In 2015, many crucified Rachel Dolezal for parading around as a Black woman. At that time, the topic of "Transracial" had rarely (if ever) been discussed on a national level. According to The Guardian, it all came toppling down on June 11, 2015. Dolezal was asked in a television interview: “Are you African American?” Her stunned reply – saying she didn’t understand the question – was swiftly interpreted as evidence she was a “race faker”.
The article goes on to say, that some white people painted Dolezal as mentally unstable, on the grounds that no normal white person would choose to call themselves black. But it was the wave of rage and mockery from the African American community that really stung. She was accused of exploiting the long history of black suffering to play the victim. The evident change in her appearance from a girl of European heritage to a woman with elaborate braided hair extensions and a distinct tint to her skin was portrayed as part of a long and insulting history of “blackface”.
The outrage of a White woman pretending to be Black was met with swift and brutal judgment. “I’m trying to regroup, rebuild, remember who I was before the frenzy. People telling me what to think, telling me what to do, telling me to go kill myself,” she says. “Locally, it feels like I am invisible. People don’t want to associate with me. This great leader that won all these awards no longer exists. It’s just like this disgust, and that was really hurtful, really hurtful.”, Dolezal stated.
If Dolezal were a woman transitioning into a man, would society's reaction be different? ACLU published on its website that "The ACLU champions transgender people’s right to be themselves. We’re fighting discrimination in employment, housing, and public places, including restrooms. We’re working to make sure trans people get the health care they need and we're challenging obstacles to changing the gender marker on identification documents and obtaining legal name changes. We’re fighting to protect the rights and safety of transgender people in prison, jail, and detention facilities as well as the right of trans and gender-nonconforming students to be treated with respect at school. Finally, we’re working to secure the rights of transgender parents."
Why aren't transracial people offered those same rights? Why is gender fluid, but race isn't? According to a report published on harvard.edu, If separate racial or ethnic groups actually existed, we would expect to find “trademark” alleles and other genetic features that are characteristic of a single group but not present in any others. However, the 2002 Stanford study found that only 7.4% of over 4000 alleles were specific to one geographical region. Furthermore, even when region-specific alleles did appear, they only occurred in about 1% of the people from that region—hardly enough to be any kind of trademark. Thus, there is no evidence that the groups we commonly call “races” have distinct, unifying genetic identities. In fact, there is ample variation within races (Figure 1B).
Ultimately, there is so much ambiguity between the races, and so much variation within them, that two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other
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