The writer, Calvin Hennick, with his family. (Photo: Calvin Hennick)
Rachel Dolezal, professional pretend black lady extraordinaire, has a novel rationale for how she obtained her supposed blackness. She got it, she says, from her kids.
“I have really gone there with the experience, in terms of being the mother of two black sons, and really owning what it means to experience and live blackness,” she told MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. Dolezal and her ex husband have a son, Franklin, and she has legal guardianship over her adopted brother, Izaiah.
On the Today show, she told Matt Lauer, “I’ve actually had to go there with the experience … the point at which that really solidified was when I got full custody of Izaiah, and he said, ‘You’re my real mom.’ He’s in high school, and for that to be something that is plausible, I certainly can’t be seen as white and be Izaiah’s mom.”
Dolezal with her four adopted siblings at her wedding in 2000. They couple divorced in 2004, but have a son, Franklin. (Photo: Dolezal Family Handout)
Are we really doing this? Does this really need to be explained?
All right, here we go: THAT ISN’T HOW THIS WORKS!
I’m the father of two biracial kids. That doesn’t make me biracial. Just like my children won’t suddenly become Asian or Hispanic if they parent Asian or Hispanic children. Our parents pass their heritage on to us. It doesn’t work the other way around.
I’ve never misrepresented my way to the presidency of an NAACP chapter, but I’ll put my bona fides up against Dolezal’s:
My wife is from Haiti, and I speak a little Creole. That doesn’t make me black.
I lived in Harlem for a year. That doesn’t make me black.
I taught middle school in the South Bronx. That doesn’t make me black.
I play basketball with the black teenagers at the high school near my house, and they, bizarrely, sometimes call me the N-word.
Guess what? Still not black!
Dolezal how she looks today (L) and as a teenager. (Photo: Dolezal Family)