The mid to late 2010s surely were an improbable time to live in. On a technological level, we went from the continuity of the late 2000s, through the comical and almost innocent-like way of using social media, to the latter domination in the most toxic form. In this utter foolery, celebrity scandals and revelations helped create an atmosphere of entertainment, to the delight of the daily social media users.
Interestingly enough, as time evolved, as early as the beginning of the 2010s, one also witnessed the importance of social media in politics. Not only during times of elections, but rather during revolutions, whether they were orchestrated or spontaneous. In this matter, when the Black Lives Matter protests took place during a worldwide lockdown period, the questions related to racism, race and colonialism were brought to the table. These questions were raised due to the ongoing police brutality, the attacks on black American women by the US political institutions, but also through issues related to “blackfishing” or racial passing. Consequently, Generation Z users did not waste their time exposing the mere celebrity who either said or wrote the wrong thing on the public platform, calling for their “cancellation”.
Yet, out of all these problematics raised by black Twitter, many were shocked to discover a new phenomenon which was, rather unexpected. As of 2015, a few women in the world of academia were exposed, denounced and accused of lies. The latter, depending on their age all had something in common: they lied about being black. Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug, CV Vitolo-Haddad, are some of the few names which provoked anger from both the black American and Afro-Latin community.
In this most intriguing issue, one wonders, almost ten years after she was debunked, why would a Rachel Dolezal abandon her privileged status of whiteness to join a side, considered inferior in every way to the eyes of the US white institutions?
In reality, this strange phenomenon which began to take place in 2015 should invite us to ask ourselves one question: were we wrong in our racial classifications? Should we keep supporting this idea of blackness which covers the obvious differences in the Afro descendant ranges? What if we failed to understand the evolution of the Afro descendant groups, by presenting the idea of blackness as a fixed, and blocked ethnic and racial heritage which did not take into account the other phenotypes, and prototypes both the slave trade and colonialism left behind us?
Rachel Dolezal: Black Americans’ Hypocrisy or Dishonesty?
Rachel Dolezal is dangerous and signifies one thing. White people are starting to lose their identity. In that sense, they will have no problem trying to replace their minorities, just to feel alive again. Despite the colonial propaganda which placed the black body at the bottom, the violence of the colonizers always stemmed from their inner jealousy towards the Natives and Black Africans. They wish they had their essence. This article is not here to attack Dolezal and hurt her, but to present her for who she is. A colonial agent.
Rachel Dolezal had it all. The beauty, the intelligence, the avant-garde. But she wrongly thought the bed she made was comfortable enough for her to be lying in it. Indeed, she was brilliant in the academic world, but lacked wisdom. Though she had been an active activist in Spokane for a little less than a decade, with an interesting academic past to support her arguments, Dolezal who had been in bad terms with her family for several years, did not see her downfall coming.
Some whistleblower told a group of white journalists that Dolezal was not who she claimed she was. She was a white woman pretending to be black, Native American and white. It is true that she invented herself an interesting past, claiming to have been raised in teepees, living like an ancient Native American, though surrounded by constant modernity.
This childhood of hers did not seem credible at all, but she, looked like many ambiguous pro-blacks who are extremely present in non-mixed black circles of the Western world. These Amber Roses of academia enjoy the privilege they exude in black spaces, especially from black men who worship the idea of a multiracial lady ready to sacrifice her little twenty-five per cent of African blood for the freedom of an unmixed black group.
Dolezal was a fraud, it is true, but the story behind her exposure was rather gruesome. As her academic career flourished, some turmoil erupted in her white family. Her brother was allegedly accused of having molested one of her adopted black sisters. As a response, the academician decided to testify against that said brother to defend her sister. This decision, allegedly, rubbed the parents the wrong way. As a revenge, they denounced her and exposed her little secret. She was not black American, native or triracial but white American or Czech and German descent.
Dolezal, like Jessica Krug and Vitolo-Haddad after her, was a colonial, racist, psychopathic fraud. According to testimonies, both Krug and Dolezal adopted attitude of superiority towards both black and white students, by pretending they were the source of all knowledge. Russian-Jewish Jessica Krug, who lied about being black American, then Afro-Latina from the Bronx, was angry everytime her colleagues suggested the idea of incorporating new teachers in the black and African departments.
(It is also worth noting the silence of the Jewish community, when Krug exploited the trauma of slavery to advance her career in academia. If a black or mixed person had lied about having had an Holocaust survivor as a grandparent, they would be sent to Israel, to the Shoah Museum in Germany and forced to apologize until their death. Yet, the Jewish community chose to remain silent)
Dolezal would take pleasure in humiliating her white students regarding questions related to black history. She was arrogant, and acted more black than a regular black person. The same problem was highlighted by witnesses in the case of Jessica Krug. The latter was described by colleagues, whether Afro-Latin, Euro-descendants or Black Americans as being manipulative, playing with trauma, and always clashing with individuals she considered not being pro-black enough.
