One of the reasons I’ve been so cynical about America’s “conversation about race” is its circular character. The same conclusions keep getting arrived at, the same rhetorical teams keep trotting out the same old plays. It seems that every generation needs to hash out this hoary American debate for itself.
New Orleans has been having a conversation about race longer than most places because racial identity here has generally been more complicated, more nuanced, than in areas with less racial mixing. The whole nation experienced a cataclysmic revolution in race relations 50 years ago, but racial consciousness has been evolving more slowly since then, notwithstanding the Obama presidency — more a matter of optics, perhaps, than profound social change.
The latest twist in the national debate is brought to you by former Spokane NAACP chapter president Rachel Dolezal.
Though black people “passing” as white were a staple of the “conversation about race” before the Civil Rights era, a white woman “passing” as black, as Dolezal managed to do until recently, has provided a fresh enough twist to light up the twittersphere, albeit with chatter more often inane than insightful.
Ebullient postmoderns celebrate the freedom of all to invent their own identities, regardless of biological restrictions like skin color or sex. They point out that in physical terms Rachel Dolezal’s identity migration has involved nowhere near the striking visual turnabout that Caitlyn Jenner’s did.
In another corner (there are more than two in this boxing ring), many African-Americans see Dolezal’s choice to self-identify as black as yet another arrogant expression of white privilege. While she can choose her race, many black people are too dark to do that. There’s a sense, too, that a white person is colonizing the limited sphere of black privilege, at a time when white privilege still brings many more rewards and remains more fiercely guarded against black intruders. (Note, too, that this vigorous defense of whiteness relegates a wider range of skin-tones to the black side of the rampart.)
Other African-Americans are willing to overlook Dolezal’s embellished racial identity out of respect for her commitment to racial justice. Then there are the white anti-racist liberals who seek to enhance their own cred by agreeing loudly with aggrieved blacks that Dolezal’s appropriation of their limited “racial capital” is unconscionable. (Conservatives try to devalue that asset by calling it “victim capital,” forgetting, I guess, that black cool is a currency held in high regard by many a white liberal.)
Unfortunately, white supporters of racial equality are often inhibited in the scope of their analysis by fear of treading on the authentic black subject’s license to have the last word in any discussion of race.
Finally, aggrieved white right-wingers, convinced they are being condescended to by other white people, whine that they are somehow being stripped of their right to have any opinions at all about race — those opinions often being racist, but not always.
The problem people have with Dolezal is not that she’s a white anti-racist or even that she assumed a leadership role in the NAACP, but that she has chosen to fight racism as a black person, rather than as a white person.
The proper role to be played by white anti-racists triggered debate 50 years ago and a hundred years before that. When my white parents were active in the Civil Rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1960s, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) resolved to expel white members and become an all-black organization, a step the NAACP has never taken.
…In our time the white-on-white racial debate is most often disingenuous and unproductive, an entertainment conducted to tittering laughter by elite media liberals like Jon Stewart …
The idea of an all-black SNCC wasn’t meant as a slap in the face to drive white allies from the struggle for black rights. The idea was that white people should form their own organizations for combating racism. Thus did SNCC spawn a more heavily white offshoot called the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC). The point was that white people should speak to white people about race and promote anti-racism among them. That didn’t mean agreeing with liberal friends over craft cocktails; the SSOC plan was to reach out to working class whites, the people most targeted by racist propaganda, and organize them, not laugh at them for being dumb racists.
Unfortunately, in our time the white-on-white racial debate is most often disingenuous and unproductive, an entertainment conducted to tittering laughter by elite media liberals like Jon Stewart and centered on making fun of “rednecks.” The assumption that poor white southerners are probably racist is an inoculation against the guilt that stems from not doing a @#$% thing about a grievous social problem that hip references to race and gender don’t even begin to address: the massive and mounting economic inequality that’s tearing America apart.
Almost a century before SNCC and SSOC, white anti-racists in the labor and populist movements hit on what strikes me as a far more enlightened strategy. It was to show working white people that anti-black racism undermined white interests, too. Capitalist overlords, from the agrarian planter class to industrial robber barons, had cleverly used racism to create a bogeyman — the notion that working blacks, their natural economic allies, posed some kind of threat to the white working poor. Thus was racism used to subvert a cross-racial working class movement from gaining real momentum, even in the teeth of the Great Depression.
