EDITORIAL THE RACHEL DOLEZAL ‘EVENT”: DEFINTELY NOT ‘BLACKFACE” By Phil Seahorn philseahorn@gmail.com
JUNE 15th, 2015 I HAVE TO BELIEVE IN KARMA WHEN I TRAVEL FROM ST. LOUIS TO SPOKANE JUST TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE RIOTS, JUST TO WIND UP IN SPOKANE, WHICH IS NOW KNOWN FOR THE RACHEL DOLEZAL NAACP ‘EVENT”.I HAVE GONE FROM ONE RACIAL ISSUE THAT HAS GONE WORLDWIDE AND VIRAL, TO ONE
HERE IN SPOKANE THAT MAY RIVAL THE FERGUSON EVENTS. I was going to wait and ride this event with Rachel Dolezal out thru the social media because I’m still new here in the Spokane area. However, and incident this past Saturday morning at the “Gay Parade”( I posted earlier on FB that for some reason people like bus drivers can’t call it that) downtown convinced me that an editorial may indeed be in order for this event. I’ll admit, in first hearing about the story (well, reading the post on FB) I laughed my ass off. But then, OTHER posts started appearing online as well as on FB purporting extreme outrage from the white AND black community in America. That’s when it hit me: today, in 2015, people in America are STILL fucked up COMPLETELY about race and culture in the greatest of melting pots of human civilizations ever existed. I have two true stories of white guys I have grown up with that puts to the lie that Rachel Dolezal, when she states that she is black, COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY BELIEVES THAT. Here’s the real bacon: when white folks go ‘native” they go all the fucking way. STORY ONE: TOM TAYLOR Tom was this guy who I met when I was 13 and transferred from HOLY GUARDIAN ANGELS CATHOLIC SCHOOL in the Peabody Projects to go to middle school up on “The Hill” as we called it back in the day in St. Louis, Missouri “The Hill” was actually the Compton heights neighborhood back in the 70’s, and it was a private school called Compton heights Catholic Middle Scholl” is where I met the first white guy who for a month I thought was a very light skinned black dude. Turned out this afro wearing gold tooth six foot two 7th grader was ALL white, as in ‘Completely Caucasian”. And yet, as I got to know Tom, he was not putting on an act. He was, for all intents and purposes, a ‘brutha”. Tom had grown up in a section of the Compton Heights area that had been all black and notoriously hood and gangsta. From the time Tom was small, as in first grade, Tom had to fight. And he kept that up until seventh grade when I met him. He even gained the respect of the most notorious and violent of the ‘hood bullies” by standing to up toe to toe and eye to eye with him. The bully didn’t ‘punk” Tom, and from that day on, Tom would have OTHER black kids beat the shit out of anyone who disrespected him because he was white. He would stand there and laugh his ass off. Because everyone in the hood knew: this boy/man had FOUGHT his way into his “blackness”. I know, I know, straight out of a pulp magazine, but I experienced this shit with my own eyes.
But wait, there’s MORE! STORY TWO: KEITH CHAPLA Senior year for me at ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL in St. Louis back in the day. In comes this tall, blonde, blue eyed kid that, when you turned your back, you would SWEAR this was a “brutha” from the straight up hood talking. That was Keith Chapla, the freshman basketball wonder boy who would propel the basketball team St. John’s to the some exciting games and times. But what struck me about this cat was that, for all intents and purposes, this was ANOTHER white dude that had “gone native.” Keith was so down back in the day that he would bring his black girlfriend to our practically all white high school, and he was STILL popular with the white girls. Keith had grown up on the OTHER side of Compton Heights but closer to the Peabody Projects, which was my home turf. Keith had to deal with black folks from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed. Now I know that with his basketball skills, he won respect on the courts (back in the hood in the day, many really serious neighborhood disputes were settled over a game of b-ball. It was the ass whippin after the game when the loosing team would lose their shit that got really interesting. So Keith had that going for him. But the fact that this REALLY white boy who already had skill to pay the bills would adapt and adopt the urban black culture to the point that you couldn’t even tell what he was when he spoke was something that if found was fucking incredible. So, there’s TWO stories that make me write this to say: LEAVE
THIS
WOMAN ALONE!!!!!!! The fact that she chose to serve the NAACP is the real reason American people (black and white) are upset! This is a woman that has immersed herself into the black American community so much that she FINALLY UNDERSTANDS WHAT MOST WHITE AMERICANS FAIL TO :
THERE IS NO SUCH THINGS AS BLACK RACISTS. She understands that ‘racism” is inflicted on those in our society deemed “powerless”. She, as a white person, finally understands the hatred, anger, hurt, and disenfranchisement that most African Americans are BORN INTO in this country. The true ‘racists’ are the people in America that HAVE the social, financial, and political power to inflict social injustices on a people. And what did Ms. Dolezal learn that most white folks never get the opportunity to learn about black folks?
IT AINT THE BLACK COMMUNITY WITH THE MONEY, POWER, AND POLITICAL PULL TO BE RACISTS IN AMERICA. It (this obvious truth about the white/black diaspora in America) is what probably drove her to join the NAACP, and eventually to head it. So bashing this woman for experiencing a life that a lot of younger white kids today seem t emulate in clothes speech, and even social priorities is fucking stupid. Some White Americans can’t, for the LIFE of them, simply can’t understand why a white woman would want to live her life as a black person. Black Americans feel this is one of the most extreme and horrible instances of “black face” in American history. Both groups of Americans are dead wrong. Look at famous actors and actresses who “act black”? They getting fucked with? And of course, “EMINEM”. So, in the case of Rachel Dolezal, I say: fuck the haters. She just opened up a door in America’s racial discourse that I just can’t WAIT to see where that door leads.
p
eace