In that sense, both Dolezal and Krug surely did not come into the black spaces out of love, out of respect for the black community and a desire to change the members of such structure. They were colonial agents, they came to conquer, dominate, control and shine, personally. They had the intention to replace black people, themselves.
In both cases, these women came to the higher sphere of the black community. They did not come from the bottom but infiltrated from the sphere of power, through the field of academia. He who thinks, writes, re-writes and thus possesses. Krug and Dolezal knew that.
Automatically after they were exposed, black social media users used Twitter and any other platform to voice their rage, anger. They felt betrayed. Among them, former colleagues, friends or students who wrongly believed these white women were black. Unambiguous and dark skin US women explained their frustration, claiming both women took away opportunities from them, but also from Afro-Latin academics who did not have the chance to go to college, educate, form themselves and think about their future.
However, one question remains. Who let Jessica Krug and Rachel Dolezal happen?
This questions cast doubts on the real interests of the black American community. Indeed, why are black people, especially unambiguous dark skin black women, whether in the academic, entertainment, regular worlds, so adamant about claiming the whitest mixed individuals as black, while feeling angry when a Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug are being exposed?
It is clear that, in both the academic and regular worlds, black Americans tend to feel superior to other black diasporas spread throughout Western Europe, and even in South America. Since they are the number one minority in the US, the most powerful country on earth, their fights, their lives, cultures have been presented by Western white European leaders as the prime examples of a successful blackness. The black Americans are no longer African, they are assimilated into an Anglo culture from which they created their own structures known as black cultures, including their own music (jazz, blues, rnb, funk, zydeko, hip-hop), food or vernacular. In that sense, they constitue, to themselves, a unique ethnic group. Their economic superiority, even in their constant exploitation by their white institutions, made them superior to any other black group living in the Southern hemisphere.
The French institutions decided to add Josephine Baker to their Pantheon, the most prestigious “altar” for a deceased personality. Baker does not reflect any symbol at all for the Black French, whether they are West Indians (descendants of slaves) or sons/daughters of exploited immigrants. She was chosen in a poor 2.0 Barack Obama strategy, especially when she had a blackness deemed acceptable and enjoyable for the common white French. She was a black American woman, assimilated and whitewashed. She was far from the Négresse Solitude or any other black and mixed-race political individuals who fought against imperialism. She was no Thomas Sankara. She was assimilated and not deemed a threat to the eyes of the white French.
In that sense, the lives of an Afro-Bolivian, Afro-Boricua, Afro-Peruvian or Afro-Uruguayans are, in the hierarchy, far less important than the lives of a black American. The others come from the Third World, are poor, speak Spanish and have no political and economic power. In this regard, they do not exist. The same black American community which deemes itself more important than the others they can despise. (in this regard, the disdain of black Americans towards Afro-Latinos in the U.S)
The improbable one drop rule allowed black American intellectuals and black women to block and manipulate generations of mixed-race individuals who were, out of disdain for the black race from the Whites, placed within the black group, when they belonged to another category. This policy led to the misconception that “blackness comes in all shades”. Blackness does not, but mixed-race does. For years pro-black thinkers claimed to be in favor of the protection of their own, but also managed to dissimulate their inner thoughts of self-hatred by constantly chasing after multiracial individuals they claimed as black and forced to stay in the black clan.
This toxic black policy of identity is applied by black American scholars on European public persona of mixed ancestry who are falsely described as black by the same powerful black American thinkers. Aleksander Pushkin, an octoroon whose great-grandfather was Hannibal a black African, and Alexandre Dumas père, a quadroon, were both, forcefully classified as BLACK by the black American academics. The two legendary authors lived a white European reality, were white men who carried a percentage of African ancestry. This heritage they had made them mixed white men, but certainly not black at all. Yet, in their dishonesty, the black academic corpus want to expand their obsession with white people to other blacks’ identities.
This obsession with whiteness and white mixed people they refuse to call mixed stems from low self-esteem. The unambiguous, unmixed black group is also composed of members who wished they were not West African-looking. The racial admixture in the mixed-race community ignites envy in their heart, as the Blacks consider the mixed group members are superior, through their proximity to whiteness, but also to the door of escapism they allegedly possess, through that non-black blood of theirs. These thoughts are fallacious but are internally believed by the black group, whose members claim pride in their race, while chasing after the constant approbation, recognition of mixed people whose identiy remains blocked by the horde of toxic Blacks who refuse to let them go.
