I was 19, white, and experiencing a full-blown identity crisis, not unlike the one that probably jumpstarted Dolezal’s downward spiral into delusion. Like her, I empathize with marginalized groups, but I do so with the benefit of a Jew-fro.
I look more like Rachel Dolezal in her “after” photos, except I was born this way. I have a naturally dark and kinky fro, skin that is a “medium-tan” at Sephora, and the kind of body proportions Sir-Mix-A-Lot paid tribute to in 1992. I am of Jewish descent, but strangers often think I am of mixed race. As a teenager, I played into that perception. I lived in Harlem, dated a Black Panther and hung a poster of Bob Marley smoking a joint in my studio apartment. But in reality, not only had I rarely faced discrimination, I often benefit from being what a Beverly Hills casting agent called “ethnically white” — someone whom everyone feels comfortable with.
I never told people I was black, but I felt like I was something other than white and I identified with the Black Panther cause as if it were my own. In our activist group, other white women — the kind who looked like Dolezal in her “before” photos — had a hard time integrating. They were often called out for overstepping their boundaries as allies, for their use of the words “we” and “our people.” One time, during a meeting in which we were discussing racial inequality, a white member interjected: “Isn’t it all really economic inequality?” She went on to talk about the problems she was facing as a low-income white American. Other members brows furrowed and my boyfriend shot a glance my way, rolling his eyes, like, here we go again.