I never faced this kind of critique. At my very first meeting, I was welcomed into an intimate women’s chat in the kitchen, the group’s symbolic inner circle. They offered me advice on how to loc my hair and referred me to their hairdressers. I was able to build friendships with black and Hispanic members that outlasted the eight-month stint during which I was active in the group. (After my boyfriend and I broke up, I left the group.) They invited me to spoken word poetry slams and to a baby shower where I ate the beau ideal of Jamaican jerk chicken. I was warmly introduced to sisters, brothers, and a grandfather who quickly cracked me a beer and gave me a bear hug. When another white member approached the grandfather, he just shook his hand and nodded hello.
There were times when I worried that their kindness came with a presumption that I was black, and I started inserting “I am Jewish” randomly into conversations. But in practice, I continued to internalize a culture and experience that weren’t mine. I loved that my passable appearance afforded me insider status. I can’t help how my appearance makes people feel about me, but it doesn’t give me license to appropriate a culture and confuse its struggle for my own. That’s where I – and Dolezal – crossed the line, regardless of any work we did to promote causes of the black community.
My moment of self-awareness came during one of our protests against police brutality. I had written a poem about how poorly the issue was being covered by the news. It was dry and stilted, lacking the power and emotionality of the art created by our other members. The poem was distant because I had never been stopped nor frisked by police.