Well said. You put forward my take on this as well.
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While you could be right about her being a grifter, that doesn’t sit well with me, in this particular scenario. This could stem from her youth. Maybe she wasn’t a well liked, or “popular” girl, and she yearned for attention. Having the sense of being invisible as an adolescent has a profound impact on some. All of the sudden, she finds an avenue where she can be, in her mind, “special”, and over the years, begins to believe the lie, and actually begins to self-identify. I think she suffers from a less violent, though the same thing that makes people partake in Munchhausen by Proxy, and illnesses of that ilk. She desperately wants attention and sympathy, so she conjures stories of racial bias, personal struggle, etc. In her mind, being black was her way to feel important/victimized/admired all in one. I don’t necessarily think this came from a bad place inside of her. A misguided place, yes, but I don’t know if there was any ill intent here, other than her potential sickness, shortsightedness, and a lack of reason. I suppose, let me ask it to you this way, what did she have to gain from this grift? This is an intriguing conversation. It always fascinates me how different people see things in so many different ways.
Crazy is too loose a term to describe the range of human thought and emotion. But Ms. Dolezal clearly has psychological problems that Sigmund Freud would have found intriguing. Having sued Howard University for racism against her, a white student; having been the target of eight separate, but uncorroborated hate crimes; she appears to have trouble with the truth and with perceiving herself as a victim. She is simply a social version of the Munchausen Syndrome.
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Holy crap…watching MHP interview with her right now. So many convoluted non-answers, deflection and confusing statements by this woman. She needs help. Her rationalizations have gone off the deep end. She sounds like a person who knows the gig is up. She’s been outed, and now she’s trying her best at psychobabble and appropriated terms like “down with the cause” and “for the movement”. Every now and then I hear her inflection or should I say ‘affectation’ and the way she pulls it back because she seems aware of how inauthentic it is. I can’t stomach this bullshitter.
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She appears to constantly be the ‘victim’. Now the veiled claim of physical abuse in the home. She filed a discrimination claim against Howard University as a white woman…and loses in the lower court and in the Appeals court. As a black woman she files false Hate Crime claims. I see her as believing she is a ‘victim’ who always feels like she is persecuted. I am no psychologist, nor do I want to be, but her patterns of behavior are quite observable. I see this pattern in people I work with in my job. It is not a particularly effective strategy in life.
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Why does no one dare ask the same questions of Bruce Jenner, or Chastity Bono?
She’s not crazy, she’s just a crook.
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She has been pretty careful about not saying that she IS black, but that she considers herself to be so. People are conflating this with the lies that her parents claim she has been telling. When you look at them, the baboon whips, the teepee and the Jesus Christ on her birth certificate, they do sound crazy.
People hear all that, and then they hear her parents making statements that “sound” bad, like stating that she lied about her race to get a scholarship and her job etc. Then they hear the stuff about her black dad, which upon closer inspection is just someone that she’s adopted as a father figure and you have “OMG that woman is so crazy, look at all the crazy things she’s saying and look at how she looks!”
It didn’t help that her parents, who pretty much were getting their revenge about the things she’s said about their abuse, which hit a bit too close it seems, went there with the mental health issues. People just conflated all of them to attack and ridicule her and were so fascinated by the bizarreness of it all that they didn’t stop to wonder if the things she was saying about her parents might be true, after all what kind of parents would do that to their kid, and speak about how they love them? I mean a teepee and a baboon whip?
And yet, so much has come out about all those bizarre things being true, her siblings support this. Her brother published a book last year where he corroborates her strange stories, and then there is that child rape trial.
The hate crimes weren’t “false allegations” it seems or the police would have said so, and pressed charges, they have not. There was indeed a teepee, her mother said so, and she explained it in her interviews today, also not a false story. Her family were hippies who became Creationists who “lived off the land” and enjoyed lot of Elk, in a state where hunting for food is not exactly odd.
The “baboon whip” is an actual term used in South Africa, it’s a name for a bull whip,which was indeed used on slaves. Her brother was removed from her parents custody on the basis of the court finding some credibility in the abuse allegations, the pedophile brother speaks of the abuse from the parents, the sister was shipped off to a home for abused kids.
That’s the thing that the media seems to be getting wrong. The stories she’s telling aren’t false, there is corroboration, there is evidence and a trail. It’s not sociopathy on her part. This bizarre nonsense is sociopathy on the part of the very people who told a false story about how she lied to her University, Howard says no she did not, her employer, who denies this as well and the NAACP who state that they didn’t ask. They all made assumptions.
