Joshua Dolezal’s troubles could perhaps explain at least one piece of the complicated puzzle behind this saga, the question of why a couple claiming to be Rachel Dolezal’s parents would expose their daughter to such public humiliation and perhaps legal jeopardy....The affadavit in support of the arrest warrant has a racial theme: "The family had a subscription to National Geographic magazine... Joshua Dolezal showed [redacted] his collection of photos of topless and naked African women.... Joshua Dolezal was turned on by the black body and was curious about black women sexually."
Joshua Dolezal, an English professor, seems to be a respected writer. He has a memoir published by the University of Iowa Press, "Down from the Mountaintop: From Belief to Belonging." The WaPo reporter extracts material about Rachel from the memoir:
[He] watches his mother praying while listening to his father read an entire chapter of the Bible before dinner, “as is customary.” Lawrence Dolezal is reading about Joshua, he who slew Goliath.So Joshua stands accused, and he himself accused Kevin Moore. Oh, what a family we have here! Who is telling the truth? Maybe they are all deeply involved in creative storytelling. The WaPo reporter ends his piece with Joshua's own author's note from the memoir: "To remember is to reconstruct and interpret... and this is as truthful as story as my memory can tell."
“I know she is praying silently, trying to envision me as my namesake — the firstborn leader of his people — the way she thinks of my sister, Rachel, in relation to the Jewish matriarch who wept for her exiled descendants,” it reads....
“[M]y mother dressed my sister and me in homemade corduroy overalls and plaid shirts with elk-antler buttons and the four of us went to church, where the other Jesus People struck up folk tunes on their guitars.”...
The memoir also offers the most complete picture heretofore of Rachel Dolezal’s broken marriage. According to Lawrence Dolezal, she was married to a black man, Kevin Moore, and the couple divorced in 2004....
“When my sister brought her husband home after they had eloped, she brought the project of their love,” he wrote. “Her job was to say, ‘Baby, could you wash while I dry?’ His job was to play along. Our job was to ignore the muffled shouts behind the bedroom door.”
It wasn’t just shouts. Without naming Moore, Joshua Dolezal also wrote Rachel reported being “thrown by the hair” and sexually assaulted by her husband while she was asleep.
Joshua Dolezal was angry.
“I murdered him hundreds of times in my sleep,” he wrote of his former brother-in-law.
To get all "trans-" about it: There is outward reality and there is the truth as it is understood and believed in your mind.
If the 2 states, outward and inward, align for you, well, then aren't you lucky? But if they don't, what do you do? The mainstream answer is: Get your head straight.
But the artist's answer is to write a memoir and "reconstruct and interpret." That might do some damage though, if you name names, like Rachel and Kevin Moore. But mostly, the artist's answer is as honored as the mainstream answer... at least if the art is good and contained within the covers of book.
And then there's the trans-realist who goes beyond memoir-writing and lives what the straights call a lie. That could be interesting, charming, even productive, but it can get destructive, especially when the legal authorities are invited inside this inner world of a non-truth-aligned mind.
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48 comments:
I thought David slew Goliath. And he was the youngest brother, not the first born. The memoirist didn't pay attention during his time with the "Jesus people." If he really spent any time with them at all.
Soap opera goes into the media and connects to all the narratives.
The audience tends not to be male.
The NYT needs to hire the family as a team of feature writers. They have demonstrated talent with words that imply whatever terrible thing you want to imagine did actually happen to someone.
Girlfriends tend to tell you about the dream they had last night.
Also they're mad about what you did in it for most of the day.
This is a harmony of inner and outer.
@Sydney
You are correct: David slew Goliath, and he was the youngest of the sons of Jesse. However, the fault is not that of Joshua Dolezal, but of the Washington Post reporter. “I know she is praying silently, trying to envision me as my namesake — the firstborn leader of his people — the way she thinks of my sister, Rachel, in relation to the Jewish matriarch who wept for her exiled descendants,” That is what Mr. Dolezal wrote, which correctly identifies Joshua as the leader of his people (after the death of Moses). The post reporter is the one who writes "Lawrence Dolezal is reading about Joshua, he who slew Goliath." So, blame Justin Moyer for lack of familiarity with the Bible.
