Late last night I returned home and logged on only to find the various social media dominated by the news that the Spokane, Washington, NAACP president Rachel Dolezal had been outed by her parents as a white woman who has been passing as a black woman for the last twenty years or more.

After an initial period of disbelief, followed by the hilarity that ensued on #blacktwitter under the hashtag #RachelDolezal, I awoke this morning and began to seriously consider the implications of Mrs. Dolezal’s actions.

Seemingly I was not the only one because across the various social media and several websites, many had begun to openly ponder just what she had done that was so wrong. Surely, she was wrong in lying about her racial identity and posing as someone who she was not; however, in her assumed identity as a black woman, she had accomplished many positive things and made many positive contributions to the black community and the on-going struggle for full and unqualified citizenship for that community.

And in considering Mrs. Dolezal’s plight, I could only think of my aunt who is white, which is to say she has white skin, which is to say her mother and father and maternal and paternal grandparents were white, which is to say that she comes from a long line of white people. Yet, she has lived most of her life as part of the black community. In fact, most of those who know her would perhaps think of her as more black than white. I would go so far to say that she herself more closely identifies as a black woman than a white woman.

So, isn’t Mrs. Dolezal similar to my aunt? What is so different about the two since both spent most of their adult lives in the black community identifying, for most part, as and with black women.

But under closer examination, though quite similar, the two women are separated by a few importantly striking signal differences.

See, my uncle, my mother’s middle brother, married this white woman, who, in turn, became my aunt. Currently, inter-racial marriages are quite common, but my uncle and aunt married during the early seventies in a small, rural, very much segregated community, smack dab in the middle of the deep South.

At that time, in that place, such marriages were taboo. In fact, the moment my aunt married my uncle, her entire family and much, if not most, of the white community immediately, totally, and unceremoniously disowned her. And to my knowledge, no one in her family has spoken nary a word to her to this day.

Then, soon after my uncle and aunt married, they began having children, my cousins, three in fact. And, peculiarly, though these three children’s skin was as white as alabaster, their hair was coal black and as nappy as a goat’s ass, so there was no question of their parentage.

In fact, their hair was so nappy that their mother, my aunt, had no idea whatsoever what to do with the two girls hair, so she would bring them to our home on Sunday evenings, and my mother would do their hair in exchange for my aunt doing some chore or chores for her.

But I digress. I apologize. I allowed myself to be drawn off topic.

However, the point I was attempting to make before being drawn off topic is that the birth of these three children simultaneously both further alienated her from her former white community and tied her to our community, the black community, because even when she left our community to venture out into the greater community with my cousins in tow, these three alabaster white, nappy-headed children become evidence and symbols of her racial transgression. Even whites who did not know her or know of the cardinal race sin she had committed, knew her backstory the moment they laid eyes on those children, which in their eyes made her even lower than the blacks they so ardently despised.

So, there was no road leading home for her even if she wanted to go back; for her to go back would necessarily mean abandoning and disowning the three people she loved most in the world and who returned that love unconditionally.

She was permanently exiled and dislocated from her former life, her former family, and her former community, which she had known, loved, and depended on for the whole of her life until the moment of her marriage and had been the extent of her world.

However, allow me to suggest, empirically, that black folk are the most accepting people on earth. Whereas her family and community completely rejected her, the black community took her in and embraced her. The sister elders of the community put their arms around her and helped her begin the healing process. The sisters of the community befriended her, providing companionship and helping her find her place in the community. And my family gave her the love and familial acceptance that her family so resentfully withheld. Within our community, she and her children found the communal affirmation so essential to developing a healthy sense of self.

And over the years, she became an integral part of our community. As time passed she ceased being known as Ms. Margaret’s white daughter-in-law and/or that white lady who lives up on the hill, and became known simply as Ms. Margaret’s daughter and/or that lady who lives up on the hill.

As for me, I never even thought of her as “my white aunt” or my cousins as my half-white or half-black cousins; I thought of her only as my aunt and my cousins as my cousins. In fact, I never really considered her race at all except when it was pointed out to me. She was a very important part of my childhood and continues to be someone who I love and respect to the utmost.

Circumstance placed her in our community, the same circumstance that regulated us to that community, but her deportment and sincerity earned her a place in our hearts. And that is the signal difference between my aunt and Rachel Dolezal.

My aunt gave up her privilege vis-à-vis her whiteness to become a part of our community and family. She came to us because she had the audacity to love someone from our community and family and then follow through on that love at a time and place when and where her community and family deemed it an unforgivable sin to do so.

And she came to us without pretense as a white woman and because of this whiteness and the concomitant suspicions of her motives that invariably came with it, she humbly endured a long and informal (and I would add necessary) vetting process and eventually earned her place and respect within that community. In short, she grounded herself in that community, endured with that community, and made many positive and enduring contributions to that community, and she did so without having to lie about or misrepresent her whiteness.

