Paper short abstract:

This self-reflective essay on the case of Rachel Dolezal, a woman who had posed as black before being ‘outed’ as white, explores my reaction - as a self-identified black woman - to this ‘controversy.’ It reflects on questions of racial identity and the interplay between self-formation and intersubjectivity.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I transport myself back to the summer of 2015 when Rachel Dolezal, the then president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, who had long presented herself as black, was "outed" as white by her parents. The Dolezal 'controversy' spurred a media frenzy and many dinner-table conversations as it challenged normative understandings of racial identity. As a self-identified black woman, I reflect here on my initial, 'visceral' reaction to this case as well as how it led me to think critically about my identity. This paper should be seen as an essai, or perhaps askēsis work - as an effort to think within, through and tentatively beyond my conceptions of racial identity and self. By askēsis is meant 'an exercise of oneself in the activity of thought', an intimate intellectual exercise on subjective conceptions of identity and race. I suggest that Dolezal's pursuit to mold her body to express her 'true' self-identical racial (psychic) core can be likened to an ascetic concern for authenticity and 'knowing thyself'. In contrast, I argue that those critical of her project instead likened racial identity as the deployment of a genealogical self, placing the self at nexus of (re-)occurring forces and relations of power and knowledge. I also briefly consider what I argue is the bounded relationship between the perceived sincerity and authenticity of one's self-expression (or performance.) I end this paper by suggesting the interplay between self-care (and self-knowledge) and how it is ultimately both shaped and (de-)limited by others.