Fascinating and thought provoking as one woman’s personal identity and racial fraudulence escalated into discussions of transracialism and racial fluidity.
Blue-eyed, blonde-haired Rachel Dolezal, born in Montana to white, fundamentalist Christian parents, rejects her biological ancestry and, in her early 20s, begins to identify as black. Her call – except, until exposed, Dolezal has been passing as black and where she has become the high profile, outspoken president of Spokane’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) chapter, an educator, teaching black students The Black Woman’s Struggle and mother to two black children (one adopted).
Exposure has, not surprisingly, led to social ostracism. But her pursuit of notoriety is to be followed at all costs – even at the expense of the lives of her two sons. Interviews with ex-colleagues of the damage she has caused are interspersed with heartbreaking, fly-on-the-wall moments as gentle, melancholic pre-teenage son, Franklin, voices his mother’s potential for destruction whilst simultaneously desperate to protect her.
Filmmaker Laura Brownson follows Dolezal over a period of some two years as she continues to live and claim experientially and historically what is not hers to claim. But in doing so, the film offers an interesting insight into discussion of what Dolezal is.
Rating: 60%
Director: Laura Brownson (Lemon)
An Opinion or Two 