Althouse: "I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs."

March 24, 2017

"I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs."

"I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo … imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways … that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in."

51 comments:

Ignorance is Bliss said...: I'm going to file this reasoning away, and pull it out if that picture of me in blackface at the company talent show ever shows up on the internet. ( And such things always show up on the internet... ); 3/24/17, 2:27 PM
buwaya said...: A certain mania-driven lack of perspective.; 3/24/17, 2:29 PM
Chuck said...: I move that we waive Rachel Dolezal's 15 Minutes of Fame limitation under the Warhol Rule, and extend it indefinitely, to however the Lulz keep going.

Is there a Second to my motion?; 3/24/17, 2:32 PM
AlbertAnonymous said...: Why are we still talking about this person?

Ditto Lena Dunham.

Just spare us....; 3/24/17, 2:34 PM
Achilles said...: Dolezal did it wrong. She needs to go work for Senator Warren. Now there is a racial grifter worthy of attention.; 3/24/17, 2:39 PM
mockturtle said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/24/17, 2:40 PM
Achilles said...: High cheek bones are way easier to fake than black skin.; 3/24/17, 2:43 PM
Fernandinande said...: We used to imagine that we were different people living in a different place; that was one of the few ways that we could escape the oppressive environment, and, at the same time, play "cowboys and Indians".; 3/24/17, 2:45 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "… that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in."
If you want to know what an oppressive environment is, read Orwell's or C.S. Lewis's account of attending a "cram" public school in England a century ago.
Funny thing is, contemporaries describe both Orwell and Lewis as reasonably happy, normal kids when they were attending those boarding schools. They seem to have been miserable as adults when looking back at their experiences.; 3/24/17, 2:50 PM
exhelodrvr1 said...: So it's dirty?; 3/24/17, 2:55 PM
Rosa Marie Yoder said...: Is this a failure of parenting? Did Mom and Dad shower so much attention on their adopted sons that little Rachael longed to be like them? Was their home so Afro-centric that it led their daughter to deny herself?

She has also recently announced that her name is now Nkechi. No! I will not allow her to besmirch the name of a lovely young woman with whom I am acquainted.; 3/24/17, 2:56 PM
DanTheMan said...: "I used to do stupid stuff, just to draw attention to myself."

Still works.; 3/24/17, 2:59 PM
Rob said...: She writes, “For the first time in my life, I was truly owning who I was: a woman who was free, self-reliant, and, yes, Black.” If she's owning a Black person, doesn't that make her a slaveholder?; 3/24/17, 2:59 PM
n.n said...: So, it's [class] diversity. Reconciling moral, natural, and personal imperatives is beyond her ability, and likely her comprehension.; 3/24/17, 3:01 PM
Ken B said...: "When I was a child I tried to lend verisimilitude to my lies. But when I became an activist I learned I needn't bother. I put away the blackface and the tawdry tricks of the novice deceiver."; 3/24/17, 3:01 PM
buwaya said...: There are all sorts of eccentricities.
Sometimes the choice of eccentricity is driven by early impressions. So a young woman inclined to be a bit unbalanced could have been driven into this particular obsession by her childhood. She may have been odd in some other way without it. Maybe a communist, or a feminist, or in a better time, perhaps a nun.
Being black, even as a delusion, is far from the worst sort of nuttiness she could have settled on. It's a harmless thing in itself.; 3/24/17, 3:08 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: When I was a kid and played softball I used to pretend I was hitting it out of the park in a major league stadium. That took some imagination considering that balls I hit rarely left the infield.

Does that mean I can now pass myself off as a MLB centerfielder?; 3/24/17, 3:21 PM
DanTheMan said...: >> Does that mean I can now pass myself off as a MLB centerfielder?

You ARE now a MLB centerfielder, because you say you identify as one. Anybody who says differently is a hater.; 3/24/17, 3:25 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: "You ARE now a MLB centerfielder, because you say you identify as one. Anybody who says differently is a hater."

Thank you for validating my experience! Now all I need is some of those MLB paychecks.; 3/24/17, 3:30 PM
AllenS said...: Would someone please forward this miserable woman this thread --

What incorrect belief did you carry around for the longest time and how did you find out you were wrong?; 3/24/17, 3:40 PM
Peter said...: "Today, Dolezal remains “unapologetically Black” and insists race is a social construct with no biological origins."

