachel, don't you want to be White? Don't you want to be our daughter?" It is hurtful! "What was so wrong with being a guy, Caitlyn?" When you choose to be
something you are not, you are lying, to yourself and to others and you are revealing self-hatred and
hatred of those who made you a self.*
There is the insult just of the lie. Lying is absolutely justifiable sometimes, necessary even, excusable sometimes when it is not necessary, but people do not like to be lied to! I think to some extent the more transparent the lie the more insulting it is. It is not that other people didn't know and would never have known that Rachel Dolezal was White. It was obvious! But in addition she had parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, a husband, who knew that she was White. Did she take them for fools? People don't like being made to be fools.
Take Ward Churchill. Please. Another pale face. "Ward Churchill": good old Indian name, huh! Thought if he grew his hair long and got involved in AIM he could pass as an Indian. That's insulting! Became a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado. Fools. Shame on them.
I do not say "Viva Bush" as the New York Times said. I can't condemn Jeb Bush either, I don't know what to make of him checking the Hispanic box on his voter registration form. It was not a mistake, a literal slip of the pen. It was not a lie either, he does not go around saying "I am Hispanic," he clearly feels himself to be one with Hispanic people, speaks Spanish fluently, Mexican wife, children half-Hispanic, and like with Rachel Dolezal, it was one of Jeb's family, one of his half-Hispanic children who first called him on the voter registration form. Jeb does not deny his "old family" roots (may like to distance himself from his brother, though)... I don't know what that is about. I feel confident what it is not about but not what it is about. I wish a candidate for president hadn't done that.
#I have never had an identity crisis, never had a sex change operation. Never changed my name, put on blackface or bleached my skin; never claimed to be a dispossessed Duke or Dauphin. I bet you haven't either. I am comfortable with myself. Even if other people aren't. Bet you are too.
The individuals profiled above present a wide range of identity crises. They chose and we have the right but not the obligation to choose to "accept" or not to accept their changes. Acceptance or rejection is individual to each of them and with each of us. These are mine:
-Rachel Dolezal: Reject.
-Michael Jackson: Reject.
-Jeb Bush: Reject.
-Ward Churchill: Reject.
-Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner: The only one I evaluated in detail according to the several definitions of "accept." Accept.
-Female soldiers in the Civil War: Accept.
-Rock Hudson: Accept.
-Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin aka George Sand: Accept.
*Saturday People magazine published an article with these quotes from Rachel's Black brother: "It's like what psychologists call self-hating," he continued. "She had no reason not to like herself being white. She was an awesome artist and she could have accomplished everything she did, if she had stayed exactly the same."...Ezra told Buzzfeed he felt that Rachel's alleged deception was a "slap in the face" to African Americans and their struggles."She puts dark makeup on her face and says she black," he said. "It's basically blackface," he said.
