Rethinking Rachel Doležal and Transracial Theory

121 Pages·2021·1.363 MB·English

by  Molly Littlewood McKibbin

Rethinking Rachel Doležal
and Transracial Theory
Molly Littlewood McKibbin
Rethinking Rachel Doležal and Transracial Theory
“In this unbridled and cogently, incisively argued meditation on transracialism
through Rachel Doležal, Molly Littlewood McKibbin presents readers with the
tools to begin to reimagine what is possible. Taking a deeply informed stance on
the possibilities that arise when taking seriously the fissures in race and racial iden-
tity, McKibbin reckons majestically with how to approach a world in which race is
of significant importance yet needs to be handled with care and complexity. And
she comes correct, in the vernacular meaning of the phrase: as she thinks through
this thorny issue, she shows her work, addresses key counterarguments, and does
not mince words when it comes to advocating for a more complex assessment of
race. This brief book is indispensable for the contemporary moment.”
—Marquis Bey, Assistant Professor, African American Studies and English,
Northwestern University
“Molly Littlewood McKibbin is a courageous thinker. She takes on a fraught
topic—the possibility or not of transracial identity—about which advocates and
opponents are screaming past each other, and deals with it carefully, calmly,
methodically, to see what it might teach us. She wisely avoids the authenticity
question, and focuses instead on the ways people are talking about the phenome-
non, for and against. There is wise counsel here for those who would read and
think, and a model for civil discourse.”
—Paul Spickard, Distinguished Professor of History, Black Studies, and Asian
American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
“The author provides us with a stimulating and provocative analysis of socially
defined racial boundaries. She provides answers to why they exist, why people find
them so important, and how they are still defended in the 21st century. This is an
important work that deserves attention.”
—Joseph L. Graves Jr, author of The Emperor’s New Clothes (2001); The Race
Myth (2005); Racism, Not Race (2021, co-author)
“The history of race is simultaneously a history of Black people’s subjugation and
fetishization. In Rethinking Rachael Doležal, McKibbin moves between the his-
tory of race and racism, enactments and performances of raced-identity and vari-
ous claims of authenticity and its opposite to provide an account of our racial
present in which race as an idea and a practice meets blackness and Black people in
what is at heart an account of Black people’s ongoing struggles to narrate them-
selves fully to others. Race remains a site for struggle and liberation as this book so
clearly demonstrates.”
—Rinaldo Walcott, author of The Long Emancipation: Moving toward
Black Freedom
Molly Littlewood McKibbin
Rethinking Rachel
Doležal and
Transracial Theory
Molly Littlewood McKibbin
Kingston, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-030-86277-0 ISBN 978-3-030-86278-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86278-7
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect
to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover pattern © Melisa Hasan
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
A
cknowledgements
I am grateful for my family, whose love and care sustain me. I wish to
thank my mother and my spouse for their constant, infinite support and
their unhesitating willingness to help and to celebrate. I am profoundly
fortunate to have each of them.
I am grateful for my professors, who have become mentors and friends,
and whose confidence in me has mattered immeasurably to my intellectual
life. I want to thank Arthur Redding at York University and Karen Bamford
at Mount Allison University for their enduring support and reliable advice.
I owe Art a special debt of gratitude for so generously reading an early
draft of this manuscript and encouraging me to pursue publication. Many
thanks as well to Leslie Sanders, also at York, for always being there when
I need her.
I am grateful for my friends, especially Madhurima Chakraborty, who
wisely suggested Palgrave Pivot as a home for this project and who offered
extraordinary and compassionate understanding when I most needed it. I
also wish to thank Amanda Paxton for her trustworthy friendship and sup-
port, Jennie Fauls for being my steadfast pandemic pen pal, and Angela
Facundo and Navneet Alang for patiently answering my questions.
