WA - Civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black, parents say #2

[EllieBee]

(Emphasis added.)

Great post, however I can't help but object to what is obviously a slur against Asians. (j/k)

I felt bad for laughing. At first. But laugh I did. :lol:

Proof positive that humor is never out of place when it is not mean, but rather silly and lighthearted!

 

[Nova]

Hopefully, people in the future will know their ancestry in the same way as people in the past - they'll care enough to ask questions, parents will care enough to pass along family history. Forensic anthropologists will continue to do what they've always done, which is make identifications based on known race differences such as bone density and shape. There have always been demands to identify people of mixed origin - definitely not a problem of the future.

Please explain how this distinct difference is a sociopolitical concern, and where it lacks scientific criteria:

"The pelvic inlet was wider among 178 white women than 56 African-American women (10.7+/-0.7 cm compared with 10.0.+0.7 cm, P<.001). The outlet was also wider (mean intertuberous diameter 12.3+/-1.0 cm compared with 11.8+/-0.9 cm, P<.001).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18378751

"White women have a wider pelvic inlet, wider outlet, and shallower anteroposterior outlet than African-American women."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/

That's lovely but there is more than one example in this thread of people whose personal understanding of their heritage--based on what they were told by parents, etc.--does NOT correspond to the biological distinctions you find so important.

And the point, once again, is that the median figures you find so important are based on arbitrarily chosen criteria. And the median is just another construct. As Donjeta has continually asked you: what are the high and low ranges of each group, how much overlap does one find between those groups?

One can construct a median of any group, however arbitrary. Whether than median means anything depends on other factors such as those Donjeta has identified.

How were "white" and "African-American" defined in those studies. There is a great deal of mixture already present in American populations.

And how significant are differences in medians of .7 and .9 cms (about 1/4 to 1/3 inches)? What social, political or even scientific policies should be based on such insignificant variations, especially when we know that individuals of each group overlap with the measurements of the other?

So far, all the studies I've seen are based on a very small number of test subjects. One of the links above is to an entire book based on testing 48 people out of 300 million Americans! I suspect that if you divided 48 women on any basis: foot length, thickness of arm hair or fondness for The Good Wife, you might well get medians that vary as much as the ones your mention.

But perhaps not. Were those figures compared against some sort of test group of randomly chosen subjects?

Bottom line: there are many explanations for a minor variation in width of pelvic inlet. Why does it even matter, except to give aid and comfort to those who want to argue that African-Americans are less intelligent and more violent than their European-American counterparts?

 

[otto]

That's lovely but there is more than one example in this thread of people whose personal understanding of their heritage--based on what they were told by parents, etc.--does NOT correspond to the biological distinctions you find so important.

And the point, once again, is that the median figures you find so important are based on arbitrarily chosen criteria. And the median is just another construct. As Donjeta has continually asked you: what are the high and low ranges of each group, how much overlap does one find between those groups?

One can construct a median of any group, however arbitrary. Whether than median means anything depends on other factors such as those Donjeta has identified.

How were "white" and "African-American" defined in those studies. There is a great deal of mixture already present in American populations.

And how significant are differences in medians of .7 and .9 cms (about 1/4 to 1/3 inches)? What social, political or even scientific policies should be based on such insignificant variations, especially when we know that individuals of each group overlap with the measurements of the other?

So far, all the studies I've seen are based on a very small number of test subjects. One of the links above is to an entire book based on testing 48 people out of 300 million Americans! I suspect that if you divided 48 women on any basis: foot length, thickness of arm hair or fondness for The Good Wife, you might well get medians that vary as much as the ones your mention.

But perhaps not. Were those figures compared against some sort of test group of randomly chosen subjects?

Bottom line: there are many explanations for a minor variation in width of pelvic inlet. Why does it even matter, except to give aid and comfort to those who want to argue that African-Americans are less intelligent and more violent than their European-American counterparts?

The question about anthropometry was based on a misunderstanding of anthropometric data in Humanscale 123. The data is pulled from US military records starting in WW2 and continuing until the 1970s. I'm sure that the sample source is adequate and includes every possible variant ... and still, the variations are so, so, very small. Humanscale is not some silly little data base. It continues to be the go-to data base for the military today.

No social and political policies should be based on race. Should there be a policy for people with slanted eyes? Isn't that absolutely absurd? Should there be policy for people with blue eyes? Should there be policy for people with black skin? The US has a long history of persecuting people that are not Caucasian, so perhaps Caucasians in the US need policy to straighten out their thinking, but otherwise I can't see any reason for policy based on race. Perhaps there should be policy that people who disrespect others are compelled to spend six months with Rachel Dolezal - she could chase them around with her baboon whips and force them to hunt food with a bow and arrow.

 

[EllieBee]

The question about anthropometry was based on a misunderstanding of anthropometric data in Humanscale 123. The data is pulled from US military records starting in WW2 and continuing until the 1970s. I'm sure that the sample source is adequate and includes every possible variant ... and still, the variations are so, so, very small. Humanscale is not some silly little data base. It continues to be the go-to data base for the military today.

No social and political policies should be based on race. Should there be a policy for people with slanted eyes? Isn't that absolutely absurd? Should there be policy for people with blue eyes? Should there be policy for people with black skin? The US has a long history of persecuting people that are not Caucasian, so perhaps Caucasians in the US need policy to straighten out their thinking, but otherwise I can't see any reason for policy based on race. Perhaps there should be policy that people who disrespect others are compelled to spend six months with Rachel Dolezal - she could chase them around with her baboon whips and force them to hunt food with a bow and arrow.

:deadhorse::deadhorse::deadhorse:

 

[EllieBee]

When my daughter was born, my mother-in-law announced in shock: where did those slanted eyes come from! We don't have slanted eyes in our family. I could not stop laughing. Then I mentioned, for the first time, that my grandmother was born in Surabaja. That could have been the moon, as far as she knew. People from redneckville can't see beyond the next hillbilly. Blond hair, blue eyes, a tan that comes easily and lasts long, and slanted eyes ... what's one to do! I still think it's funny - even though the poor mother-in-law never fully recovered.

