Change Of Subject

This morning: NPR fluff about "'Jebcito,'" who "once mistakenly listed his ethnicity as Hispanic on a Florida voter registration form," and "once called himself the first 'Latino governor of the state of Florida.'" That story followed by furor over racial self-identification (of someone not a member of the Bush family): Rachel Dolezal's "passing" as black.

Dolezal is hardly the first: there is a long history of "passing" on different sides of the supposed divide. In a scholarly take here, Daniel J. Sharfstein notes such cases as the Nazi Party secretary and KKK Grand Dragon who had been a Jew, and the former speechwriter to George Wallace who wrote a best-selling "memoir" in the guise of being Native American.

Scharfstein also cites older history: that of the first free families of color and white mothers of black children. Those mothers had to find—

... new ways for their families and themselves to parse slavery, freedom and race, akin to James McBride's account in his memoir, "The Color of Water," of how his mother described her own identity while raising 12 African-American children. When McBride asked her about her parents, she would respond, "God made me." When he asked if she was white, her answer was, "I'm light-skinned."

James McBride's mother is an example Clever Sister brought up a couple days ago;Johnny Otis is another.

Considering Dolezal's multiple and apparently false claims of death threats and harassment, there may be a serious personality disorder involved. But the people it should concern are Dolezal, her family, and her associates. What should have been, at most, a local story in Spokane has been turned into day after day of national headlines.

That it's not simply a local story is no accident—not when it serves to reinforce a worldview of They get special privileges; the NAACP is phony; and the like. Once out, the story was amplified by the immense public shaming platform social media offers.

By now, it's become the perfect narrative for displacing stories that had been getting attention, like armed white cop vs. teenaged black girl clad only in swimwear. And for any attention paid to solid citizen reaction ("the blacks are the ones causing the problems and this 'racial tension.'").