In the time since Rachel Dolezal was exposed as a woman with white parents, with a white ancestry, who had been presenting for years as a light-skinned black woman with a black father, some people have compared her presentation to that of trans women, particularly Caitlyn Jenner, calling it a "transracial" identity or expression. In response, some pointed out rightly that "transracial" is a term already coined for children of one race adopted by a family of another race or races. Many others rose up to express why Dolezal's choice cannot be compared to Jenner's choice. These folks have largely taken the stance of supporting Jenner and criticizing Dolezal, and their arguments have run the gamut of reasoning.
But the folks I've read are wrong. And it bothers me.
I agree that Jenner and all trans and genderqueer people get to claim and express a gender different than the one they were given at birth. I also agree that Dolezal or any other white person does not get to claim a racial identity of color. But I'm struggling to understand why one and not the other, and so far I haven't found an argument that holds.
I need an understanding of why Rachel Dolezal cannot do what she did that, if applied to trans and genderqueer folks, won't undermine our self-determination and freedom from the tyranny of biology.
Some critics have made a biological argument, saying that Dolezal was white from birth by virtue (double entendre intended) of her skin color and her heritage through Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Sweden. They argue that her physical skin color and her genetic heritage are immutable and determine her race, and that she was only able to live as a black woman by making cosmetic changes to her hair and body. To respond that biological race is a phantom and racial categories themselves are social constructs is of course a too-quick dismissal of the very real history of racial profiling in the States in enslavement, suffrage, housing practices, police surveillance, and hundreds of other ways. But biological primacy is a favorite strategy attacking trans identity: chromosomes and hormones and genitals are made out to be causes rather than correlations, and physical changes to our bodies become, at best, cosmetic and, at worst, Frankensteinian mutilations.
This argument has been the most interesting and the most troubling to me and has, in my mind, most clearly exposed the double standard. Again and again, commentators used a biological argument to insist that Dolezal was doing something deceitful and false and harmful, but allowed that Jenner was doing something right and good and true. Why is Jenner allowed to transcend this biological totem, but not Dolezal?
I don't know. But she is. And Dolezal is not.
Other critics have focused on appropriation, saying that Dolezal has stolen physical and cultural aspects of blackness without having earned them through survival of black childhood and the daily life-long experience of racial oppression and discrimination. This is also a familiar argument against trans identity, used particularly against trans women, who are similarly said to have appropriated definitions and expressions of femininity and taken over women's space without knowing what it truly means to be a woman by having lived through girlhood and its attendant gender tracking.
Several people pointed out that Jenner has an enduring, involuntary identity as a woman, as female, that has been part of her self-understanding since childhood. On one hand, the "involuntary," one-size-fits-all determination that all trans (and queer) folks must be "born this way" is another troubling manifestation of biological sovereignty. On the other had, this piece of the conversation must include questions about how and whether identity even translates to race in a similar way. Outside of supremacist circles, does one "feel" white? Or is whiteness the invisible norm to white people: the air we breathe and the reflexive mechanism that works our lungs?
But Dolezal did use this very language to authenticate her racial sense of self, including an identity from a young age drawing pictures of herself with a brown crayon. When she did, she was quickly pronounced delusional and even mentally ill. This is particularly troubling for me. Not just because trans people have been historically pathologized through an assortment of clinical and armchair diagnoses, but because we still are by both the anti-trans public at-large and by the medical institution. It is still difficult or impossible to receive many gender-affirming surgeries without input and paperwork from psychiatric professionals.
Because of this ongoing history of dismissing trans identities as insane and malignant, I am loathe to do the same to Rachel Dolezal, even with the gentleness and probably genuine compassion that I've heard some folks call her crazy. So what do we do with her self-identification?
The strongest argument that I encountered is one that I came across first in a piece that contended that this application of a "transracial" identity can only work in one direction. Of course light-skinned black people have for a very long time presented as white and avoided the cultural sanctions that a racist society places on bodies read as black, but the essence of this argument remains forceful. Not every black person could, if they somehow did, identify and live undetected as white.
In the end, though, "passing" remains an unachievable goal for many trans people, as well. It doesn't play out, as with race, as a single direction from male to female or vice versa, but there are a large number of trans (and, frankly, non-trans) folks who are called out, misgendered, misnamed, and sanctioned for failing to live up to gendered norms and expectations. It is partially for these reasons that Dean Spade and, more recently, Janet Mock have problematized the goal of "passing." What is an "authentic" woman or man? Even Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show complicated its Dolezal coverage by devolving into a dispute over which correspondents were "black enough."
Ultimately, it may just be that there is no way to distinguish Dolezal from Jenner. The arguments differentiating between these two "trans" expressions simply are not persuasive, because anything applied to Dolezal can (and possibly should) also be applied to Jenner and other trans and genderqueer folks. It may just be that those of us who support trans people but not Rachel Dolezal say simply that one is not acceptable and one is, perhaps for no reason other than that race has been made such a monumental hash. And that may finally be the most compelling distinction: At least at this point in our history, we are unable to conceive of race as an independent trait or an expression of self that is not inextricably tied to privilege and oppression.