My own aunt, my mother's sister, said upon seeing my (supposedly all white) daughter's school pic "who is that little black girl?".

My DD has light brown hair and blue eyes, but very tan skin and curly hair.

If this were 100 years ago, she would have trouble "passing" and yet, she is not at all black. (Disclaimer: neither her father nor I have had genetic testing, and yes. He really IS her dad!, but we are both very fair and caucasion-looking).

This is why I say calling someone out as a certain race because "OMG, it is SOOOO obvious " is not only bad manners, it is bad science.

 

[Donjeta]

Good to hear. As long as no one is suggesting exactly that due to over the counter DNA analysis, anthropological race classifications are no longer valid, or that each time a mixed child is born, a new race classification is defined, I think we're on the same page.

No, I don't think over the counter DNA analysis has anything to do with it. There were scientists saying that the there is not any valid way to divide the human species into biologically distinct races long before those were even invented.

Of course that doesn't mean that you can't sometimes find differences between different populations, which means that forensic anthropologists may have success in matching people to categories that broadly correspond to their ancestry in the census data. (But if you hang around the UID forums you will also find some cases in which they apparently got it wrong.)

Anyone who'd suggest that a new race is born each time there is a new mixed ancestry child would have had to totally misunderstand what the term race means I think. One person is not a race. What was being said was that our history of hundreds of thousands of years of having mixed ancestry children who further reproduced and contributed their DNA in the population contributes to the fact that no human populations are distinct enough genetically to be called a separate race.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-science-human-genomes-darwin

We now know that the way we talk about race has no scientific validity. There is no genetic basis that corresponds with any particular group of people, no essentialist DNA for black people or white people or anyone. This is not a hippy ideal, it&#8217;s a fact. There are genetic characteristics that associate with certain populations, but none of these is exclusive, nor correspond uniquely with any one group that might fit a racial epithet. Regional adaptations are real, but these tend to express difference within so-called races, not between them. Sickle-cell anaemia affects people of all skin colours because it has evolved where malaria is common. Tibetans are genetically adapted to high altitude, rendering Chinese residents of Beijing more similar to Europeans than their superficially similar neighbours. Tay-Sachs disease, once thought to be a &#8220;Jewish disease&#8221;, is as common in French Canadians and Cajuns. And so it goes on.

Hopefully, people in the future will know their ancestry in the same way as people in the past - they'll care enough to ask questions, parents will care enough to pass along family history. Forensic anthropologists will continue to do what they've always done, which is make identifications based on known race differences such as bone density and shape. There have always been demands to identify people of mixed origin - definitely not a problem of the future.

Like Blumenfeld noted they may find differences between the Caucasian and African American populations but scientifically it's really a bit inaccurate to call them race differences.

You can find differences between the Swedes, the Saami, the Estonians and the Finns even though most would say they're the same race. How about the Pygmy and the Masai? Both are considered the same race, black, by the traditional American classification - but one is among the shortest populations and one among the tallest so if you looked you'd find lot of significant differences between their skeletal measurements.

Please explain how this distinct difference is a sociopolitical concern, and where it lacks scientific criteria:

"The pelvic inlet was wider among 178 white women than 56 African-American women (10.7+/-0.7 cm compared with 10.0.+0.7 cm, P<.001). The outlet was also wider (mean intertuberous diameter 12.3+/-1.0 cm compared with 11.8+/-0.9 cm, P<.001).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18378751

"White women have a wider pelvic inlet, wider outlet, and shallower anteroposterior outlet than African-American women."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/

To me this finding appears to be of obstetric concern, not a sociopolitical one.
The full text is available and the authors make no mention of how useful this finding is going to be in determining ancestry from skeletal remains but we can make some inferences on the basis of the data given:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/table/T2/

...some of the observed differences were statistically significant but small in absolute magnitude

5/9 of the measures turned out no significant differences and in the ones that were significant there is considerable overlap (the numbers are expressed as the mean +/- standard deviation) so that means that many of the white and AA women scored in the same range and you couldn't distinguish them forensically on the basis of this data, just the ones who outlie the overlap.

These authors are concerned with obstetrics outcomes and not the biological reality of races (the participants self identified their ethnicity here) but even so they recognize this as a limitation of their study:

In addition, we treated race as a categorical variable, but we recognize that race cannot be accurately classified into simple categories.

The question about anthropometry was based on a misunderstanding of anthropometric data in Humanscale 123. The data is pulled from US military records starting in WW2 and continuing until the 1970s. I'm sure that the sample source is adequate and includes every possible variant ... and still, the variations are so, so, very small. Humanscale is not some silly little data base. It continues to be the go-to data base for the military today.'

No one said that it isn't a good, large database or that it isn't based on great research and adequate sample size. It's just that the way it is described on Amazon (as a tool for architects and industrial designers etc.) the data appears rather irrelevant in a discussion about whether the human species is divisible in distinct races.

But if you can quote a relevant passage offering evidence for the existence of separate races from the Humanscales, feel free to do so.

We harvest thousands of human genomes every week. Last month, the UK launched the 100,000 Genomes project to identify genetic bases for many diseases, but within that booty we will also find more of the secret history of our species, our DNA mixed and remixed through endless sex and continuous migration. We are too horny and mobile to have stuck to our own kind for very long.

Race doesn&#8217;t exist, racism does. But we can now confine it to opinions and not pretend that there might be any scientific validity in bigotry.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-science-human-genomes-darwin

Finding more examples of biological differences between people of different "races" does not disprove this because the argument isn't that there are no differences between populations who may be identified in various social arenas as different "races". Rather it is that these differences are not significant enough and consistent enough and do not differentiate the populations enough to warrant the description "race".