Science would disagree. Overall, science seems to have moved toward the "nature" end of the continuum over the last few decades; we're certainly a long, long way from the Freudian's casual assumption that nurture was what was really important.

She'd be on stronger ground if she said she identifies with some aspects of African-American culture; otherwise she'll at least have to explain why northern Europeans are not at risk sickle-cell disease. What will the next claim be, that there are no sex-linked illnesses?

Perhaps the real question is, can politicized humanists stigmatize the science of genetic difference enough to shut down any research that might better target medical science based on the patient's race and sex?

How society reacts to genetic differences remains an important political question, but, insisting there is no difference is to insist that water is not wet. Is the real question whether we can all be sufficiently cowed to insist that, yes, we too can see the emperor's new clothes?; 3/24/17, 3:40 PM
jaydub said...: I think what she's saying is it isn't her fault she's effed up. It's her parents' fault, her brother's fault, religious fundamentalism's fault, her environment's fault, her upbring's fault. That may all be true, but my money is on her having been born effed up. That happens sometimes, but you don't hear a lot about it because most people don't write books titled "I Was Born Effed Up." I suspect she could have.; 3/24/17, 3:41 PM
Achilles said...: jaydub said...
I think what she's saying is it isn't her fault she's effed up. It's her parents' fault, her brother's fault, religious fundamentalism's fault, her environment's fault, her upbring's fault.

Is Warren effed up too or just smarter in her choice of lies?; 3/24/17, 3:47 PM
Chuck said...: "Today, Dolezal remains “unapologetically Black” and insists race is a social construct with no biological origins."

If I was unapologetically black, I would have gotten into Yale Law School.; 3/24/17, 4:08 PM
Roughcoat said...: Funny thing is, contemporaries describe both Orwell and Lewis as reasonably happy, normal kids when they were attending those boarding schools. They seem to have been miserable as adults when looking back at their experiences.

Probably because it was only as adults that it fully dawned on them that they had been raped/sodomized repeatedly by the older lads, a nearly universal (and oft-enacted) rite of passage for English public school boys when Orwell and Lewis were attending.; 3/24/17, 4:12 PM
Roughcoat said...: Rachel Dolezal is the camel's nose under the tent that presages the end of affirmative action and other race-based preferences and programs. The first step on the slippery slope. Think about it.

So, I say: you go, girl.; 3/24/17, 4:19 PM
Known Unknown said...: Talcum X
Mayo Angelou
Milli Vanilla; 3/24/17, 4:52 PM
lgv said...: Extreme cultural appropriation that should be punished rather than embraced.

Apparently, there wasn't much in it for her to identify as an Asian.; 3/24/17, 4:53 PM
Drago said...: "lifelong republican" Chuck: "If I was unapologetically black, I would have gotten into Yale Law School."

Here ya go: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091991/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_131

Just don't let Darth Vader catch you...; 3/24/17, 4:55 PM
Drago said...: Between Rachel and Shaun King, we have a regular Cosby Show breaking out.; 3/24/17, 4:56 PM
Anonymous said...: When I was a paperboy, delivering newspapers on cold fall nights in the early 1970's on my bicycle, I imagined I was a colonial boy on Mars.

I sort of got over it.; 3/24/17, 5:12 PM
buwaya said...: "but my money is on her having been born effed up"

Most likely, but the specific form it takes seems to depend a lot on environmental influence. This is I think a fascinating subject. Childhood imprinting? It seems very likely. Also, the expression of madness seems driven by fashion, through current cultural memes, as seen in mass media or social media, plain copy-catting. And then there are peer effects, etc.

The explosion of interest and controversy re transgender this and that, for instance, has probably led to irreversible damage to a lot of people, their own instability having driven them in a direction determined by what is currently popular.

It would be far, far better for such afflicted souls to be convinced they are black instead.
I guess the black ones could be led to believe they are white. I wonder how that would turn out.; 3/24/17, 5:16 PM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: So she's saying she was born this way?; 3/24/17, 5:21 PM
JackWayne said...: Bywaya, cue Michael Jackson.; 3/24/17, 5:54 PM
sean said...: When I was a boy I used to wish I was a girl, but eventually I achieved sanity. I hope some day this poor woman will do the same. Meanwhile, it's kind of funny that everyone thinks she is a figure of derision, but boys who think they are girls are now hormonally and surgically mutilated starting at an early age, and if you criticize that program, Prof. Althouse and her ideological comrades will call you a bigot and attempt to drive you from the university and public life.; 3/24/17, 5:54 PM
A_Nonny_Mouse said...: I demand that the rest of the world validate Crazy-Me as normal."

