On Rachel Dolezal and being "trans-racial".

[galled]

I was with you until you equated race with non-physical traits. Non-physical traits are cultural and societal. While these cultural and societal aspects may be more present or dominate a greater portion of a race, people are not born with these. This is why prejudice and stereotyping based on your physical appearance is so silly.

The term race has morphed into meaning more today than it has in the past. "Trans-racial" is ill-defined, and quite frankly, inaccurate, useless slang. While I completely agree that Dolezal's actions were unsavory, I think (another made up, slang term, but IMHO more accurate) what she was trying to impart is she feels she is "trans-cultural" or "trans-social". Of course these are just additional slang words that are nearly useless too because in today's world, especially if you're an American or part of some other nation (or even on the internet unresticted), that more often than not, welcomes rather than suppresses people of all backgrounds, we're all "trans-cultural" and "trans-societal" to some extent. The old term (which I think is still perfectly acceptable) is "cross- cultural."

[Lime]

This is a really interesting topic, I love it. I watched a few videos and read a couple articles because I was interested about the whole thing. I'll try not to make my post too long and condense it, but a few key points always make me raise an eyebrow.

It reminds me of a show I watched not too long ago, where there's two plain, adult, white males talking and the one makes a racist Asian comment, and the other guy goes "Dude, I'm Chinese." and the first one is like "What? But.. No, you're not.. You're.." and he makes a gesture with the eyes. Then the second male just stares at him and goes "Yeah, but my parents are Chinese, and I was raised in a Chinese family, in a Chinese house. I'm Chinese."

Which kind of made sense to me- I don't know how other people feel about it, but it kinda clicked a little with me.

My mom was adopted by a guy from Trinidad, so, to put it plainly, as stereotypical "black" as people like to joke about. Although we live in Canada (my grandpa moved to Canada too, my mom was just born here) but I do take in some of their culture from time to time, because it's just part of how I was raised.

For example, if we cut my grandpa's hair, we have to sweep it up and dispose of it all properly, because of superstitions involving voodoo. My favourite is the cuisine. Do I think it's weird? Not at all, it's just part of how I was raised. Am I black? Hell no. Am I white as a piece of bread? Yessir, because I take after the heavily Dutch side of my family physically. I just draw from both for upbringing.

Now, I don't claim to be trans-racial at all. I know I'm super white, and I'm okay with however I am. I also know that I haven't had as much influence from my grandpa. But I understand a little bit, and if I were to scale something like that up (say your entire family, friends, etc.) then I can definitely see someone just saying that's what they are.


EDIT: On a side note, I totally don't agree with what she did though. I forgot to mention that. Lying is never cool.