On the other hand, Rachel Dolezal exercised her white privilege and prerogative in surreptitiously forcing her way into the black community. And though I do not know her motives for doing so, in my opinion it was not out of love for any one black person or blackness, but out of a certain fetishism of black people and blackness, itself an arguably less pernicious form of racism, which is evinced by her two decade long garish, pretentious presentation of black womanhood during which she cloaked herself in a mocking, disrespectful caricature of what she thought a black woman to be, all while having spent her life up until that time not having to experience the historical, on-going, and pressing racism, sexism, and classism that each and every black girl most experience to some degree and that shapes their experience as a black women.

In short, she deceptively, thus maliciously, imposed herself upon the black community, thereby foregoing any scrutiny, which might very well have revealed her cynical fetishism, though I doubt many would recognize it and/or even care. She did nothing to earn the esteem she was given, and all the many positive contributions she is said to have made to the black community, she could have as a white female ally.

I’m not sure if this makes Rachel Dolezal a bad person. In fact, the more I read about her, the more I begin to believe that the person she became, no matter who that person is, is the product of a tumultuous, disorienting upbringing in a dysfunctional family, who might be struggling with a few issues for which she should seek professional help. But that in no way makes her black. Nor should we just shrug our shoulders, pat her on the back, tell her everything will be alright, and move on.

This is a question asked in W.E.B. Dubois’ treatise The Souls of Black Folk. The question doesn’t ask how does it feel to have problems or have the kinds of problems that some people can’t or won’t understand. The question directly asks how does it feel like to actually be a problem. This question is also the title of a book by Moustafa Bayoumi who gives an indepth look as to what it’s like to live in a time where being a young Arab or Muslim American is often judged as being the enemy. A threat. A terrorist.

Being a member of the “other”, especially if you’re black, you are not granted the privilege of being individuals, especially if a crime occurs. When a black person is so much as suspected of any crime, the whole race is suspect. If a black person was the suspect and there are white victims, the whole race is looked upon with disdain and mistrust, seen as the potential enemy of white folks who will seek another innocent white person to get back at them for slavery. It seems like it’s always slavery that’s the underlying reason white people believe is the reason for any black-on-white crime. But I digress.

I remember a few years ago back in 2008. A UNC Student named Eve Carson who had a potentially bright future ahead of her was robbed and murdered by two young black males. It was a major news story. A white woman was killed by not one, but two black men. I also remembered two words in one article I read. Racial tension. I hear and see those words often whenever there’s a story about an interracial crime. Usually when it’s black-on-white, that’s when a feeling of dread hits me, because I fear of repercussions for that area against the black community. When a black person commits a crime against white people, black people, not just those responsible, must be held accountable.

Most people still can’t, or won’t, grasp the racism that reeks whenever black people are seen as a collective problem that must always pay whenever a few of their own fuck up. A lot of people avoid being called the r-word by excusing it with statistics, so-called “facts” that they’ve found most likely at a racist conservative website that exaggerates numbers to prove their point. After all is said and done Whiteness is nuanced, blackness is not

On the other hand, white people are granted the privilege of individuality no matter how often or how heinous a crime is. Whether it’s a school shooting, a bombing, serial rape or even mass shootings, white people are given the third degree and had their culture questioned, nor are they given stern lectures to “do better” by those who unofficially appoint themselves as guidance counselors for the whole race.

It has been a few days since the Biker shootout in Waco Texas that claimed nine lives, injured over a dozen more and led to the arrest of over a hundred bikers. The media treated the bloodbath with kid gloves, turning it into a singular incident where it was an isolated tragedy and not part of a string of white-on-white crime where more than a few lives are usually taken.

However, the same media treated the protests in Baltimore and Ferguson as if it was a warzone. Protests themselves became riots. Protestors became looters. Animals. Thugs. The peaceful anger and uprising vanished within the news media’s sensationalism and racism and became an outbreak of black pathology unfolding before America’s eyes.

No matter what, black people are constantly seen as the problem in America. It’s safe to say that no matter what we do, our faults end up overshadowing our accomplishments as well as overall humanity and individuality though the eyes of the white racist mindframe that continuously sees itself as innocent and normal while it sees blackness as criminal, pathologic and something to be feared and taken care of mostly by imprisonment or brute force.

During the span of one week alone, we’ve seen more reminders of how far this nation needs to go if it wishes to truly become largely “raceless”.  The first comes in the form of an app you can download called Sketchfactor. This app was developed by a couple of white folks, Allison McGuire and Daniel Herrington and it allows people to rate the “sketchiness” of certain areas of major cities. McGuire said that she was motivated after getting lost in Washington D.C., a mostly black city. Now, she lives in New York where, “almost nothing’s sketchy anymore.” People immediately concluded that “sketchiness” refers to black neighborhoods. This app is a nod to the imfamous Ghetto Tracker App produced almost a year ago.

