I make clear that being passionate about racial justice does not require white people to become black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-03-23 18:03Z by Steven

As the director of African-American Studies at the University of Montana for the last seven years, I tell my students each semester, “I want you to know that I know I’m white.” I make clear that being passionate about racial justice does not require white people to become black.

It requires those of us who are white to become more, not less, aware of our racial identity and all the power, privilege, and access it affords. Masking that identity, as [Rachel] Dolezal tried to do, changes nothing.

Only changing the institutional practices that give the benefit of the doubt to white people will create a world where racial passing no longer captures our attention.”

Tobin Shearer, “Reflections On Rachel Dolezal, White Privilege, And “America’s Headlong Progress”,” Reflections West, Montana Public Radio, March 9, 2016. http://mtpr.org/post/reflections-rachel-dolezal-white-privilege-and-americas-headlong-progress. http://cpa.ds.npr.org/kufm/audio/2016/03/RW-Shearer-Dubois-03-09-16_0.mp3 (00:01:54-00:02:44).

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Reflections On Rachel Dolezal, White Privilege, And “America’s Headlong Progress”

Posted in Audio, Media Archive, Passing, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2016-03-21 02:04Z by Steven

Reflections On Rachel Dolezal, White Privilege, And “America’s Headlong Progress”

Reflections West
Montana Public Radio
2016-03-09

Tobin Shearer, Director of the African-American Studies Program; Associate Professor of History
University of Montana


W.E.B Du Bois in 1918
Cornelius Marion Battey (PD)

“For seven days in June 2015, Rachel Dolezal captured the news cycle,” writes University of Montana professor, Tobin Shearer, for “Reflections West.”

“Dolezal had led Spokane’s NAACP and taught Africana studies, but lost those positions after her parents outed her as a white person. Dolezal had presented herself as black for years.

She dropped out of the news cycle after the June 17 massacre of nine worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. In the aftermath of that hate-fueled attack, few wanted to hear about the tawdry details of Dolezal’s racial passing gone awry…

Listen to the story (00:04:59) here. Download the story here.

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