TWO WOMEN, TWO COLOURS

Simone Biles

Rachael Dolzeal - then and now

Simone Biles is still a teenager but has already written an autobiography and has achieved more than most us will manage in a lifetime despite being effectively abandoned by her parents.   She never knew her father and her mother’s addictions prevented – and were a poor substitute for – everyday parenting.  Her mother’s father and his wife brought Simone and her sister up and she regards them as her parents.  They encouraged her to develop her talents as a gymnast and the medals followed.    I have little of interest to add to the praise heaped on her already except that those medals show what can be achieved with the help of effective and committed parenting, whether by your mother and father or others, whether you are born into an ethnic minority or a white Anglo-Saxon majority.  The fact that she is black is possibly ways the least important thing about Simone Biles.

For Rachel Dolzeal, however,the fact that she is not is her tragedy.  It left her feeling she lacked something.  She was brought up by highly religious parents but effectively abandoned them by assuming a non-white identity and passing herself off as a black woman.  A photograph of her as a young woman shows her as not just white but as the typical naïve and innocent all-American teenage girl smiling at the camera, tentatively entering adulthood but seemingly without a care in the world.

This was far from the case.  Feeling unwelcome in the white crowd at college Dolzeal latched on to an African-American one and gradually assumed a black identity she felt more comfortable with.  This trick was first tried over fifty years ago by an American writer called John Howard Griffin who temporarily disguised himself as black to experience racism (or racialism as it was then called) at first hand.  Griffin’s book Black Like Me showed that there was very little that was good in the experience and he was happy to re-assume his white identity although he did have to move his family to Mexico for a while to escape hostility which followed the publication of his book. 

This was in 1960 at a time when only a writer in search of a story would have assumed a black identity so entrenched was the second class citizenship of blacks in the USA (and here in the UK).  That has changed now – not enough admittedly, but the idea of there being a black man in the White House or accepting a Best Director Oscar would have laughable when the book was written, while it was a reality recently, even if the rebound from it gave us Donald Trump as Obama’s successor.

It was not only a reduction in racial disadvantage which prompted Rachael Dolzeal to assume a black identity but the fact that it still lingers on which appealed to her.  She wanted to embrace the victimhood which becoming black would grant her as she, in her own words, ‘finally found my place in the world’.  It was a place far better than Griffin’s temporary residence there could ever be but it was still one where she could identify herself as a victim of prejudice – without too much actual suffering.

I found myself feeling sorry for Rachael.  Most of us, if we are honest, like the idea of being victims occasionally so we can fight against the world.  Yet those who, like me, have lived privileged, comfortable - and white - lives have precious little opportunity to assume victimhood.  This can lead people to embrace disadvantage even if they have no entitlement to it.  It can also lead to them reverting to the use of previously derogatory terms.  Some gay men have readopted  the once hated word ‘queer’ while African Americans men still refer to themselves as ‘niggers’ (apologies but there is no other way to say this). 

A term of disparagement becomes a badge of honour - but usable only by those in the community. As a straight white male I would never allow myself to use the infamous ‘n' word unless in quotation marks but I may be use the term ‘queer’ if only by adding a 'Q' onto LGBT. I asked a gay friend of mine why this once hated word was being reappropriated.  His answer indicated that it represented a rejection of acceptance from those who do not subscribe to conventional sexual identities and do not wish to be confined by them.  Give us equality but don't think we will be your friends. So not long after I exclude the word ‘queer’ from my vocabulary, I find it being re-adopted by those for whom it once represented hatred.   

I hate this - and I find it confusing.  I will continue to boycott ‘queer’ (except in quotation marks) when it comes to sexuality.  And I will maintain an identity that is white, male, straight and – yes – privileged.  This does not make me a bad person just someone who has to work harder at being good.

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com  EDWIN LERNER