At Palgrave Macmillan, I would like to thank my anonymous peer
reviewers who have offered helpful feedback and professionalism regard-
ing a subject that so readily evokes uncharitable disagreement. I appreciate
their willingness to engage so productively and am grateful for their gen-
erosity with their time and expertise. I also want to thank my editor,
Camille Davies, for her remarkable kindness and skill.
v
c
ontents
1 The Current State of (Trans)racial Discourse 1
2 Pathways for Further Developing (Trans)racial Discourse 53
Index 109
vii
CHAPTER 1
The Current State of (Trans)racial Discourse
Abstract Part I outlines particular challenges we are currently facing—
conceptually, linguistically, politically, and theoretically—in our recent
effort to theorize potential transracial identity. The concerns Part I
addresses include: how Doležal’s case might be understood alongside the
identities of other racial nonconformists; what we think “black identity”
consists of and how our language and concepts for race need to be clari-
fied; whether ancestry and phenotype should continue to dominate our
discourse; and the relevance of political orientation and action to racial
identity; and the implications of motive and intention for racial identity.
Keywords Rachel Doležal • Transracialism • Racial identity • Critical
Race Theory • Transracial theory • Passing
IntroductIon
Although the transgression of the color line is a very old practice, the case
of Rachel Doležal has altered the perception and conceptualization of race
change in the twenty-first century.1 “Transracialism” has solidified as a
subject of study with the publication of Rogers Brubaker’s Trans: Gender
1 I will use the name “Rachel Doležal” throughout, rather than her subsequent name of
“Nkechi Amare Diallo,” because she has specifically chosen to use the former for her “public
persona” and autobiography.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1
Switzerland AG 2021
M. L. McKibbin, Rethinking Rachel Doležal and Transracial
Theory, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86278-7_1
2 M. L. MCKIBBIN
and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities (and an accompanying journal
article) in 2016 and Rebecca Tuvel’s “In Defense of Transracialism” in
2017.2 This modest volume is an effort to help shape transracial discourse
in its formative years, as the theorization of transracial identity builds on
the work of these foundational scholars and begins to proliferate. In other
words, my intention is to help us hone our discourse before the field set-
tles into its norms.3 Rethinking Rachel Doležal and Transracial Theory
argues that transracial discourse could be strengthened and particular mis-
steps could be avoided with some conscious effort on our part.
This book is an examination of how we, as academics and as a broader
society, are thinking about race and the potential for transracial identities
in the context of the United States in the twenty-first century. Since race
has different histories and contemporary practices in various places, it is
important to note that this project is concerned with the specific time and
place of the United States in the present day. In my view, Doležal has
forced a reckoning in the contemporary moment with the overlap of the
relatively newfound American respect for self-identification (especially
racial) and even newer American understanding of the vast flexibility and
variety of socially derived identities (especially gender).4 Part I focuses on
what Doležal has revealed or provoked—including a defense of essentialist
race concepts, a renewed interest in identification processes, and the rele-
vance of political sentiment to racial identity—and suggests ways to
improve the current discourse in order to better theorize transraciality.
2 The term “transracialism” has been employed widely and may be (or be becoming) the
norm. However, out of respect for the offense that I understand “ism” to be in transgender
studies discourse, I have elected not to use the term for the time being.
3 The “we/us/our” that this work addresses is the academic community—specifically,
those working on identity.
4 Americans were able to choose their own race on the Census beginning in 1960 and were
allowed to choose more than one race beginning in 2000. Notably, the state still dictates the
racial categories named on the Census. Individualized and non-normative racial identities,
such as Tiger Woods’s “Cablinasian,” are not recognized by the government or, arguably, by
American society.
In 2017, Treva C. Ellison, Kai M. Green, Matt Richardson, and C. Riley Snorton stated,
“We are in a time labeled the ‘transgender tipping point,’ a period characterized by the scal-
ing up of legal protections, visibility, rights, and politics centered on transgender people”
(162). Of course, reactionary conservative efforts are abundant and tremendously alarming
(especially the laws Republican state legislatures are enacting—see Burns, for example), but
Ellison et al. note our unprecedented moment in terms of public recognition of non-
normative gender identities.
1 THE CURRENT STATE OF (TRANS)RACIAL DISCOURSE 3
Part II identifies the more general concerns that need to be addressed as
we continue to develop the discourse—such as whether to employ trans-
gender theory, the concept of “passing,” or socially conservative views—as
well as some new ways we might come to frame productive discussion in
the future.