It worked then and it still works, as can be seen in a glance at post-election maps of today’s voting patterns. In short, the effort by white southerners to inculcate anti-racist values in other white southerners has not gone well — unless we recall that even white southern Republicans claim to be anti-racists nowadays — and I suppose that counts for something.
Michael T. Jeffries, writing in the Boston Globe, has offered one of the most cogent responses to the Dolezal incident. Obviously, a white person passing for black is not a simple symmetrical inversion of a black person passing for white. Jeffries points out that black people “passing” for white (passé blanc, in old New Orleans parlance) can be a form of resistance to racism. But this is an iconoclastic view in the context of African-American literature, where passing has most often been represented in negative terms.
Two famous novels on the theme are Nella Larsen’s “Passing,” (1929) and James Weldon Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” (1912) While Larsen and Johnson were celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance, New Orleans writers were way ahead of the curve on this issue. Local writer Alice Dunbar-Nelson captured the haziness and variety of racial identities in 19th Century New Orleans, as did white writer George Washington Cable before her. And from John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me” in 1961 to Nell Zink’s hot off-the-press “Mislaid” — both written by whites and exploring white passé noir experiences in the South — the topic has continued to fascinate.
The New Orleans contribution to the national obsession with racial identity is rooted in our racial indeterminacy — with being neither black nor white, with being both, or not being able to tell which. It was a big theme in New Orleans literature and culture before race relations here were finally Americanized in the Jim Crow era.
Lafcadio Hearn wrote of New Orleans in the 1880s: “Every race that the world boasts is here, and a good many races that are nowhere else… .” In one of the most striking scenes in Cable’s 1880 masterpiece, “The Grandissimes,” a transplant from Philadelphia discovers that his landlord is … well, what is he? “Ah ham nod whide, m’sieu,” the landlord advises the bewildered northerner.
As New Orleans became more American and more homogenized linguistically as well as ethnically (with immigration tapering off after the 1920s), the color-line became ever more stark.
Dunbar-Nelson’s “The Stones of the Village,” never published in her lifetime, is a tragedy of racial determinism, depicting the unhappy fate that befalls an Afro-Creole man who, feeling neither black nor white, tries to live on the white side of the growing racial divide. He ascends to the heights of elite New Orleans society, but is emotionally torn apart by fear of discovery and resentment that he has been required to make such a choice.
Another story of Dunbar-Nelson’s, “The Pearl in the Oyster,” published in 1900, is more like a comedy of errors. The protagonist first outrages his Afro-Creole family by attending a black university, then blends in with the Irish in the Irish Channel, then tries to go home again to his people in the Creole districts, only to discover that they resent his dalliance among whites too much to accept him again. He resolves to leave New Orleans forever, saying to his wife: “… We will start life again, but whether we decide to be white or black, we will stick to it.”
With the Americanization of race relations in the Jim Crow era, New Orleans became much less racially imaginative. My dad reports, however, that in the Ninth Ward shortly before my boyhood there, many racial self-identifications seemed to hinge on trust, perhaps owing to the lingering presence of dark-skinned non-black ethnicities. I remember him saying later that the funny thing about a David Duke rally in New Orleans was how many people in attendance wouldn’t be allowed to join the Klan in Alabama.
I am old enough to have known some of the low-income white people who crossed over into poor black society, most commonly women who married in. (These were common-law marriages, of course.) They were not exactly passing; the black world knew these women to be racial interlopers — and accepted them anyway. And of course there was no turning back and rejoining white society once they made the choice to have black children.
But did a socially established white person ever actually assume a black identity, long-term, in the era before Rachel Dolezal? According to University of New Orleans anthropologist Martha Ward, that’s exactly what the love of Marie Laveau’s life, Jean Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, did in the 1820s, so great was his commitment to love the Voodoo queen as a peer.
And what lies ahead — for us? For Rachel Dolezal? In her 1976 novel “Woman on the Edge of Time,” Marge Piercy depicted an anarcho-syndicalist utopia of seductive charm. It could not be called post-racial; there is a wide range of communities in Piercy’s American future: African villages, Native American ones, and a host of other cultural models. But the citizen gets to choose which culture to live in, regardless of her racial or ethnic background. Naïve, perhaps, but sweet. And of course not possible in the kind of economic rat race we live in, one that pits us against the wrong people for all the wrong reasons —such as their skin color or the color they want to be.