Does Jenner know about the dream thing or does the estrogen treatment take care of it.
The important point about James Thurber, as I think Vicki Hearne pointed out that Dorothy Parker pointed out, was that Thurber actually liked his difficult, bitchy women.
The inner and outer is an important part of that.
You are really covering the heck out of this story. Why so interested in spreading all the details?
I hope the clock is running out of the 15 minutes of fame for all these folks.
PS: I thought the Rachel is pretending to be black stuff surfaced elsewhere than the parents?
Rachel Dolezal may have helped orchestrate
A good crazy woman, already known for filing phony crime reports, can use the courts to cause tons of grief to others.
Back when she was white -
sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman
She be lovin' that legal system long time.
What's interesting about artificial intelligence is that there's no inner. So philosophically it's a tool for thinking about the mind, or the impossibility of AI.
Coleridge, after Schelling : For, grant that an object from without could act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no Inward. We remove one surface, but to meet with another.
More strictly, for thinking about what language does to your thinking.
You wind up at Wittgenstein.
Holy f!@#.
Just when it couldn't possibly get any more bizarre. Kinda makes the "trans" part of this lean more toward the mental illness side, doesn't it?
The affadavit in support of the arrest warrant has a racial theme: "The family had a subscription to National Geographic magazine... Joshua Dolezal showed [redacted] his collection of photos of topless and naked African women.... Joshua Dolezal was turned on by the black body and was curious about black women sexually."
The previous line from the article:
The affidavit included claims that an older incident of alleged abuse of another victim in 1991 had a racial element.
He's 39 now, which makes him 15 or so then. We're to understand a 15 year old boy was curious about naked women? Whoever could have guessed? This seems McMartinish to me. In that case agenda driven police interpreted normal sex acts perversely and indicative of sexual dysfunction, which they claimed supported the backstory of an abuser. But in reality the dysfunction was purely that of the investigators.
There are actual sex acts alleged in this case, but it's quite easy yo believe someone as unstable as Rachel fabricated the story to further her agenda. It'll be interesting to see whether there is any evidence.
Inner and outer are like male and female.
o+ reclining nude (Modigliani twitter feed)
"claiming to be Rachel Dolezal’s parents" This is a weird construction. Were they or not? If they thought they were - don't want to go there.
If she were a black person "passing" as white, white people wouldn't be making a big deal about it. We'd just say, "Ok" or "Good for her"
It really is a fascinating look how black and white people see race- their own races and each other's- very differently. It's almost as if blackness comes with a certain responsibility toward being black.
The text of article has been changed since you posted.
Your quote reads:
"the question of why a couple claiming to be Rachel Dolezal’s parents would expose their daughter"
It now reads:
"the question of why Rachel Dolezal’s parents would expose their daughter"
They took out the words, "a couple claiming to be"
This is all fascinating in so many ways. I feel guilty for observing it from afar as if it were a television serial instead of about real people.
This mess actually makes me feel sad for the NAACP.
A little bit, anyway. A tiny, bitty little speck of sorrow.
Maybe you need an electron microscope to see it, but it's there, trust me.
"If she were a black person "passing" as white, white people wouldn't be making a big deal about it.
Well, it's not as if she was just passing as black at nightclubs or something: Dolezal made a career out of her claim to be black.
I don't think it's quite possible to do that in reverse, as there's no white equivalent to the NAACP (i.e., there's no way to make a career in the racial grievance industry as an aggrieved white).
And then there's the tie-in with demands that men trying to pass as women be accepted as women ...
I don't think it's quite possible to do that in reverse, as there's no white equivalent to the NAACP (i.e., there's no way to make a career in the racial grievance industry as an aggrieved white).
Yeah, that's part of what makes it so interesting.
She was on the Today Show today, being interviewed. Roland Martin tweeted she should "holla" at her people on a Black TV network because they have different questions for her.
