Rachel Dolezal, the president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, has resigned, according to a letter from her that was posted Monday on the NAACP Spokane Facebook page.
Dolezal did not address allegations that have landed her and her family in the national spotlight over the past several days. Her parents, who are white, allege that she has been lying and presenting herself as black when she is not. [from CNN.com 6-15-15]
What does this whole incident say about the character and integrity of organizations like the NAACP?
It says that such organizations are actually what they say they are.
Consider the evidence.
The president of the national NAACP also weighed in Monday after Dolezal’s resignation, issuing a statement and later speaking to CNN.
“Our members who looked up to her, appreciated her leadership, are pained, very disappointed,” said Cornell William Brooks. “This is a distraction from the work.”
In his statement, he said the organization’s focus “must be on issues not individuals.”
Actually, in this case the issue is the individual. The NAACP should celebrate Dolezal, not be ashamed of her. Why? Because she represents exactly what they stand for: The triumph of group identity over the individual; and the importance of racial victimhood over and above individualism, and individual rights.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m on the other side. I don’t agree with the NAACP, who — like other collectivist “civil rights” organizations — treats black persons as if they’re inferior, helpless victims who cannot endure equal treatment under the law, so instead must have special rights to sue, gain government benefits, languish for generations in government-funded inner city racial ghettos, and — if some in the collectivist civil rights establishment get their way — even force white persons to pay “reparations” to black persons for slavery.
Both the NAACP and Rachel Dolezal stand for the same things: Victimhood above individualism; racial identity above personal identity; and collectivist socialism above private property and capitalism.
When you elevate unchosen characteristics, such as race, over and above self-determined characteristics (such as values, intelligence, personal development), then Rachel Dolezal is what you get. Most don’t go all the way, like she did. But she was operating on the very same premise of the NAACP, along with other victim groups like it: Your victim identity is who you are.
Dolezal so bought into this collectivist, tribal mindset that she actually adapted the physical traits of a black woman and tried to pass herself off as one. In Dolezal’s leftist/socialist/progressive race-centered world, being a member of the oppressed victim group is the ideal. It’s the ultimate in “cool.” We know that because of what they preach and practice in their work. Dolezal’s desire to “become black” was both a logical, and psychological, consequence of her underlying premise that being a member of what she perceives a cherished racial victim group (not all black individuals see themselves that way), she would have fulfilled her life’s dream.
In her resignation letter, quoted by CNN.com, Dolezal wrote: “While challenging the construct of race is at the core of evolving human consciousness, we can NOT afford to lose sight of the five Game Changers (Criminal Justice & Public Safety, Health & Healthcare, Education, Economic Sustainability, and Voting Rights & Political Representation) that affect millions, often with a life or death outcome. The movement is larger than a moment in time or a single person’s story, and I hope that everyone offers their robust support of the Journey for Justice campaign that the NAACP launches today!”
Interesting. Dolezal appears on the verge of suggesting that race does not exist. That’s what she’s implying when she writes, “While challenging the construct of race…” as at the core of an “evolving” human consciousness. In other words, it’s progress in human evolution, according to her, to stop acknowledging that race exists.
Yet organizations like the NAACP get money and go on existing only because race does exist. They’re counting on politicians and academics not only to recognize that race exists, but that it’s the single most important aspect of human character, personality, and relationships, including social-political relationships.
The people who support the NAACP are firmly focused on the past, centuries past in the case of slavery, and many decades past in the post-slavery Jim Crow South. Those immoral and unconstitutional manifestations of government force no longer exist. Good riddance to them.
Yet the central purpose of organizations like the NAACP is to expand and strengthen socialism in the United States. This is what they’re really after, as Dolezal herself acknowledges in her resignation letter:
CNN: [Dolezal] said that though “many issues face us now” such as “police brutality, biased curriculum in schools, economic disenfranchisement, health inequities, and a lack of pro-justice political representation … the dialogue has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity.”
This is the typical language of someone supporting more government intervention in the economy, more government control over business and more government programs/directives (of the kind the NAACP favors) to be imposed on already existing public institutions like schools, hospitals and government agencies.
Racism is an irrational and ultimately destructive force. But you have to be clear what racism is. Racism involves the elevation of racial qualities to the most important issue in human life. Racism is evil — and ultimately impotent — because it denies what is objectively the most important thing about each and every human being: his or her individual identity. Race is secondary, and in a more enlightened world, it would be marginal. Let’s be real. The NAACP, by emphasizing race and victimhood as part of “black identity” into the indefinite future, has not made the world more enlightened.
Some who supported the civil rights movement back in the day viewed it as an opportunity to remove race as a significant factor from human relations, and replace it with a mindset of individualism. Instead, organizations such as the NAACP have rigidly adhered to their own version of statist-Marxist collectivism, focusing on retaining the status of victimhood for black people into the indefinite future, since this obviously serves their own agenda of expanding government programs and power via the welfare state. Obama was their man, not because he is (half) black, but because he’s socialist in his outlook. Hillary Clinton will be their man, just as much.
The more America’s shameful history of slavery and racism fades into the past, the more ludicrous it becomes to have organizations like the NAACP, which treats people of today the same as their great-great grandparents who needed government protection against the statism of Southern slavery and imposed segregation laws. The civil rights movement’s refusal to embrace individualism and equality of rational self-responsibility for people of all races led to a context where people like Rachel Dolezal felt it made sense to do everything possible to “be black” and part of the accepted victim crowd embraced by her socialist cronies in academia and government.
Is Dolezal mentally imbalanced and unhealthy? Undoubtedly so. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to figure that out. Is she a fraud, morally speaking? Of course she is. She’s no different from someone who lies on their resume and hopes to get away with it. In her case, she worked around people who want to be deceived, because socialism, permanent victimization and all the other things the NAACP stands for require a considerable amount of self-deceit if you’re to actually buy into them.
This whole absurd affair is the inevitable byproduct of the anti-individualist, collectivist view, that promised to give us a color blind society … and gave us Rachel Dolezal, instead.