"I demand that the rest of the world validate Crazy-Me as normal."

"I demand that the rest of the world validate Crazy-Me as normal."

"I demand that the rest of the world validate Crazy-Me as normal."

"I demand that the rest of the world validate Crazy-Me as normal."

--- translation of pretty-much every statement made by pretty-much every SJW who ever existed.; 3/24/17, 6:09 PM
buwaya said...: That was the least of Michael Jackson's problems, in spite of his nose.; 3/24/17, 6:18 PM
buwaya said...: And good point re Michael Jackson. Thats one that seriously tried black->white.; 3/24/17, 6:19 PM
robinintn said...: Could I just say I think that thing about smearing mud all over herself is total bullshit? The first time my daughter turned up like that would have been the last. I guess she'll need counseling to recover from the oppressive environment of her childhood.; 3/24/17, 6:34 PM
buwaya said...: "Could I just say I think that thing about smearing mud all over herself is total bullshit?"

The kids used to do that all the time while camping by the Tuolumne.
Maybe not permitted in her childhood?; 3/24/17, 6:39 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Look, WHY WHY WHY is Rachel Dolezal OK with the SJWs, while no one else is? I mean, two days ago it was white girls wearing hoop earrings, because those are a Latina thing. (I wore them myself, in a city that had no Latinas in it.) Yesterday it was a white girl braiding her hair, because that's a black thing. Today it's probably some other microaggression. But it's not Dolezal, who is immune. If anyone is "culturally appropriating," it's her. But she gets a pass. Why?; 3/24/17, 7:03 PM
buwaya said...: "But she gets a pass. Why?"

There are no enemies on the left.; 3/24/17, 7:11 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: “Just as a transgender person might be born male but identify as female, I wasn’t pretending to be something I wasn’t but expressing something I already was. I wasn’t passing as Black; I was Black, and there was no going back.”

I admit: I read the entire article waiting for this analogy.

Theory: the push for recognizing Transgender issues is NOT for the tiny amount of people under that description: it is to set a stark benchmark that anything can be anything else if we just say it is so. Transgender people, being used as cannon fodder for Semantics: their choices humored because it provides desired leverage elsewhere.

And they put it right at the end of the article: a SJW Money Shot.

From Wiki:

"According to Steven Ziplow, author of The Film Maker's Guide to Pornography, "the cum shot, or, as some refer to it, 'the money shot', is the most important element in the movie and that everything else (if necessary) should be sacrificed at its expense."[2][6] It has also been argued that this is the filmed moment that the audience has paid to see.[2] In her book Hard Core, Linda Williams argues that the money shot is not simply desired in and of itself, but proves to the audience that the sex is real.[7]"

I am Laslo.; 3/24/17, 7:14 PM
Dan Hossley said...: Basically, she admitted she is bat shit crazy. OK, that explains it.; 3/24/17, 7:16 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Isn't it racist to believe that making yourself dirty will make you Black?; 3/24/17, 8:14 PM
Etienne said...: Mainstreaming insane people is evil.; 3/24/17, 8:56 PM
buwaya said...: Laslo,
Perhaps I am some sort of as yet uncategorized pervert, but I just don't get it about the "money shot". Why?
And who wants naked men in these things anyway?
Yes I know they do this, as a ritual I guess.

In my day the whole point was beautiful women, naked.
No longer it seems.

Wandering this world in perpetual befuddlement ....; 3/24/17, 9:30 PM
Earnest Prole said...: brown sugar; 3/25/17, 12:08 AM
Annie said...: Didn't she start identifying as black after she was turned down for some position while attending a black university, because she was white? She found it was easier to get work as a black woman. (her artwork sucked btw); 3/25/17, 12:13 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Could we be giving dolezal too much credit? I see her as of a piece with "cash me outside" girl.; 3/25/17, 1:08 AM
John Nowak said...: I suspect Annie's got the gist of it.

Dolezal was in a position where being black got her an advantage, so she pretended to be black.; 3/25/17, 8:30 AM