C.W. Cannon teaches New Orleans Studies and English at Loyola University.
what the heck? the page is greyed out and a Google questionnaire is in front of the content and will not let me in unless I answer it?
The writer overlooked the fact that this woman slandered her own family, threw her closest friends under the bus, fabricated crimes, as well as committed a few – and I suspect her ex-husband is owed a long overdue apology from the general public as well.Personally, I wouldn’t trust this female with bagging my groceries, never mind anything else.
Nicely done and a wonderful read that makes me want take a New Orleans Studies class- and learn more about silly Asain (?) folks like Lafcadio Hearn- “and a good many races that are nowhere else
We use Google Consumer Surveys as an indirect way to generate revenue on stories when people visit us from some external sources (mostly Google). You shouldn’t see the survey when you come from our newsletters, social media, most links and from our home page. If you do, please let me know at smyers @ thelensnola.org. Here’s some more info on how and why we use this service: http://thelensnola.org/2014/05/22/how-the-lens-is-using-google-consumer-surveys-to-generate-revenue/
Brooke Kroeger’s book “Passing: When People Can’t be Who They Are” is worth a look. http://www.amazon.com/Passing-When-People-Cant-They/dp/1586482874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434644479&sr=8-1&keywords=kroeger+passing
‘The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White’ by Shirlee Taylor Haizlip explores this issue. From Amazon’s blurb:
We are drawn in by the story of an African-American family. Some members chose to “cross over” and “pass” for white while others enjoyed a successful black life. Their stories weave a tale of tangled ancestry, mixed blood, and identity issues from the 17th century to the present. The Sweeter the Juice is a memoir, a social history, a biography, and an autobiography. Haizlip gives to us the quintessential American story, unveiling truths about race, about our society, and about the ways in which we all perceive and judge one another.
This case also reminds me of Jean-Charles Houzeau, a Belgian editor of the black New Orleans Tribune during Reconstruction. Houzeau recounts his time there in a memoir published by LSU Press:
http://lsupress.org/books/detail/my-passage-at-the-new-orleans-tribune/
helpful piece. I have been surprised at the vehemence of those who cannot imagine her thought process, although I think her brother has said that he believes she just lacked the ability to explain how she allowed confusion about her story to emerge. I have read as many of her direct quotes of her experience as I could and like you, Charles, wondered how this would have played out if it happened in New Orleans. I remember well your post K essay on the 4 reasons why America doesn’t understand New Orleans (not exactly the title but it describes it well I think) and how the fluidity of race identification was one of those reasons. To say that a person does not have the right to describe their identity in any way that they so choose seems illogical as people do it every day, as you point out. Additionally, as has been discussed many times, the identification and deliberate assignment of roles based on race is a social construct and not based on anything in science but is either about encouraging or addressing racism depending on where the assigner sits. Of course, partly because of the pervasive nature of institutional racism that has existed in the world for millennia, cultural traditions and political strategies have cropped up to allow for easy alignment and strength among sistren and brethren in order to more easily acknowledge those in the fight and to share comfort. Those traditions range from a secret handshake or asking where you went to school to noting color of skin or even the wearing of orange or green — In other words, it is universal and often arbitrary. No question, when the stated identity is later known to be other than it was reported, it can demoralize the connection or campaign as it has likely done on this occasion. Your point about how black-led organizations asked white civil rights activists to find their own battles and to found their own organizations was spot on and unfortunately, your point will probably be misunderstood by some.
The allegations that she used her stated identity to further her career seems to be what troubles most people, but as you say, what is true is she used that identity to work for justice and equity which seems an important point to raise. Her history as described by everyone does seem like a long search and it does not necessarily seem calculated to emerge at the end of it as a civil right leader, but it is also likely that she had advantages in being a white American on that journey. (I do wonder if when asked in recent days about her appearance if she had just said “I like the way I look now and didn’t like the way I looked as a teen. is that okay?” if at least that part of it would have gone better for her.) I can think of many people I have known who used identity markers associated with a culture that they admire whether they were born into it or not, including “new New Orleanians” who talk about “our” traditions; Even I am a newish New Orleanian, having moved here as a teen 35 or so years back and certainly have appropriated parts of it as my own. When people ask me where I am from, they usually don’t want a lengthy response so usually just say “from here” even though it is not necessarily accurate.
