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Why Did Richard Dawkins Tweet About Rachel Dolezal?
Some people did not recognize the reference. Here’s a quick refresher.
A tweet by the famous biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins on April 10, 2021 made headlines for its comparison between the identity claims of transgender people and those of Rachel Dolezal.
Because some people are not aware of the details of the 2015 scandal in which Dolezal was outed, and specifically the discourse that tried to make an analogy with transgender identity, I will revisit those details here as background information. Then, in my next article, I go on to discuss the controversy over Richard Dawkins’ comments.
The Dolezal Scandal in 2015
Rachel Dolezal is a white American woman who posed as Black. She attended Howard University, a historically Black institution, and sued the school in 2002, claiming it had discriminated against her for being white. Increasingly, she presented herself as Black, eventually becoming president of a local NAACP chapter. When she was outed by a journalist in 2015, she said: “I identify as Black.”
Dolezal’s choices were widely perceived by Black people as a betrayal and an exploitation. I’m not Black, so I’m not the best person to describe the feelings and reasons involved. Many Black people have written brilliantly and movingly on this topic, so please read their work if you’d like more information. You could see this and this and this and this and this (all here on Medium), or The Washington Post, or Slate, or head over to The Root and search “Rachel Dolezal”.
The Comparison to Transgender Identity
Within days of Dolezal’s outing, a Fox News pundit claimed Dolezal’s lies about her race were the consequence of cultural influences regarding the “transgender position…that a genetic reality is not reality.” (The pundit also suggested that he himself might provide a false age to sign up for government healthcare “if I believe in my soul I’m a 65-year-old.”)
The same complaint was explored, in greater depth, in The Economist:
Conservatives, for their part, wanted to know why we are now expected to accept, if not celebrate, those who choose…