More interesting reading:
http://anthropology.msu.edu/anp202-...1992-Forensic-Anthropology-Race-Concept-1.pdf
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071098.php
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...rror/201109/the-main-reason-races-don-t-exist
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/302497/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...irror/201108/another-reason-races-don-t-exist

 

[Donjeta]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adrian-margaret-brune/the-naacps-first-transrac_b_7639690.html

The summer of 1919 had been a contentious one for a country in the throes of its first World War -- and under the radar, for a nascent Civil Rights movement. In the middle of the fury, a small, 26-year-old activist named Walter Francis White -- a black man who could pass as white -- had been sent by his employer, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to probe into dozens of lynchings and riots. But the unrest hadn't quite ended with the season-a three-alarm riot two thousand miles to the South sent White packing again.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/comm...t-lets-not-destroy-her-for-wanting-to-be.html
Rachel Dolezal isn’t black like me — but let’s not destroy her for wanting to be
The knee-jerk backlash against the former NAACP leader who lied about her racial background does a disservice to the important issues at play.

Frankly, I could argue that on the whole, Dolezal’s actions constitute a net positive, in that it is better to have a person who cares and over-empathizes with another ethnic group, than those who care too little or are prejudiced. After all, Dolezal’s commitment to the black community seems deep and genuine: prior to this scandal, she not only led her local chapter of the NAACP, she taught university classes related to African-American culture, and chaired police fairness oversight committees. It’s hard not to see the black community in her area as better off because of her efforts. Shouldn’t deeds matter?

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jun/16/rachel-dolezals-claims-lost-the-trust/

Angela Jones said after the rally she joined the Spokane chapter of the NAACP on Monday, following the announcement of Dolezal’s resignation. Jones said she’d “consciously” avoided becoming an official member of the group because of her disagreements with Dolezal’s strategies.

Freda Gandy, executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center in Spokane, questions what Dolezal has done as NAACP president.

“What has she done? What? You’ve gone around town and posed for a lot of pictures with different people,” Gandy said, referring to Dolezal. “What really have you done? What is it? Because I don’t know.”

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jun/20/new-naacp-president-dolezals-actions-shouldnt/

“We cannot allow the actions of one individual to derail the work of many,” Quarles-Burnley said.

The public firestorm surrounding Dolezal has been a distraction from the work of the NAACP, she said.

“We want the focus back on the issues at hand,” she said. “For us, it’s not about Rachel, it’s about the work. She will have to answer for her own actions.”

Former NAACP Official: Rachel Dolezal ‘Has Very Self-Serving Motives’
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2015/06...rachel-dolezal-has-very-self-serving-motives/

“Every complaint she has had has been as a victim and she feels that is the story of African-Americans. It has served to give her the attention that she is seeking. She has to make up her fight. The struggles that most African-Americans face daily are not made up. We wish we could escape them but we can’t. She can decide when she wants to fight Howard University as a white woman if it is in her best interest, and if it is in her best interest to get attention by being black she will use that. Rachel has very self-serving motives,” Wilburn told CBS Seattle.

However, a few days earlier he said:
http://www.kulr8.com/story/29308942...sion-for-human-rights-and-thats-what-mattered

We asked if Wilburn thought if Rachel was black or white when he first met her. He said he didn't care. He told us, "White, black, it didn't matter. She had a lot of passion for human rights and that's what mattered."

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...ions-raised-about-race-of-spokane-naacp-head/

James Wilburn, past president of the Spokane NAACP who was replaced by Dolezal, said Thursday that discussions about her background were relegated to a few members of that group before her election late last year.

“It was discussed among close members to me, and we kept it like that,” Wilburn said.

If I was a member of the Spokane NAACP I would like to know what the NAACP leaders knew and why they chose to remain silent.


Here's an interview with Rachel when she was elected president of the NAACP and it seems like she thought of herself as a person who will save the chapter but also gives the impression of being a divisive figure.

My candidacy was really a response to requests for me to run for the position of president. My candidacy was not originally my idea, but a request from officers and members in the branch frustrated with current leadership.

The former president would have been running uncontested if I hadn’t been nominated.

Nobody else contested him.

When James Wilburn (former NAACP president) announced he was running for re-election, the treasurer said she would run, but later decided she wouldn’t run. At the election, the presidency was the only office on the ballot, with a few members at-large also being confirmed.

The officers didn’t want to serve additional terms under the former leadership, but they have expressed interest in helping with the transition to new leadership in support of my incoming presidency.

People had lost interest in involvement with the Spokane branch of the NAACP in the past couple of years; they were discouraged and disillusioned, and many members have left.

At one time the local Spokane NAACP had 325 members, now we’re down to under 50 active members.

Thirty members were actually present to vote at the election on Monday, November 17, including me, James, and other officers who voted. Many of the people voting hadn’t shown up in a long time. Think about that. It means membership dwindled under the former president’s leadership and there were no active committees as of Monday.

Even if true that the chapter had problems and the former leader wasn't doing a good job, it doesn't seem very diplomatic to say so in an interview.

 

[Donjeta]

http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...tements-from-rachel-dolezal-and-counting#more

A list of her lies, disputed statements, hypocrisies, plagiarisms and attempts to cover the truth (it's long but i'm sure they left something out).

Most of it we already know but a few instances were new (to me, anyway)

11. Dolezal has also repeatedly represented Albert Wilkerson, Jr., a black man, as her real father. In fact, he's a friend of hers, but not her biological father. For example, Idaho Rep. Paulette Jordan tells the Inlander when Dolezal served as her campaign manager that Dolezal &#8220;made it clear that she has part-black and part-native heritage,&#8221; and that Doelzal introduced him to her &#8220;father&#8221; Albert Wilkerson back in 2009.

12. ... City Councilman Jon Snyder and Spokane Police Officer Cliff Walter say Dolezal said her father was an Oakland police officer. An &#8220;Albert Wilkerson,&#8221; not her father, is listed as receiving a police officer pension, but in San Diego, not Oakland.

7.

Chilesa Patzer, daughter-in-law of the Hillside Inn Restaurant's owner Annie Pennington, says Dolezal&#8217;s portrayal in the Inlander of how their &#8220;Shorty Can&#8217;t Breathe&#8221; confrontation played out is inaccurate.

9. In an April interview with Inlander reporter Lael Henterly, Dolezal regularly referred to slain veteran Delbert Belton with air-quotes around the &#8220;veteran,&#8221; implying he wasn&#8217;t actually a veteran. He was. Dolezal&#8217;s real dad was not.