In that sense, Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug were created by the black American themselves who are fans of ambiguous looking people who want to become the new faces of blackness. The mere fact that a white-looking mixed woman would dare to abandon her privileges to sacrifice herself, her beauty to the black cause, is perceived as the best sign of support from the unmixed black group.
The black communities throughout the Western world do not know how to protect themselves. They welcome anybody, are quick to call any white person with a little bit of groove ‘black by association’, when the other minorities, whether Asian, Latin or Arab, do not welcome foreigners so easily.
By the time of segregation, and later with the Black Panthers, black academicians or thinkers always favored white people with African ancestry as the faces of black struggle. White men such as Walter Francis White, Charles Waddell Chesnutt who possessed less than ten per cent of African ancestry were cheered by the black community who adored them, when they were white men. The issue of colorism regarding Rosa Parks was also brought up following her arrest. Indeed, a months before she refused to let her seat, a dark skin black teenager, Claudette Colvin, had done the same but her case was hidden by the black leaders since she was dark skin, pregnant and unmarried. The period of segregation lifted white leaders with drops of black blood as the faces of pro-blackness, with the support of the unmixed population. Later on, the Black Panthers reproduced the same mistreatment of dark skin black women.
Powerful fighters like Afeni Shakur, mother to the late rap legend Tupac Shakur, were placed in the back, reduced to the status of inferiority by black black men themselves who rather promoted mixed race women with a proximity to whiteness as the faces of the black community.
In this regard, Kathy Cleaver, Angela Davis, Elaine Brown were chosen as the faces of the Black Panther movement, while they did not represent the majority of unmixed black people whose profiles remained hidden for political reasons.
Dolezal and Krug knew about the obsession, sexual attraction and envy of both black men and women for the whitest mixed category. They did infiltrate with the idea of playing with the illogical reasoning of black people regarding their utter submission of white people carrying distant African ancestry, trying to act pro-black than Blacks themselves.
By promoting the white individuals in the black fight, unmixed black people just reveal that they consider progress, social elevation and power to be synonymous with whiteness.
White Women, Sexuality And Proximity To Blackness
The white community is the most violent on earth. They not only were initiators of genocides, mass murder, torture, slavery and mass deportation, but they also truly believe, in their institutions, in a pyramidal structure where the elite should crush the bottom.
In that sense, in order to understand the brutality of colonialism in Africa, one needs to focus on how Europeans colonized other Europeans, hence methods they simply reproduced in Africa, Latinized America and Asia for centuries.
In this scheme, white women, who were always considered inferior to white European men, the original creators of machism, suffer from this pyramidal structure to the core. The same thing could be said for the men, too. Consequently, those who come from the lower class in the white society are deemed undesirable and do not find a place within the middle or higher levels. They are thus, in this total social violence, treated like trash who deserve to eat the bottom for the rest of their lives.
This white-on-white rejection begins with economics, then politics and finally beauty standards. Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug and CV Vitolo-Haddad had one thing in common. They did not fit in the white society, were deemed ugly by white beauty standards and thus had no chance to make it in their racial group.
Consequently, the white trash individual is rejected in the white sphere, but considered a king or a queen in black society. Indeed, in the continuity of the self-hatred of many members regarding their unescapable pure blackness, the white trash possess all the attributes of the black experience, without the blackness.
In this regard, sexuality is the realm where improbable, unhealthy and neo-colonial racial relationships between white women and black or mixed race men form. The Kardashians are the most famous neo-colonial family, but the case of rapper Drake also illustrates our point.
The white trash have no culture, are cultural errands, and want to be a part of the black community they still despise knowing they will be elevated for their whiteness. Knowing white people from the higher spheres have total disdain for them as white trash, low black people will give them satisfaction.
Sophie Brusseaux, a former French porn actress and groupie turned professional painter, is far from the standard of beauty for the white community. She is no Brigitte Bardot, no Margot Robbie, not even a Julia Roberts for the fanatics who deem the latter a supreme goddess. Brusseaux has unpleasant features, is not pretty, and would be considered extremely fat for white men, who would prefer a Bar Refaeli instead.
Yet, though not good-looking, Brusseaux managed to sell herself on the black market for her body. She is shaped like a black woman, without the blackness. She thus represents the fantasy of all colorists. Since Brusseaux, like any other white groupie of her range would never appeal to a white man of the elite, she had to find her niche within the lower spheres of the black sphere, and thus found a way to a proximity to blackness, eternally (or for the next eighteen years to come).
Drake, a biracial Jewish man fell for the trick and found himself trapped for the next eighteen years. This revelation was not only a humiliation to him, since he procreated with a well-known prostitute, immoral and abject individual who exploited sexuality and birth for a come up, but also because he reduced his social level by reproducing with the lower range.