None of that would be happening in reverse. So who is more protectionist of their racial status? White people, who supposedly have all the privilege- or black people?
Also, this is the second story we have read about Rachel Dolezal wherein we hear about "the black body". What's that about?
So, wait... Rachel Dolezal has a child, a real one. Where is her son? Her child wouldn't be old enough to be an adult, yet. Who's raising him? Why did she lose custody? How did she "have no legal right to her son"? How does that happen? Was she a stepmom?
It's amazing how many unanswered questions there are in this case. The rabbit hole just keeps going. Reporters will drop facts in the last paragraph and not follow them up.
"If the 2 states, outward and inward, align for you, well, then aren't you lucky? But if they don't, what do you do? The mainstream answer is: Get your head straight."
Not mainstream anymore. See Jenner, Caitlyn.
"But the artist's answer is to write a memoir and "reconstruct and interpret." That might do some damage though, if you name names, like Rachel and Kevin Moore. But mostly, the artist's answer is as honored as the mainstream answer... at least if the art is good and contained within the covers of book."
Who is to say "if the art is good"? Implies judgment and standards of quality, white upper-class privilege. If the answer is their answer and they believe it, who are we to reject it?
"And then there's the trans-realist who goes beyond memoir-writing and lives what the straights call a lie. That could be interesting, charming, even productive, but it can get destructive, especially when the legal authorities are invited inside this inner world of a non-truth-aligned mind."
"What the straights call": yes, the straights represent just one perspective among others, and we know reality is perspectives all the way down. Nietzsche won. But why isn't destruction just as interesting as "charming" lies? Progs have been at it since 1789 and show no signs of letting up. What, exactly, should be protected against destruction, and are there any grounds left to oppose it?
Huh, ain't that a hoot.
These are people, not works of art.
Was going to suggest "transabuse" as a new term for those who wish to identify as being abused as a child even when they were not, but the term seems to be in prior use. "Transabusedchild", however, is still available and could be a useful term to describe such people.
We couldn't have National Geographic in the house when I was a kid. I had to choose between the Sears and the Penneys Summer catalog. Penneys usually won out.
It is now reported that she told people in Spokane that her father was a black Oakland police officer.
Or how about the trying to pretend your painting is an original work of art?
http://www.jammiewf.com/2015/shocker-psycho-dolezal-claimed-her-father-was-black-oakland-police-officer/
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rachel-dolezal-may-have-also-plagiarized-a-175-year-old-painting/
A new thing every day!
"Well, it's not as if she was just passing as black at nightclubs or something: Dolezal made a career out of her claim to be black.
I don't think it's quite possible to do that in reverse, as there's no white equivalent to the NAACP (i.e., there's no way to make a career in the racial grievance industry as an aggrieved white)."
I could picture a light skinned black person trying to pass as white during the Jim Crow era--and I'd be sympathetic to such a person in that situation as it could mean personal safety and basic rights. My main scorn would be aimed at a system that is racist enough that it requires people to try and pass as another race. Donezal on the other hand was not facing life as a white person in the same way a black person during Jim Crow would have suffered. She just wanted the "hip" status, the "victim" status, and to advance her career in the professional racialist industry.
Are we on a new frontier of distractiblity and stories that mean very little? I think we are! Who knows, maybe it's actually a new MARKET.
I call it boutique. These are boutique issues that don't very much move us forward, in my mind. In the grand scheme of things these stories mean very little. And rabbit hole or sink hole, however it was someone described it, is completely correct.
These are ultimately superficial matters that don't inspire us much to think on a deeper level and make meaningful connections between ideas and principles. They are well suited to fragmentation and cultures that are not that cohesive.
I am trans-bored with crazy people.
Joshua is no prize. Note how he spells is last name. He must be some kind of self-identified transCzech.
Two Professors in this Jesus freak family? Were they home schooled? A
Are the other siblings academics also?
MayBee said...
Also, this is the second story we have read about Rachel Dolezal wherein we hear about "the black body". What's that about?