11. In her Easterner profile, Dolezal claims she doesn&#8217;t really care about &#8220;titles.&#8221; This is her email signature.

http://gyazo.com/cabcd32cb2c1c81fc30ad236d023a647

And does a person who does not care about titles call herself a professor if she's a quarterly adjunct instructor?

1. According to former EWU student reporter Shawntelle Moncy, Dolezal asked Moncy to keep the information that her adopted brother was not her son off-the-record.

Here's from her Inlander blog:
http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...k-on-growing-up-black-in-the-inland-northwest

About the same time most parents get around to telling their kids about the birds and the bees, parents of black children in America sit their kids down for &#8220;The Talk.&#8221; This talk almost always includes the standard DWB and SWB (Driving While Black and Shopping While Black) components, but as a mother raising two black sons in North Idaho and Spokane, I had to draft a prologue, several chapters, a glossary and footnotes to the standard monologue. And while &#8220;The Talk&#8221; is traditionally an annual event or coming-of-age moment for many families, it is not a special occasion in our household, but rather a daily corrective for living in the Whitopia of America.

It was after they had already encountered biased incidents at ages 4 and 5 that I began an at-home remedial curriculum for surviving life as a black boy in a white community. I tried to prepare them for a wide array of styles and methods of institutionalized and individual racism, but I failed to anticipate some of the extremities our family would face.

This to me sounds like she definitely intended to give the impression that she was already raising Izaiah as her own when he was a little boy (as opposed to getting custody when he was 16) . However, when he was 4 (in 1998, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal ) he lived in Troy, Montana with Larry and Ruthanne, and around that time Rachel would have been studying in Mississippi, far away from his daily struggles. A few years later, he lived in South Africa with his adopted family and while I don't know where they lived it doesn't seem likely to have been an all-white experience as people of Caucasian origins are a less-than-10% minority there.

23. Dolezal has recently justified her 2002 lawsuit against Howard University for racial discrimination by saying it was because she was being perceived as white. But in the deposition in the suit, Dolezal said, &#8220;I consider myself to be Caucasian biologically.&#8221;

24. To Melissa-Harris Perry on MSNBC, Dolezal said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve never said, oh, I&#8217;m transracial.&#8221; In her Howard admissions essay, she described her family as "transracial" (though that term likely was understood in a different way back then).

25. Dolezal has claimed that the media, not her, began representing herself as &#8220;blacker and blacker and blacker&#8221; the more she was the victim of hate crimes, and she just didn&#8217;t correct them. In fact, she told police as early as 2009 &#8212; when the alleged hate crimes occurred &#8212; that she was being targeted because of her &#8220;race&#8221; and her &#8220;bi-racial heritage.&#8221;

26. Furthermore, investigative journalist David Barstow still has his notes from interviewing Dolezal in 2010. He confirms she identified herself directly as multi-racial.

.

30. Dolezal tells KREM and Human Rights Commission chair Blaine Stum that she&#8217;s received another &#8220;threatening package&#8221; from &#8220;War Pig.&#8221; In reality, it&#8217;s an apology letter. (Another letter, sent after the scandal broke, expressed outrage that Dolezal&#8217;s fraud cheated a black woman out of an education and the chance to be the first &#8220;black female president of the United States.&#8221; Odd for a supposed death-threat-slinging racist.)

Oh, and here's a movie advert:

here's a Rachel Dolezal original artwork:

See more here
http://byhookorcrook.blogspot.com/2015/06/rachel-dolezal.html

Disputing her claim that she sold her paintings for $10.000 while a student:
http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-curious-case-of-artist-rachel.html

Curiously absent from her otherwise detailed and glorified CV's are the details of the numerous exhibitions her artworks have reportedly attended, and the art awards she says she's got.

My relative is an artist and every time she exhibits there's a catalogue listing the dates and times of all her previous exhibitions.

http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2015/06/even-more-on-curious-case-of-artist.html

In her website she tells us that:
Rachel Dolezal is an award-winning Mixed Media Artist with over 20 exhibitions in 13 states, internationally, and at the United Nations Headquarters. Dolezal completed her Master of Fine Arts at Howard University, where she majored in experimental studio and minored in sculpture.
As an artist, writer, curator and art dealer, I have read and reviewed thousands of artists' resumes over the last four decades, and I find it a little odd to discover Dolezal's lack of any significant artistic digital footprint, other than the WaPo one line mention discussed here and the one, single pre-2007 painting discussed here. Additionally, her 2007 work with the UN is discussed here, although it deals mostly with children's work.

But where are Dolezal's "20 exhibitions in 13 states"? Why are there no references anywhere to be found? Why doesn't she have the most common of artists' resume anywhere, listing group and solo shows?

Oh and here's from her application essay to Howard University:

At Howard University, Dolezal had accused the school of denying her a teaching position because she was white. During a deposition, Howard's lawyers asked whether she had tried to mislead the admissions office with an essay focused on black history and identity, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

"I plunged into black history and novels, feeling the relieving release of understanding and common ground," she wrote in the essay. "My struggles paled as I read of the atrocities so many ancestors faced in America."

http://www.khq.com/story/29338774/rachel-dolezal-facing-new-and-old-questions

I think she was very careful to give them the impression that she was African American, but to keep plausible deniability in case someone got mad ("so many ancestors" instead of "my ancestors")

In her admissions essay, she described her family as "transracial," writing that "at the early age of three I showed an awareness of the richness and beauty of dark skin when I said, 'Mama, all people are beautiful but black people are so beautiful.'"

During the deposition, Dolezal said she was "talking about black history in novels."

Lawyers pressed her to say if she had ever misled anyone into thinking she was black.

"I don't know that I could lead anyone to believe that I'm African-American. I believe that, you know, in certain context, maybe someone would assume that, but I don't know that I could convince someone that I'm a hundred percent African-American," she responded.

Asked to explain what she considers her own race to be, she said, "if you have to choose to describe yourself and you're able to give terms like a fraction or whatever but an overall picture, I consider myself to be Caucasian biologically."