Out of jealousy, and because these white women do not know where to stand, the creation of mixed race children becomes the ultimate way of asserting their colonial position in the white sphere. Dolezal not only had adopted black brothers and sisters, but also consistantly reproduced with black men to maintain this proximity to blackness at all costs.
Many racist white women, whether in the U.S or in Western Europe want to be black or mixed race and though, racist or simple self-haters, will marry black and mixed and create mixed children to be an adjacent part of the black group for eternity.
This constant proximity to blackness allows them to keep a stronghold over the group and never back down to the white sphere which never granted them any power in the past. Sexuality is thus another form of infiltration, colonialism. Jessica Krug, who had morphed prior, had the idea to become Afro-Latina after her Boricua boyfriend Gary Kemp, welcomed her in her Puerto-Rican family in the Bronx. Through sexuality, Krug had the opportunity to study, mimick the family members as a white woman, before reproducing it somewhere else as soon as she put an end to the relationship.
Yet, one question remains. Should Krug and Dolezal be attacked when the black community still refuses to recognise that a heavily mixed individual is no longer black following generations of racial admixture? How could these two women have any respect for a community which accepts, embraces the one drop rule, going as far as calling a man like Walter Francis White, “light skin”, just to refuse to recognise him for who he was, a white man?
Why blame Dolezal when unmixed black women aggressively want Mariah Carey and Meghan Markle to be faces of blackness?
On The Importance of Creating A Multiracial White Category
The one drop rule needs to be debunked for several reasons. First, it allowed generations of racist white and black people to kidnap and block people’s identities for years. The white community supports the idea of the one drop rule to both protect their racial purity and economic elevation, and thus to prevent any foreigner from taking advantage of any progress they would generate. The black community, traumatized by centuries of dehumanization, suffers from low self esteem and needs to nurture toxicity to promote their new political leaders, or community saviors. The same black community is against the idea of individualism and wants its members to never emancipate themselves from the structure at all, forcing them to sacrifice who they are and their own particularities for the group. In that sense, a black man, not mixed at all who has a preference for Asian women will have to justify his choice. A black woman who marries a white man, will have to explain why. Therefore, this constant obsession for the group leads to the backwardness of the community.
Yet, if the one drop rule was to be removed, the Whites would not suffer from it much since they possess the power. But the Blacks would see their number lower drastically, especially if a mixed race category was to come into existence. In that sense, they could realise that their unmixed group did not make that much progress over the centuries, especially when the mixed descendants played a huge role in the advancement of black causes. The mixed race community would hurt many Blacks who had placed their faith in the hands of a mixed white savior.
The Black academicians and activists who support the idea of the one drop rule, along with the manipulative mixed race politicians who want to stay in the black sphere for their own little advantages knowing the Whites would never let them seat at their table, want to force the false argument that black people come in all shades, thus blocking the reality and the various, specific experiences and conditions of the mixed race community hidden under the toxicity of black politics.
Yet, when it comes to the reality of history, after four centuries of oppression and a century of colonialism, if the white slave masters divided the new populations of the New World in black and white, this reality is not always clear for all. Indeed, some people are made of so many things that they can not be placed within the black or white category at all.
In the Caribbean, the Swahili coast, and Latinized America, individuals can be black, white or simply multiracial. In this multiracial spectrum, white mestizos and black mestizos do exist. And by supporting the one drop rule, it is the place of these individuals which remain erased in history.
If one mentions the issue of colonial rape, no one wants to talk about the child conceived after the rape.
The multiracial white or mixed white people were submitted to some of the harshest condition following the slave trade. They were not only used as pawns to amplify the racist policies of whitewashing, but were also quantified by the white authorities who applied the one drop rule against them. The mixed white group represents an important part in history filled with trauma, violence, abuse, rape, hence episodes which need to be recognised, respected by the creation of a multiracial white category, very well distinct from the biracials and multiracial black individuals.
If these clear distinctions are made, then millions of individuals could find their place in the spectrum of history, it is true, but could also properly heal from the centuries of abuse which changed our DNA, bodies, phenotypes due to to centuries of colonial rule.
If this category was to be created, then no Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug could think about infiltrating anything in the future.
Written by Victoria Kabeya, All Rights Reserved
[3] “LHHMIAMI Controversy over Veronica Vega’s ethnicity flares up again” Starcasm, 2019
[5] Samuels, Allison, “RACHEL DOLEZAL’S TRUE LIES”, Vanity Fair, 2015
[7] Ziyad, Hari, “The Stories and Lies of Jess Krug”, Vanity Fair, 2020
VKY 