Melissa Harris-Perry on Rachel Dolezal: ‘It Is Possible That She Might Actually Be Black?’
Melissa Harris-Perry on Rachel Dolezal: ‘It Is Possible That She Might Actually Be Black?’ If you’ve been following the Rachel Dolezal story online, you may have seen the word “transracial” being thrown around and people saying choosing to be black is like Caitlyn Jenner choosing to be female. It’s unclear how much of it’s sincere and how much is just straight-up trolling, but MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry entertained the notion on her show today with kind of a huge question.
“Is it possible that she might actually be black?”
While not wanting to make the transgender comparison, Harris-Perry questioned whether one can be “cisblack and transblack,” and whether there’s a way to describe “the achievement of blackness despite one’s parentage.”
Alyson Hobbs, who literally wrote the book on “racial passing,” said there’s “certainly a chance that she identifies as a black woman and there could be authenticity to that.”
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