Related fallout:

http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...ssion-process-has-been-anything-but-fair#more

City Council Members,
I moved to Spokane to make a positive difference, and in 2014 I was invited to serve on the historic OPO Commission. During my tenure, I served faithfully guided by the principles of equal and fair access to justice, civilian oversight, and the democratic process. As your appointee, you know this about me.

This process has been anything but fair and just, particularly when the investigation was conducted by the former firm of our present city attorney. Fairness and impartiality is vital; I have always maintained transparency in my viewpoints and beliefs. I believe in the important effectiveness of accountability and not simply its appearance. This is different, in my opinion, from what the mayor and police department demonstrated.

Therefore, I must say, that I am disappointed in this report. If the report highlights anything, it's the absolute imperative to appoint an ombudsman&#8212; whether interim or permanent&#8212;to fulfill the mission of the office, to generate the policies, procedures, and culture of accountability that the citizens of Spokane expected when they voted for and passed Proposition 1. This, and independent investigative authority, is what the community wants and needs.

Due to a recent change in occupation, I had previously submitted my resignation to be effective the end of July. However, in light of recent events, I will expedite my resignation to be effective immediately.

I remain a faithful advocate of the people and will continue to put the health of all communities first. Unlike the mayor's office, city's attorney's office and police department, who may lower their standards, I cannot and will not subscribe to that.

Thank you for the opportunity to serve Spokane.

Very truly yours,

Adrian E. Dominguez

 

[otto]

No, I don't think over the counter DNA analysis has anything to do with it. There were scientists saying that the there is not any valid way to divide the human species into biologically distinct races long before those were even invented.

Of course that doesn't mean that you can't sometimes find differences between different populations, which means that forensic anthropologists may have success in matching people to categories that broadly correspond to their ancestry in the census data. (But if you hang around the UID forums you will also find some cases in which they apparently got it wrong.)

Anyone who'd suggest that a new race is born each time there is a new mixed ancestry child would have had to totally misunderstand what the term race means I think. One person is not a race. What was being said was that our history of hundreds of thousands of years of having mixed ancestry children who further reproduced and contributed their DNA in the population contributes to the fact that no human populations are distinct enough genetically to be called a separate race.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-science-human-genomes-darwin

Like Blumenfeld noted they may find differences between the Caucasian and African American populations but scientifically it's really a bit inaccurate to call them race differences.

You can find differences between the Swedes, the Saami, the Estonians and the Finns even though most would say they're the same race. How about the Pygmy and the Masai? Both are considered the same race, black, by the traditional American classification - but one is among the shortest populations and one among the tallest so if you looked you'd find lot of significant differences between their skeletal measurements.

To me this finding appears to be of obstetric concern, not a sociopolitical one.
The full text is available and the authors make no mention of how useful this finding is going to be in determining ancestry from skeletal remains but we can make some inferences on the basis of the data given:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2593128/table/T2/


5/9 of the measures turned out no significant differences and in the ones that were significant there is considerable overlap (the numbers are expressed as the mean +/- standard deviation) so that means that many of the white and AA women scored in the same range and you couldn't distinguish them forensically on the basis of this data, just the ones who outlie the overlap.

These authors are concerned with obstetrics outcomes and not the biological reality of races (the participants self identified their ethnicity here) but even so they recognize this as a limitation of their study:

No one said that it isn't a good, large database or that it isn't based on great research and adequate sample size. It's just that the way it is described on Amazon (as a tool for architects and industrial designers etc.) the data appears rather irrelevant in a discussion about whether the human species is divisible in distinct races.

But if you can quote a relevant passage offering evidence for the existence of separate races from the Humanscales, feel free to do so.


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/01/racism-science-human-genomes-darwin

Finding more examples of biological differences between people of different "races" does not disprove this because the argument isn't that there are no differences between populations who may be identified in various social arenas as different "races". Rather it is that these differences are not significant enough and consistent enough and do not differentiate the populations enough to warrant the description "race".

More interesting reading:
http://anthropology.msu.edu/anp202-...1992-Forensic-Anthropology-Race-Concept-1.pdf
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071098.php
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...rror/201109/the-main-reason-races-don-t-exist
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/05/the-royal-we/302497/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...irror/201108/another-reason-races-don-t-exist

Humanscale is all about the Caucasian race, right?
Amazon is a book store, not an authority on the validity of the information that is published.
Suggesting that race classification cannot exist because those identified groups have mixed offspring doesn't make sense to me.
There's nothing inaccurate or unscientific in the methods used to identify distinct differences between race classifications.

The denial of race classifications seems to align well with the number example I provided. We need 1 and 2 to make 3, but it is absurd to suggest that when we have 3, 1 and 2 are no longer valid.

 

[Donjeta]

Humanscale is all about the Caucasian race, right?

I don't know. You brought it up, I haven't seen the books. You haven't seen it either? If it's all about Caucasian measurements then I don't see how it's relevant in the race differences discussion.

Amazon is a book store, not an authority on the validity of the information that is published.

No, but generally their book descriptions are somewhat descriptive of the book (don't they get them from the publisher?) and if they say they're selling an industrial designer's manual about the normal scale of human body that's probably what the book is about. Otherwise the customers who wanted an industrial designer's manual about the normal scale of human body to help them design furniture for living people are going to be very disappointed when they get a book about how to prove that races exist on the basis of cadaver measurements.

Suggesting that race classification cannot exist because those identified groups have mixed offspring doesn't make sense to me

.


This has been explained several times but here goes once more: A species may get divided into separate races if/when there are two or more populations that are genetically isolated for long periods of time. This means that they stick to their own kind and don't produce offspring with the other sort. If there is no genetic exchange between the populations they may develop enough genetic differences between the two populations that they can be called different races. This has never been the case with humans because humans move and migrate and have sex with people who belong in different ethnic groups. If, for thousands of years and lots of generations, populations mix and have children with members of other populations who contribute their DNA to the genetic stock, it's simply impossible for the populations to stay separate and homogenous enough to be called different races. Compared to, say, elephants who probably live all their life, mate and die somewhere in the vicinity of where they were born, we have quite mobile sexual habits.