My own conclusion is that the woman in question has some unresolved issues, has done some important work, and probably is not the best spokesperson for racial identity. For me, its because I don’t like the way she says things like “we’re all from the African continent” when asked if she was African-American, when she has a moment in the public eye to decry racial constructs in a helpful way instead of that passive-aggressive mode. I do firmly believe that she has the right to identify herself (and to choose if she has good relations with her family) as long as she has not committed fraud in its use and no evidence of that has been offered or proven at this point of that, but I am sure the hunt for that evidence will continue.
” . . . as long as she has not committed fraud in its use and no evidence of that has been offered or proven at this point of that . . . ”
Suing Howard as an undergraduate for discriminating against her because she was white, well, that’s problematic at best. But leave that aside. She applied to both her (former?) university employer and for that city police ombundsman board as black.
Absent the gain or loss of government benefits (privilege?), there would be nothing to discuss here . . . beyond gossip. Or Twitter/Facebook. But I repeat myself?
P.S. A 12-year-old shows up at the counter and tells the Registrar of Voters, “I identify with 22. I demand you let me vote.” Homework assignment: develop a principled distinguishing reason when the state will or will not recognize “I identify with _______ ” as binding on (a) itself (b) third parties,
Haven’t read this story yet (and it looks like a good one), but how many of you remember a somewhat obscure movie (over 20 years ago) about a woman who rose to a top prosecutor position (or something else powerful) by being “Black” although she was the OC. The “character” had bedded down with a black militant for a while. In the movie, yo’ girl evolved. Earlier photographs showed her with White friends and her hair was straight. In White groups, she looked White. In Black groups, she looked Black – hair, skin color, dress…The bottom line in the movie was that she murdered someone who was “blackmailing” (ha!) her. This is not funny, but the movies do seem to be ahead of the times. Those authors/authoresses and screenwriters are pretty good. 06/18/2015 8:10 PM DST USA
as race is an optional choice on employment applications (and as far as I know) there there is no evidence at this point that any employment or benefit was derived from it even if she did check that box. It is illegal to hire based on race so I’d like to hear about it if so (the law even goes so far as to ask employers involved in affirmative action to track that information separately.) But again, I am not forgiving any fraud if there was such a thing; leaving aside outright fraud which she should answer for if it exists (but outside of what may be possible artistic plagiarizing no example has even been offered), my question is whether anyone suffered or gained from her choice of identity or whether people are simply offended that a white woman felt she identified with a culture that was not her birthright. Your analogy is about outright fraud and I agree that that scenario would be wrong and expect repercussions. If I missed some facts that have been displayed about her lying on applications and thereby gaining an unfair advantage, I am interested in hearing about them, but it will not change my view that she has the right to choose her identity as long as it is not fraud. Let me also say that I am not impressed with this woman- she strikes me as out of touch for a NAACP chapter leader, and living too deeply in her own world, but I’ve yet to see how her choice of identity was predicated on a hustle.
Well now I guess we’re going to make her popular and rich by giving her something to write about. I’m so sick of all these people who discover their blackness and now their whiteness who then go on to make money off their book as if we in the the ” black” community haven’t been aware of these folk for decades. I am a second generation 7th ward “creole ” , whose family has been written about, studied and talked about for years. I know my genealogy for centuries . I am sick and tired of all these “white ” folk who have lived white and married white coming out as adults and discovering their drop and their black cousins ( yeah right ) and making money on their “new” knowledge. I ask, when did you sit in the back of the bus? When did you have to go miles and miles on a bus ride to go to school ? What the hell do you know about the culture of your relatives, what they ate , what churches they went to, what they did for family activities etc. NOTHING . You lived a different life ,so don’t come and try and steal my heritage even if you look like me, you are not ” Black” or ” African American”or ” Creole” , you are white or a caucasion of color but you definitely cant be me.
What no one can do is lie on a job application. To be a lie, as in perjury for example, requires more than just being factually wrong. It must be knowing, intentional, and done for the purpose of deceiving the other party/the record/the court. Based on what I’ve read so far, I believe a reasonable person could easily conclude she lied to the university and to the city. That’s why the mayor asked her to resign and why the college has suspended her. (By now she may have been fired? – – I stopped followed the details of this story a day or two back.)
Again, her choice of identity can be anything for any reason . . . so long as she does not fill out a job application or a government form or induce someone to enter a contract with her based upon a representation which knows is not correct. And so on. In her private and personal capacity she can claim to have won a Medal of Honor when she hasn’t served a day. But if she fills out a form that way, different story. So, she can go into a bar or a faculty lounge and spin any tale she wants for any reason at all. I barely care about her lying on those forms and I most assuredly don’t care if the local NAACP chapter takes her back.
