Soon-to-be homeless Rachel Dolezal shunned by Progressives

Rachel Dolezal of Spokane is jobless and on the verge of homelessness (she claims). The reason is simple. At best, she’s perceived as a fraud, and at worst, a mentally ill fraud. Would you hire her?

Let me talk through this story with you a bit. I find it fascinating that Progressives have mostly shunned her when, on paper, they should embrace her.

Related: Rachel Dolezal is everything that’s wrong with political correctness

Dolezal is best-remembered as a white woman who pretended, for years, to be African-American. She appropriated a culture that she has no actual connection to and, once exposed, was rightfully derided. No longer is she the leader of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.

In a feature with the Guardian, ahead of her book’s release, we learn she’s not been able to overcome the adversity she created:

Today Dolezal is jobless, and feeding her family with food stamps. A friend helped her pay this month’s rent; next month she expects to be homeless. She has applied for more than 100 jobs, but no one will hire her, not even to stack supermarket shelves. She applied for a position at the university where she used to teach, and says she was interviewed by former colleagues who pretended to have no recollection of having met her. The only work she has been offered is reality TV, and porn. She has changed her name on all her legal documents, but is still recognized wherever she goes. People point at her and laugh.

It seems obvious why she’s unemployed. She chose to lie about her identity and thus brought these problems on herself. Yet, part of me feels bad for her. She’s so deep into this scam, she’s actually convinced herself she’s black and she’s a victim.

“This is obviously an issue a lot of people want to say things about,” Dolezal told the Guardian. “And it needs to be talked about, so it’s kind of helpful to create a punching bag. There’s nobody saying, ‘Well, that’s racist if you say that about Rachel’, or ‘That’s sexist if you say that about Rachel.’ There’s no protected class for me. I’m this generic, ambiguous scapegoat for white people to call me a race traitor and take out their hostility on. And I’m a target for anger and pain about white people from the black community. It’s like I am the worst of all these worlds.”

Victimhood at it’s worse.

You’d think she’d have more allies in the Progressive movement, but they’ve overwhelmingly shunned her. Why? Why is gender fluid, but not race? Progressive activists seem reticent to answer that question, instead, focusing on the fraudulent nature of her claims so they don’t have to take a hard stance. Again, the Guardian:

African American commentators called her a “blackface,” guilty of the worst extremes of cultural appropriation. She was “mentally ill”, and had cheated black people out of positions that were rightfully theirs. When Dolezal quoted the activist Dick Gregory to black talkshow host Loni Love – “White isn’t a race, it’s a state of mind” – the host exploded: “No, let me tell you something. I’m black. I can’t be you, I can’t reverse myself. That’s the difference.” Twitter span with comic memes, and still burns with comments along the lines of: “Why hasn’t anybody beaten her up already?

I think a reason she’s not accepted is that she’s originally a white woman, making it easier for Progressives to view this story as an example of white privilege. Dolezal used her privilege as white women to infiltrate an oppressed community that she’s essentially turned into props to use for her own benefit. Indeed, that’s offensive and exploitative, no matter what her original intent.

But is this truly an example of privilege? She was caught and exposed (albeit slowly) and now she’s jobless and claims to be on the verge of homelessness (though this could just be a way to gin up book sales). Where is the privilege to save her? She has a book coming out and she can profit off of it, but who is the audience? Presumably a white, Progressive audience. So if she makes significant money off her book, the Progressives who have rejected her case will be to blame.

Was she the beneficiary of white privilege? Maybe. But the greater question still should be answered by Progressives: is race fluid? And if it is, does white privilege truly exist? Both concepts — racial fluidity and white privilege — can’t seem to coexist here. If a white person can be black, then they can’t be the beneficiary of a privilege that only positively impacts a white person. If they don’t lose that privilege while identifying as non-white, then the term “white privilege” should be changed to reflect the actual reason behind the privilege.

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