Biologists have defined the threshold of genetic diversity between populations that is required to call the populations different races or subspecies, and noticed that we are well below that threshold. Some other large mammals have got races but we don't.

That's just the way it is, whether it makes sense to us or not. It may be quite hard to grasp because the social implications of the perceived race differences are so very real in the every day life.

There's nothing inaccurate or unscientific in the methods used to identify distinct differences between race classifications.

No one is saying that forensic anthropologists aren't making the skeletal measurements studies and using their methods with all the scientific precision and accuracy, it's just that those scientists themselves ADMIT that their results don't mean that there are races.

The denial of race classifications seems to align well with the number example I provided. We need 1 and 2 to make 3, but it is absurd to suggest that when we have 3, 1 and 2 are no longer valid.

Well, actually 1 and 2 were never valid as biological race classifications because there are no valid scientifically defined races in the human species and there never were any. Still, used by a skilled forensic anthropologist, 1 and 2 may be a valid way to categorize people into the socially constructed "racial" group that people perceive them to belong in. But this unfortunately perpetuates the myth that race is something that is biologically real when it's not.

There are people who ostensibly belong to the same "black race" because of their skin color who nevertheless are more different from each other genetically than a random African person and a random European.

 

[Hope4More]

Rachel&#8217;s claims about her art success include that she has art displayed at UN Headquarters.

Unlikely. No photos exist of a UN installation (pretty sure she&#8217;d have a photo of that triumph were it true). Likely a RD- style epic embellishment, based on artwork created by children she taught as a human rights instructor in Idaho. The piece was of the 10 points of the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. If that piece is hanging up at the UN, artistic credit belong to the children who created it, not to her.

That her art has been displayed in convention centers in 13 states. Yet......not one photograph of any of those displays can be found. Especially noteworthy as she says she was raped by a mentor in San Francisco who was there to help celebrate her display in that city's convention center.

 

[Hope4More]

RD&#8217;s &#8220;UNCLE AND AUNT,&#8221; THE POTTERS

While attending Bellhaven in Jackson, Mississippi, RD became close to Ronald and Joanne Potter, close enough that she considered them her adopted &#8220;uncle and aunt.&#8221;
Ronald Potter is the brother in law of Spencer Perkins, son to John Perkins, the founder of the &#8220;racial reconciliation program&#8221;referred to as the reason why RD chose Bellhaven.

((Actually, RD went to Bellhaven for a degree in fine arts, though she did volunteer for such a program (off-campus) while in Jackson--the Christian Voice of Cavalry Ministries. See far below about Perkins))
--------------------------------


Ronald Potter&#8230;.was an adjunct professor at Belhaven from 1995-1998.

On her LinkedIn page, Dolezal says that she &#8220;petitioned and developed&#8221; the first African-American course at Belhaven with Ronald Potter as the instructor. Potter denies this, saying he may have given an unofficial lecture on African-American culture but that he never taught an official African-American course at the school.

Potter said that Dolezal had a &#8220;budding black sensitivity&#8221; and was a &#8220;white woman with a black soul.&#8221;&#8230;..He also said that she was one of the only white members of the Black Student Association at Belhaven

www.clarionledger.com/story/news/20...n-profs-recall-dolezal-student-days/29138167/

------------------------------------------------

The Potters, initially supportive, then not so much:


"If you believe you're black and you're not, you're delusional," said Ron Potter. "And you need some help.&#8221;

Joanie Potter (daughter of John Perkins), (watched RD morph into black on FB), said:

"I didn't think anything of it. I thought, it's a compliment to our race," said Joanie Potter. "That's cool. She can be black. She can look black. It's cool." But then she saw this, Dolezal saying, "I identify as black." That compliment turned to almost insult.

"She can be white when she wants to be and if she wants to," said Joanie Potter. "She can have the privilege of being white if she wants to. Black people can't. And so that is like a, 'who do you think you are?' type thing."

www.wtok.com/home/headlines/Mississippi-Friends-Discuss-Rachel-Dolezal-Controversy-30818981

-------------------------------------


About John Perkins, from the Wikipedia:

In 1965 Perkins supported voter registration efforts in Simpson County and in 1967 he became involved in school desegregation when he enrolled his son Spencer in the previously all-white Mendenhall High School.

In the fall of 1969, Perkins became the leader in an economic boycott of white-owned stores in Mendenhall. On February 7, 1970, following the arrest of students who had taken part in a protest march in Mendenhall, John Perkins was arrested and tortured by white police officers in Brandon Jail. (This experience resulted in his commitment) to a holistic ministry&#8212;one that saw the bondage racism inflicted on whites as well as the damage and deprivation of the black community.

He summarized his philosophy of Christian ministry in the "three Rs"&#8212;Relocation, Redistribution and Reconciliation&#8230;

..After the death of his son Spencer in 1998, Perkins returned to Mississippi&#8230;and established the Spencer Perkins Center, the youth arm of the John M. Perkins Foundation.

-------------------------


My guess is that Mr. Perkins is appalled all the way round... not least, that this person who his family "adopted" and who professed adherence to his own deeply held belief in race reconciliation, used make -believe hate crimes to advance her own career, despite the racial tensions those lies exploited and may in fact have exacerbated.

A betrayal of everything he stands for and believes in, and as a survivor of genuine and extreme hate crimes, a personal insult.

 

[Donjeta]

Rachel&#8217;s claims about her art success include that she has art displayed at UN Headquarters.

Unlikely. No photos exist of a UN installation (pretty sure she&#8217;d have a photo of that triumph were it true). Likely a RD- style epic embellishment, based on artwork created by children she taught as a human rights instructor in Idaho. The piece was of the 10 points of the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. If that piece is hanging up at the UN, artistic credit belong to the children who created it, not to her.

That her art has been displayed in convention centers in 13 states. Yet......not one photograph of any of those displays can be found. Especially noteworthy as she says she was raped by a mentor in San Francisco who was there to help celebrate her display in that city's convention center.