What does interest me is the corruption of public debate by people making stuff up. Supposedly there’s a viral picture of dog making the rounds labelled “Bruce Jenner’s cat.” As a Brit quipped a long time ago, “It’s very pretty but you mustn’t call it Homer.”
We must remember there is no hard evidence as to her fraud, only conjecture. Even if proven, I am not interested in debating legal terms of fraud as I agree that if proven it is actionable. (However, if she identifies as black, then can it be proven to be fraud?) My point has been the furor over her identity (as none is proven yet) and the original piece by CW Cannon was about the fluidity of that assertion throughout our history.
1. Didn’t we go around this same track about 20 years ago with Lani Guinier and “authentically black?” And hasn’t some Supreme Court justice recently said something like the way to stop counting by race is to stop counting by race?
2. I’m totally cool (down?) with race and sex being totally fluid . . . as long as neither the state nor an employer is required to make any decision based upon “fluid” categories. “Fluid” (a/k/a “making it up as you go along”) to your heart’s content. Just don’t expect the rest of us to keep playing along with the game.
P.S. The Advocate had a hotly contested story a few weeks back about a transgender man in the ladies room. I guess the distaff side is likely to deal with the practical aspects of “fluid” more often than the guys.
Hey, generating revenue is good. Too bad it (the survey) got on somebody’s nerves. You gotta do what you gotta do. LMAspO! 06/18/2015 11:09 PM DST USA
Lani Guinier? ah affirmative action, there it is, I think you could go back further without any problem to find those who believe race should be a hard rule to define access. What is clear to me is we disagree with the identification issue and the legal issue if there is one is beyond our knowledge. I’d prefer to let it rest there and not bat this back and forth anymore.
What do you think set “mama” off? “Tell mama…” The FAMILY REUNION ain’t gonna be the same, even with Uncle Dave on the barbeque pit and grammaw bragging about the blanket she made for the new baby on her way even though the daddy ain’t quite ready…but that’s FAMIL—A—Y. 06/19/2015 1:58 AM DST USA
The comments are wonderful on the Rachel Dolezal piece. There are some real heavyweights here – legally. So, it is a real pleasure to read. This is about Rachel, but call me curious – why didn’t “mama” adopt four Caucasian children inside “her” race? 06/19/2015 2:09 AM DST USA
Got some kind of goofy “Post you are trying to reply to has been removed by the moderator.” So, I’m trying up here back to darnola.
start
Actually we agree more than you seem to appreciate. I have often wondered about precisely such questions as ” . . . someone teaching Germanic languages must be Anglo-Saxon?” Years ago there was a backlash on Broadway about “Miss Saigon’s” female lead because she was not Asian (remake/update of “Madame Butterfly”). Be it singing opera or teaching German; don’t we want the ability to sing or teach to be first?
Anyway, I’m fine with resting.
stop
I hope you don’t have ME confused with a heavyweight.
Ha! Well yes, WE know quality when WE see it. My ASP suffers a lot of ongoing discrimination (in as much he has been labeled a “killer breed”) so he hasn’t fared well in the courts, and a couple of attorneys gave him bad advice and even badder representation. So, ASP has become somewhat of an expert in spotting integrity and honesty (two qualities that some people would say do not exist in the legal profession).
Now, what in the hell could you have said to “darnola,” KELLY M. HAGGAR, to get your comment deleted!!! LMAspO! 06/19/2015 4:00 PM DST USA
Look again; someone (him? her?) deleted all but one of darnola’s comments. All of mine are still up. And if your ASP is a killer perhaps people who treat it differently are using discrimination in its best, pre-1964 meaning and not in its current, pejorative meaning?
Ha! That’s funny – “darnola’s” comments are mostly gone, but yours are still there. Either your comment was confusing or my ASP can’t “read.”
