Last week, the Spokesman-Review questioned whether the president of the NAACP Spokane, Rachel Dolezal, was black.
This has brought up questions about what makes up identity and comparisons to Caitlyn Jenner.
Dolezal has yet to explain herself or respond to what her family has said about her.
However, comparing whatever is going on with Rachel Dolezal to transgender issues is a slippery and problematic slope rooted in transphobia.
Caitlyn Jenner is not lying about her identity. She is a woman.
Regardless of Dolezal’s reasoning behind her claiming a black identity, she should not be used to discredit transgender identities.
Some have also compared Dolezal to light-skinned blacks who would try to pass as white, but that is also not the same.
Historically, people of color have tried to pass as white whenever possible, because white people have privilege.
Dolezal did not need to be black in order to be elected president of her local NAACP chapter, because the NAACP has had white allies in leadership positions before.
Instead, she appropriated experiences that were not her own and lied about her family.
The idea that people would lie about their identities is one of the arguments that is used by activists against affirmative action, such as Vijay Chokal-Ingam, who claimed to have gotten into medical school by pretending to be black.
We still don’t know how Dolezal may have benefitted or why she decided to identify as black.
When talking about issues of race, ideas about one race may not be applicable to another because they have different institutional power.
A recent example of this is Emma Stone’s casting in the recent movie “Aloha.”
When white people represent people of another race, such as Stone did, it hurts the chances of Asian actors to get the few roles that are available to them.
Stone was cast as a part Hawaiian, part Chinese protagonist despite being white.
Actors do not have to exactly match their role’s ethnicity, but when white actors take away roles meant for people of color, it’s a problem.
Though many tried to compare this to traditionally white roles being cast as other races, it’s just not the same thing because there are tons of roles for white actors out there.
Ultimately, many have tried to compare what Dolezal did with the reverse: passing as white.
This was because they knew that they would get more opportunities and be able to protect themselves from hate crimes as a white person.
Dolezal’s case is unusual, and thus it really cannot be compared with any other type of identity issue.
Nicole Dan is a UF political science sophomore. Her column appears on Tuesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 6/16/15]