Yeah and she wrote or spoke about being a single black mom struggling to make ends meet. Had she been able to sell paintings for $10.000 like she said, even just a few every year, it'd be a pretty nice additional income with whatever she earned from the teaching jobs.

 

[Hope4More]

What some students thought about RD ( from: www.ratemyprofessors.com)

Eastern Washington University, 2011-2014, Humanities


This class was cool, but she was not good at putting up online discussion assignments on time. There was a lot of busy work, and a lot of lectures that did not really help me on my assignments or tests. I just did everything the way she wanted, but it was not a good experience


She is definitely a smart woman, however, one of the downfalls of this course were the lecture days. Her slides are crammed with a lot of text, which makes it unclear of what she wants us to focus on specifically. You learn a lot in this course and I thought it was interesting, just make sure you keep up on the homework and read your book.


Assigns a lot of busy work. Lectures have way to much info. Treats the class like a graduate level class. Very insensitive to students opinons. Easy grader however.


The material is definitely interesting, as are her personal stories. HOWEVER, she does not prepare you (during lecture) well for what she expects from you. Lots of busy work, lectures seem unprepared and has unrealistic expectations of students. You have to memorize a ton of dates (within the 1st week of class) of almost 500 years of history.......


Prior to this class I didn't know much about African American culture or history. The hands-on involvement and passion behind Ms. Dolezal's teaching made me care about the world more. I don't look at things the same. (she is also fair in her grading and assignments and will understand if you have emergency life situations)


Rachel is an amazing teacher. She is passionate about what she teaches and it shows through her lectures and all else. Most important part of the class is participation. If you attend all classes you will pass with a 4.0. Be prepared to do a lot of group discussions. This class is all about interacting with your fellow students. Loved this class
----------------------------------

Graphic Arts, North Idaho College- classes included Art100,,Art History, Illustration



Horrible professor, self obsessed and snooty to the point of actually using class time to showcase her own work, the entire time making comments about other local artists in poor taste. Does not teach true art, but how to make money from art. I will never take a class from her again, i'm disappointed,They aren't all this way, right?


She is very insensative to the fact that we are college students and are for the most part....Poor...and in debt.


Ms. Dolezal was a fairly demanding teacher, and really made us learn to see deeper into art. None of this third-grade-level stuff just to help us pass. I LOVED her class and left with a much better understanding of many kinds of art.


Dolezal means well and is very nice, however,I felt like she was unprepared for her lectures and assigned busy work often. I felt like I walked away from most lectures not learning much at all and also like I wasted my time. If you want to memorize a bunch of dates and redundant information then take this class.


This class was at Whitworth University. It was definitely eye opening, but felt she was disrespectful at times to other people's opinions. Her powerpoints were terrible with WAY too much information crammed on each page and not enough time to copy the information. And then she would only post selected pages on blackboard.
Hard time understanding alot of the material. She knew a ton about art and whatnot, but does not have the capability to teach it. I was very disappointed in this class. I would suggest taking this course from someone else!


She is an amazing teacher I learned a lot an love the way she teaches great class and lots of fun I recomend her and this class to any one interested in the art world

 

[gitana1]

http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...tements-from-rachel-dolezal-and-counting#more

A list of her lies, disputed statements, hypocrisies, plagiarisms and attempts to cover the truth (it's long but i'm sure they left something out).

Most of it we already know but a few instances were new (to me, anyway)


7.





http://gyazo.com/cabcd32cb2c1c81fc30ad236d023a647

And does a person who does not care about titles call herself a professor if she's a quarterly adjunct instructor?



Here's from her Inlander blog:
http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...k-on-growing-up-black-in-the-inland-northwest



This to me sounds like she definitely intended to give the impression that she was already raising Izaiah as her own when he was a little boy (as opposed to getting custody when he was 16) . However, when he was 4 (in 1998, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal ) he lived in Troy, Montana with Larry and Ruthanne, and around that time Rachel would have been studying in Mississippi, far away from his daily struggles. A few years later, he lived in South Africa with his adopted family and while I don't know where they lived it doesn't seem likely to have been an all-white experience as people of Caucasian origins are a less-than-10% minority there.






Oh, and here's a movie advert:

here's a Rachel Dolezal original artwork:

See more here
http://byhookorcrook.blogspot.com/2015/06/rachel-dolezal.html

Disputing her claim that she sold her paintings for $10.000 while a student:
http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-curious-case-of-artist-rachel.html

Curiously absent from her otherwise detailed and glorified CV's are the details of the numerous exhibitions her artworks have reportedly attended, and the art awards she says she's got.

My relative is an artist and every time she exhibits there's a catalogue listing the dates and times of all her previous exhibitions.

http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2015/06/even-more-on-curious-case-of-artist.html




Oh and here's from her application essay to Howard University:

http://www.khq.com/story/29338774/rachel-dolezal-facing-new-and-old-questions

I think she was very careful to give them the impression that she was African American, but to keep plausible deniability in case someone got mad ("so many ancestors" instead of "my ancestors")





Related fallout:

http://www.inlander.com/Bloglander/...ssion-process-has-been-anything-but-fair#more

It all comes down to, for me at least, her lies about being a victim. The hate crime lies do the same thing lies about rape do - they cause skepticism where none should be and make it harder for real victims to achieve justice.

Also, such lies help to instill fear and make people think there is division when there might not be.

How she identifies is irrelevant to me. Lying and false accusations are very relevant however, especially now as black people in this country continue to face incredible hurdles and hatred or biases that can result in injury and even death.

 

[Donjeta]

Yeah I think she may have instilled quite a bit of fear in her son's mind as well. In her Inlander blog she described The Talk as a near daily reminder that white people are out to get black kids and he also gets to worry about dying because adults are mean:

As 5-year-old Franklin Moore watched plaster ooze over his little hand last month, he listened to his mother talk about the art project he was helping create.

&#8220;Your hand is actually going to be holding a sign that says &#8216;slow down for kids,&#8217; &#8221; Rachel Dolezal told him. &#8220;You think people should slow down for kids?&#8221;

Franklin nodded.

&#8220;What happens if adults don&#8217;t protect kids?&#8221; Dolezal asked.

&#8220;They will die,&#8221; Franklin responded.