My ASP got me banned (deleted would have been fairer) from NOLA.COM because ASP provoked “nickelndime” to say that he had the misfortune of running into the CDC judge, Yada T. Magee, in 1986 when she was first seated. Evidently the now deceased female’ judge had “friends.” LMAspO! 06/19/2015 6:13 PM DST USA
Hey, KELLY M. HAGGAR – did it occur to you that “darnola” deleted his/her own comments? Looks like THE LENS has this option available to commenters, and it wouldn’t be the first time that a commenter removed his/her own comments – after having second thoughts on the matter. This option is not available on NOLA.COM, but WE (ASP and I) can’t go there anymore – actually WE don’t want to go there anymore because the type of censorship on NOLA.COM is too stifling. 06/19/2015 6:21 PM DST USA
The last darnola post was something like “let’s not bat this one around any more” so I think we should just close the chapter. Besides, NOLA has a hotly contested “Doleza is a racial thief” running right now so those who want to keep flogging this question have a venue. (You can always watch if you still care don’t want post yourself.)
“darnola” must have deleted the comments. I vaguely remember them. Very good – as were yours. There would have been no reason for THE LENS to “disable” the conversation. As I said, not the first time someone deleted his/her own comments. The last time was quite recent and it was someone running for public office. Had second thoughts. Same thing – the one original comment remained, but the rest were deleted. Oh well – “livenlearn” !!!! Hey, I just came up with a new pen name. Haha! 06/19/2015 11:43 PM DST USA
ASP hisses-s-s-s-s on NOLA.COM. He doesn’t like it when comments disappear just because of a different point of view. 06/19/2015 11:51 PM DST USA
NOLA.COM likes to stir up racial tension, and then (delete) what doesn’t fit in with their agenda. (expletive deleted) dat (expletive deleted)!!! ASP and I will be at the Joy to see Sarah Bernhard. She’s a trip! 06/19/2015 11:57 PM DST USA
The “moderator” didn’t remove anything. Maybe they (THE LENS) need/s to fix the language because everything else is intact. Go ahead – try it out. Delete your own comment. Oh look – WHO AM I? (I am the Snake in The Garden of Eden). LMAspO! 06/20/2015 12:04 AM DST USA
“All the news that fits, we print” is supposed to be a parody – – not a goal. I don’t post very much over there. Had a similar experience. Posted what I thought was a bland, general truism that EVERY defendant deserves a lawyer and a fair trial. Was surprised when it was deleted. No nastygram or warning; it just disappeared.
On darnola, I had a hunch or two but I still think we should let his/her rationale stay asleep.
On the bigger racial tension national problem, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.” But how? We all saw the same Bronco carrying OJ. We saw the same burning CVS. Yet we reached opposite conclusions from the same data set. Yours truly has no idea how to fix that.
You got ASP on the floor. Guess what you thought was a given (“Every defendant…) didn’t apply to the NOLA.COM sense of fair play – or, actually you said that about the “wrong” defendant. That place (T-P NOLA.COM) has more poison in it than my ASP. 06/20/2015 4:01 PM DST USA
Yes, I also thought my comment on NOLA.COM was a bland, general truism: “I HAD THE MISFORTUNE OF RUNNING INTO HER (JUDGE YADA T. MAGEE) IN 1986 WHEN SHE WAS FIRST SEATED IN CDC. ‘THEY’ SAY, ‘DO NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD,’ SO I SHALL SAY NO MORE” (posted 05/25/2015 on NOLA.COM in response to article by Littice Bacon-Blood, deleted 05/25/2015). LMAspO! 06/20/2015 4:09 PM DST USA
Rachel Dolezal “passed” with flying colors! Well, that’s what “nickelndime” and his “ASP” think. Go for it, Rachel (Oh, my bad, you did AND that’s what got you – do you have an ASP?- into trouble. What does that phrase (“with flying colors” mean, exactly? WE have heard it a thousand times.
“Passed with flying colors”… Is that like the White House (human response) to “Somewhere Over The Rainbow”? 06/28/2015 2:46 AM DST USA
Rachel Dolezal deserves a “gold medal” and “movie rights.” Forget Lana Turner and John Gavin in “IMITATION OF LIFE.” Rachel Dolezal is the real thing. Rachel is just coming from the other side (OC). As for Rachel’s mama, I would disown dat (expletive deleted).
Go for it, Rachel. Go for it again. Yo mama has issues. How, exactly, did you manage to survive that upbringing? ASP would love to do Rachel’s Natal Chart.
06/28/2015 3:13 AM DST USA
BET “outed” Rachel. Janet Jackson is coming outback of retirement, and a shark attacks another swimmer off the coast. Who does NOT see a relationship here? 06/29/2015 2:05 AM DST USA