Rachel Doleval

I'm not defending her. It's insulting what she did, and irresponsible.

There is a double standard here. I'm not saying there shouldn't be. In fact, I'm arguing that it's right and moral that there should be.

Should a black person pass as white? Ideally, no, but not because it's insulting to white people (although it could be to black people) to allow people access to whiteness. A black person passing as white is buying into the idea that blackness is akin to disability, that it's something to be overcome. A black person passing as white is silently acknowledging that blackness is, at least in practice, a disadvantage. That acknowledgement does not imply that the disadvantage of blackness is right or just; rather that it is wrong and unjust, that in some cases to achieve justice it becomes necessary to hide the target indelibly painted on one's skin.

Such action is forgivable because it's true that blackness is disadvantageous in a disproportionate number of contexts. We can therefore see the humanity of a person who (sadly) feels the need to disassociate from their blackness and pass as white. However, when we reverse the roles such that a white person chooses to disassociate from whiteness and put on a semblance of blackness in some context in which doing so is advantageous, our sensibilities are necessarily insulted. This is true for the simple reason that the such contexts are disproportionately scarce, so a white person who truly respects the disadvantages of blackness, however unjust they may be, could not in good conscience occupy that "slot" because they know it is scarce.

This double standard must exist as a reaction to the greater, opposite, and unjust double standard that also exists. In a perfect world neither would exist, but the only way to move toward that perfection is to keep the former until the latter fades into history.