&#8220;Is that OK?&#8221; she asked him.

&#8220;No, because it would be so, so mean.&#8221;

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2007/apr/07/the-rights-of-children-illuminated-through-art/

There are a few mentions of her exhibiting her work locally in the Spokesman Review archives.

2009:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jan/15/on-the-wall-jennifer-zurlini/

Rachel Dolezal is an adjunct art instructor at both EWU and North Idaho College.

She also is curator and director of education at the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d&#8217;Alene, where she recently painted the interior walls with 14 oil portraits, 12 feet tall, of international human rights advocates. Created during 48 straight hours for an exhibit celebrating Human Rights Day, the work has since been painted over.

Dolezal, who is part African- American, explores themes of her mixed-race heritage in her artwork.

&#8220;A theme in my work is the black experience,&#8221; says Dolezal, who teaches an African and African American Art History course at EWU.

A mixed-media work in the faculty exhibit, titled &#8220;Final Passage,&#8221; is influenced by her years living in Mississippi. It deals with slavery and &#8220;themes of death, pain, the afterlife, and finding rest,&#8221; she says.

Dolezal also is exhibiting small, leather high-relief sculptures, inspired by her Sioux Indian heritage.

a photo of her son and Albert Wilkerson, the caption doesn't mention that Wilkerson is the boy's grandfather.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jun/16/event-celebrates-end-of-slavery/

 

[jjenny]

So she supposedly painted interior walls with 14 portraits, only for these portraits to be painted over?
Does that sound strange to anyone?

"She also is curator and director of education at the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, where she recently painted the interior walls with 14 oil portraits, 12 feet tall, of international human rights advocates. Created during 48 straight hours for an exhibit celebrating Human Rights Day, the work has since been painted over."

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jan/15/on-the-wall-jennifer-zurlini/

 

[otto]

I don't know. You brought it up, I haven't seen the books. You haven't seen it either? If it's all about Caucasian measurements then I don't see how it's relevant in the race differences discussion.
No, but generally their book descriptions are somewhat descriptive of the book (don't they get them from the publisher?) and if they say they're selling an industrial designer's manual about the normal scale of human body that's probably what the book is about. Otherwise the customers who wanted an industrial designer's manual about the normal scale of human body to help them design furniture for living people are going to be very disappointed when they get a book about how to prove that races exist on the basis of cadaver measurements.

This has been explained several times but here goes once more: A species may get divided into separate races if/when there are two or more populations that are genetically isolated for long periods of time. This means that they stick to their own kind and don't produce offspring with the other sort. If there is no genetic exchange between the populations they may develop enough genetic differences between the two populations that they can be called different races. This has never been the case with humans because humans move and migrate and have sex with people who belong in different ethnic groups. If, for thousands of years and lots of generations, populations mix and have children with members of other populations who contribute their DNA to the genetic stock, it's simply impossible for the populations to stay separate and homogenous enough to be called different races. Compared to, say, elephants who probably live all their life, mate and die somewhere in the vicinity of where they were born, we have quite mobile sexual habits.

Biologists have defined the threshold of genetic diversity between populations that is required to call the populations different races or subspecies, and noticed that we are well below that threshold. Some other large mammals have got races but we don't.

That's just the way it is, whether it makes sense to us or not. It may be quite hard to grasp because the social implications of the perceived race differences are so very real in the every day life.

No one is saying that forensic anthropologists aren't making the skeletal measurements studies and using their methods with all the scientific precision and accuracy, it's just that those scientists themselves ADMIT that their results don't mean that there are races.

Well, actually 1 and 2 were never valid as biological race classifications because there are no valid scientifically defined races in the human species and there never were any. Still, used by a skilled forensic anthropologist, 1 and 2 may be a valid way to categorize people into the socially constructed "racial" group that people perceive them to belong in. But this unfortunately perpetuates the myth that race is something that is biologically real when it's not.

There are people who ostensibly belong to the same "black race" because of their skin color who nevertheless are more different from each other genetically than a random African person and a random European.

Yes, Humanscale 123, from WW2 US military standards, is all about the Caucasian male size and reach envelopes - for aviation cockpit jobs. The fact that Caucasian standards can be developed speaks for itself ... it's different from Mongoloid. I haven't searched it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar Japanese (Mongoloid) standards. It wouldn't surprise me if Japanese and Chinese Mongoloid race data was similar in terms of bone shape, size, and density.

Trusting that Amazon is an expert in the stuff that is published is horse sh.it. Amazon is about money, not facts.

What has been explained several times? Let's look at what over-the-counter DNA ancestry gets the average US citizen, and what exactly does this have to do with anthropological race classifications?

Throughout this discussion, I've want to bring up the point about purebred dogs. Is each breed a different race? By all appearances, it seems that each distinct breed is a different species (is that the right word?). When those purebreds have mixed breed puppies, the puppies do not represent a new purebred, and the purebreds do not cease to exist.

Perhaps this is a better example than the 3 does not mean that 1, and 2, are invalid.

Speaking of skin colour, are people with black skin now caucasians ... or whatever ... because skin colour no longer matters? What exactly is the statement here?

 

[otto]

Can we agree that someone can be 60% British and not enough information when it comes to race?

DNA ancestry that has very little to do with anthropology or race classification.
Over - the - Counter DNA genealogy is great. People can first pay for access to the link (via ancestry.com), and then they can learn how to request over-the-counter by-the-mail DNA spit sample materials.

From the DNA results provided in the news, I don't see any relevance to the discussion about anthropological race classifications.

http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.2440984

Isn't it nice to know that relatives lived in Britain and blah blah blah bull.**** that this is somehow related to race.

... over-the-counter wool-over-the-eyes stuff, eh.

Is this another money making scan where over-the-counter DNA ancestry companied attempt to dictate that race classifications never existed?

 

[otto]

Let me see if I understand correctly.

Black skin is a sociopolitical, cultural phenomena, and white people can be black if they feel like it. Similarly, black people can be white if they feel like it. When it comes down to identification of remains, who needs standards such as anthropological classifications?

Did I miss anything?