I would like to make clear what this project is and is not doing. Unlike
Brubaker and Tuvel, I am not arguing for or against transracial identity
(though it will become clear that I do not think it is a foregone impossibil-
ity); rather, my goal here is to think critically about how we are talking
about transrace and how we might best theorize it going forward. I am
keen to contribute for the moment by suggesting productive paths we
might take as we grow the field; I feel that were I to wade into the argu-
ments themselves it would distract from my ambition to help strengthen
the fledgling theory. Consequently, this work will not engage with the
actual arguments of those who have begun to participate in the conversa-
tion—for or against transracial identity—but will, instead, focus on the
way the conversation is developing and might be developed in the future.
I am interested in the ideas and omissions that currently characterize the
discourse as well as areas where we might be prone to regrettable mistakes
if caution is not observed early on. Because of my focus on the conversa-
tion itself (rather than its outcome), I am also not necessarily offering
answers but often queries themselves—queries I might tentatively begin to
address myself but which are intended more to stimulate change or
thought with regard to how we are developing transracial theory. Indeed,
I am often curious about ideas that I do not have the appropriate academic
background to take up but think colleagues in other disciplines might
address for the benefit of the discourse as a whole. And since I am not
going to engage directly with the arguments of other scholars, I have
made a good-faith effort to acknowledge their work in order to both dem-
onstrate the expansion of the field and direct other scholars towards work
that I have found helpful (in the hope that they will as well). This means
that a lot of scholarship is mentioned in notes, which should be under-
stood to reflect the objective of this project not to take up my colleagues’
arguments but to help develop our thinking by identifying trends and
oversights in the field. (I sincerely apologize to scholars whose work I have
not mentioned/discovered; any omissions are unintentional.) Lastly, while
this discussion takes up Rachel Doležal, she is used as a springboard, not
as a case study. That is, I am not interested in the specifics of her case but
rather in the issues her case raises. As Ann Morning points out, “Rather
4 M. L. MCKIBBIN
than an evaluation of the truth value of racial identity claims” what is
informative is “the form and content of the claims themselves, as well as
[…] the counter-arguments that are launched. Together, they embody
beliefs about the appropriate or correct bases for racial classification that
fall squarely within the realm of […] ‘racial conceptualization’”
(“Kaleidoscope” 1058). What is important to this discussion is not debat-
ing Doležal’s character but rather what her claims can help us understand
about our assumptions, beliefs, and practices with regard to race and, con-
sequently, how we are thinking about the possibility of transracial identi-
ties. Thus, my focus is not ascertaining the veracity of Doležal’s claims or
that of any other potentially transracial person’s, but rather is examining
the race concepts that are being conscripted into the discourse surround-
ing her identification and discovering the ways that we might expand or
adapt our discourse to theorize more productively.5
As a scholar who is trained in literary studies and who works in critical
theories of race (especially African American literature and Critical Mixed
Race Studies), my aim with this book is to participate in the academic
cross-pollination I believe is necessary for the theorization of racial iden-
tity to continue productively. Therefore, I respectfully ask scholars in those
fields with which I engage to be patient with my forays into their disci-
plines and to respond constructively so that we may all contribute to fur-
thering the scholarly contemplation of this unwieldy subject matter. I am
hopeful that we can respect the interdisciplinary nature of the theorization
of transracial identity and thus develop a productive, thorough discourse
rather than a divisive or divided one. In addition to my wish to avoid dis-
cipline-based tensions, I also wish to foster a broad culture of
5 While I am intentionally uninterested in Doležal’s personality, it is worth noting that a
significant number of people who discuss her make a point of disparaging her personally
(regardless of their stance on transracial identity claims). It is a curious habit since a view
about her personality is an unnecessary caveat to a conversation about what her case brings
to our attention. The practice certainly demonstrates how publicly toxic she is, but we need
to think about why we are enacting public distaste for her as a person. If it is the case that
those who think transracial identity is a distinct possibility feel the need to express solidarity
with the widespread dislike of Doležal as a person in order to avoid accusations of being
“apologists,” that is important to analyze—in terms of what such an accusation is intended
to mean as well as why expressions of personal distaste might be considered a defense. And
if it is the case that those opposed to the possibility of transracial identity are expressing per-
sonal dislike of Doležal as a shorthand way of dismissing her claims or as a stand-in for a criti-
cal examination of them, that is important to analyze as well—especially since ad hominem
attacks will contribute nothing to our discourse.