When that reporter asked her a question, she told the truth about it being rather complicated, and it certainly is.
But if the only thing anyone can say about her is that her supposed false history is the crime she committed, well … her history is true. And it’s her creepy, abusive, Creationist parents who have created a false history to eviscerate her credibility before she testifies at her brother’s trial that not only did he sexually assault his adopted little sister, but that his parents know about it and did nothing. It’s LITERALLY the Duggars all over again, even down to a Pedophile named Joshua abusing his little sister, with the parents doing nothing to stop it.
Agree. Crazy? Probably not, but a serious liar.
EARLY LAST CENTURY:
"I lied. I am am profoundly sorry and promise never to lie to you again."
LATE LAST CENTURY:
"I misspoke. I am sorry if anyone was offended."
THIS CENTURY (as of yesterday)
"Well, there was a little bit of creative non-fiction going on there." Ie no apology.
What is “creative non-fiction” except purposefully lying?
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The immediate, technologically-fueled response to label Dolezal’s passing “crazy” exposes society’s racism; the assumption is that since no one in her right mind would choose to be black, she must be a head case.
This is from the “How Technology Allowed Rachel Dolezal to Pass as Black” piece, also from TPM Cafe. It’s the only other place where I’ve seen this theory mentioned.
You can probably find it in the comments section on the Fox News site, but I haven’t looked. Otherwise, I think the writers should better support their assertions that this point of view is popular before using it as the rationale for another strafing run on whites/men/straights/what-have-you.
Exactly, technically we can say a person who does armed robbery, kills, etc., is “crazy”. But by no means does that mean clinically crazy. She’s plots this stuff out, is vengeful in a personal way and knowingly lies her ass off. I think the clinical term for this is “sleazy”.
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When Bill O was caught in lies, I believe we said it needed to be even more of a media story. So let’s be fair here…
It now appears she committed mail fraud, reported false hate crimes to police, and now it’s quite possible she pressed charges falsely against her brother for sexual assault of a child. This is serious stuff. No, not headline material, but it’s certainly newsworthy while this is all being investigated.
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Is Rachel Dolezal ‘Crazy’?
She most assuredly has some sort of psychosis. How else can you explain the obverse of “passing as white”?
Having an affinity for “black culture” is understandable, but spending a couple decades telling everyone you’re African-American when everyone you grew up with knows you have white parents . . . Weird is the only adjective that fits.
I suppose that there were times in her, now, former life in which she had to endured the same hardships as “real” blacks. But she doesn’t look African-American in the least, so she was always “passing” unless in a group situation experiencing discrimination.
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And why wouldn’t they? This is a truly bizarre story in “post-racial” America.
The fact that she’s willing to talk to the national press about this shows that she’s maladjusted on a number of levels. A decent person after such a revelation would have the good sense to just slink away from further public scrutiny rather than going on national television on what can only be seen as some pathetic “rehabilitation” tour.
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Well, it could be her last chance to make some bucks, that it likely the motive to go on TV. Plus she indeed obviously loves the attention.
She might be facing criminal charges, she definitely will need the money. But I’m sure a defense fund would then be set up, and plenty of gullible supporters will donate.
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Really? Do you actually believe that she has not been making up stories in order to intentionally deceive people into believing she is black? Good luck with convincing anyone else of that.
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Why is TPM covering this story ad naseum. Spokane is a small city in Eastern Washington with no national significance at the moment. I haven’t seen any of the NAACP members there complaining so maybe she was doing a good job. There is no further story here and as Chammy says may be just a lack of news. I first came to TPM because of the good political reporting. Now its more of a snark page.
On CNN this morning the racial identity of Dolezal was discussed and the question arose “Is race biological or chosen.”… All that really needs to be done is a paternity test with her parents. That would settle her “identity”. In the larger sense, as I see it, race isn’t a choice any more than we choose out parents. Race is in our DNA. But one could “choose” to be black if it meant a good job or out of some deep seated mental thing. And I think that both of those (job and mental) may apply here.
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Not all liars are mentally ill. I don’t know what her motivations are but I don’t think she’s trustworthy in any sense of the word and I’m waiting for her and her parents’ 15 minutes of fame to expire.