Next, we have a study conducted by Stanford University’s psychologists Rebecca C. Hetey and Jennifer L. Eberhardt that shows that white people are cool with laws that oppress blacks. Jamelle Boule at Slate explains:

Hetey and Eberhardt conducted two experiments, one in San Francisco and one in New York City. In the former, a white female researcher recruited 62 white voters from a train station to watch a video that flashed 80 mug shots of black and white male inmates.

 

But wait! There’s more!

Unbeknownst to the participants, Hetey and Eberhardt had “manipulated the ratio of black to white inmates, to portray racial disparities in the prison population as more or less extreme.” Some participants saw a video in which 25 percent of the photos were of black inmates, approximating the actual distribution of inmates in California prisons, while others saw a video in which 45 percent of photos were black inmates.

 

After viewing the mug shots, participants were informed about California’s “three-strikes” law—which mandates harsh

sentences on habitual offenders with three or more convictions—and asked to rate it on a scale of 1 (“not punitive enough”) to 7 (“too punitive”). Then participants were shown a petition to amend the law to make it less harsh, which they could sign if they wanted.

 

The results were staggering. More than half of the participants who viewed the “less-black” photographs agreed to sign the petition. But of those who viewed the “more-black” photographs, less than 28 percent agreed to sign. And punitiveness had nothing to do with it. The outcome was as true for participants who said the law was too harsh as it was for those who said it wasn’t harsh enough.

You can read more about the experiment here.

The last and probably the most predictable story is another killer cop drama. The setting is Tulsa, Oklahoma. This involves a couple of cops, a married couple to be precise. Shannan Kepler and his wife Gina Kepler were driving around when they spotted their daughter walking with her date Jeremy Lake. Mr. Kepler asked his daughter what she was doing in that area, and she walked off. Lake told Kepler that he was her boyfriend. That’s when dear old dad took out his gun and shot Lake at least twice. Jeremy Lake was black.

I know some white people are going to come out to tell me how racist this article supposedly is and how I’m painting white people with a broad brush. Here’s the deal. White people, for more years than you care to admit, have painted black people with a broad brush, turning us into one huge, cracked, malformed monolith of black pathology in which only white people can fix. So, it shouldn’t take a whole lot of smarts to realize that black people will likely have a major issue with that.

Frankly, I’m tired and really, I don’t give a shit. Since most white people see us as monolith, don’t act shocked when black people, or any other people of color, do the same thing. We’re just picking up on their method of thinking. Sucks, doesn’t it?

I’m not irritated over slavery, something that happened before any of us was born, the usual excuse why I write what I write. White folks need to get it through their heads that many of us are upset about the shit that’s happening NOW! The events I wrote did not happen during slavery, as if that’s the only horrific event white people seem to remember concerning black folks’ oppression. It happened on the week of August 3rd 2014.

These stories illustrate that white people still have a huge problem with black people. Even if they mask the problem by using crime states and the lame ass ‘black culture’ nonsense, it all boils down to one simple truth: We’re black, and they hate that.

Before you – the ones who believe that I’m wrong and downright evil for writing this – comment and call me and(or) this article racist, let me break something down.

Normally, when you hurt someone in some way, the ideal and humane thing to do is to listen to what’s wrong. Don’t talk. Just listen, or in this case, read. And take it all in carefully without judgments, preconceived notions or prejudices. You know what you did was wrong. And as an added gesture, you make it up with that person. You try to make it right with that person. You fix what you broke as best as you can. And soon, a strong possibility that everything’s cool will surface. It could happen.

White people, as good as they claim to be, will look at the three aforementioned stories and will be pissed off. They will see this is proof that this society still has a long way to go to remedy its problem with racism. Instead, I have a heavy feeling I will get the following kinds of reactions:

When it comes to race and the plight of black people, we instead get a thrashing down. We have our conversations taken over for the sake of those who are not serious making it about themselves and their fragile feelings. Either that, or we are told to shut up and get over it. Or we are told how race is a big deal by people who are agitated over the mere mentioning of the subject.

We are made out to be crazy and are even cursed out. We are accused of being the very people that harmed us in the first place. Racists. We are called horrible names. We are made to feel guilty for bringing it up and feeling emotional about it. We are even beaten or killed if things get that extreme. And you don’t have to be in a hate group to inflict this kind of damage.

The propaganda will continue. Interpersonal racism will persist while institutional racism continues. We will probably see racist app by white people along with other forms of technological racism. The criminal injustice will keep gobbling up black bodies and the public will see it as ‘justice’. More cops will be one of the many causes of our shortening lifespan in this nation, and the public will support it believing that black people murdered by police deserved to die. More and more history books will write out our history, including slavery, while promoting their brand of white heroism. The media will find more and more images supporting negative stereotypes of us due to popular demand, and the audience will take them as the gospels of truth while showing an endless stream of white goodness. Politicians will continue to both ignore our issues or blame America’s problems on us, and they will end up getting votes.

Yet, white people will still wonder why we’re upset. And when we tell them, they still refuse to get it.