A black body is an object which absorbs all electromagnetic radiation (e.g. light) of all frequencies and emits radiation whose spectrum depends only on the temperature of the body. It's a model, not a real thing.
The idea lead to describing the "color" of light as a temperature in photography, etc: sunlight ~ 7,000+ degrees K, light-bulb ~ 2,000 to 5,000 deg K, which is redder than sunlight, hence the old color correction filters or digital camera settings.
When used by activists, politicians and their ilk, using the term signals their (goofy) political viewpoint but doesn't actually mean anything.
That Washington Post article has also corrected the incorrect reference to Joshua and Goliath in addition to the reference to "alleged parents." Good thing they have editors.
So which network is going to pick up "Donezal Dynasty"? Discovery, History Channel, BET?
kzookitty
50 Shades of Race
I've been recently reading about afropessimism. Its a term coined by black scholar Frank B. Wilderson to describe, actually the idea that black people are ontologically marked as dead non-agent in their bodies and will always be in a state of perpetual antagonism with non-black world.
Someone asked him about helping a white person form a coalition for justice, and he said
"I’m really not interested in doing coalition work like that. I’m interested in doing theoretical work that helps Black people shit on the inspiration of the entire world."
Folks like this can't stand the idea that RD's humanity and personal struggles have any meaning. Melissa Harris_Perry trying to understand RD is a huge offense to them.
I have long noticed that black people spend a lot more effort being black than white people do being white. I can go days at a time, weeks if I don't watch TV, not even remembering that I am white. I am spending the summer in Western North Carolina, in a county that has so few blacks that there is not even a black church. They are forced to go to white churches like the one I go to--of course they are welcomed there. Isn't that a shame or racism, or something?
"These are ultimately superficial matters that don't inspire us much to think on a deeper level"
Hmm..to the contrary. This is not Charlie Sheen caught with a hooker. Between her, the mechanisms that allowed/embraced her..and her complex upbringing. There is plenty to think about.
"They are well suited to fragmentation and cultures that are not that cohesive."
Well..perhaps an event like this can't point to some of the origins of this fragmentation.
this is what happens when political correctness replaces common sense
"forced to go to white churches like the one I go to--of course they are welcomed there. Isn't that a shame or racism, or something?"
God surely has a problem with the mixing of creation, right? Yeah..sounds ridiculous when framed so..because it is.
What's interesting about artificial intelligence is that there's no inner.
“There's no inner, yet.” FIFY.
The (partial) success of AI thus far while lacking an inner, however, in my view reveals the distinct limits of the “Turing test” as a method for reliably identifying the existence of another mind out there. (Of course, the idiot program ELIZA had earlier, perhaps more thoroughly, made that same point.)
Rachel Dolezal is white and we know what she is doing - namely trying for status and power by being "black". In terms of media it all makes sense especially right at this moment - this is the Rachel-Emma-Jackie media-moment But as someone else said - these are real people. There will be an afterlife for them outside the media. Rachel is pathetic because she can't see that.
I suggest (for women embarrassed by these shameful hysterics) looking at the Carly Fiorina interview on The View - she is also trying for power but in the real world.
When I worked with blacks I noticed that they got more rudeness and abuse in a week than I got in a year. This has been going on since slavery days and they stand up under it - at least a lot of them do - and make a contribution also. Like Jackie Robinson being a great ball player who helped his team win or Colin Powell winning the Gulf War by using GPS, a new technique, to position his army which was a gamble. In different ways this is true of most American blacks. By this courage under fire and by standing up to wrongdoing, they have a status and power in a very clear but undefined way changing in every situation but which Rachel Dolezal is trying to cash in on - that is my opinion.
And others who are not very accomplished and who are not contributing are also trying to cash in on the black struggle in America. They could even be black - such people as Al Sharpton. And as result of that kind of exploiter, things are worse for the blacks in Baltimore.
The sign of cash-in-on-the blacks-person is that they do massive damage and ignore it. Like the President who imports immigrants to replace blacks in the jobs market and who does nothing about improving the economy and who supports Planned Parenthood as it wipes out the blacks in this country.
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