Academia, Criminal law, Torts, Uncategorized

Discredited NAACP Official Once Sued Howard University Over Reverse Discrimination

620We previously discussed the bizarre case of Rachel Dolezal, 37, the head of an NAACP chapter accused of lying by her own mother. Worse yet, some have suggested that Rachel Dolezal, who is the head of the NAACP’s chapter in Spokane, planted hate mail at her office. Now it appears that Dolezal once sued Howard University over discriminating against her for being white — before she claimed she was black. If true, it makes a truly bizarre story all the more bizarre.

Dolezal reportedly sued Howard for discrimination in 2002 when she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree. She was then known as Rachel Moore and sued Howard and Professor Alfred Smith, chairman of Howard’s Department of Art. The lawsuit is quoted as alleging “discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that she was denied a teaching assistant post and that her application was rejected for a post-graduate instructorship in favor of African-American students. The lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Zoe Bush and Bush’s decision was upheld by the D.C. Court of Appeals. In addition to an order forcing her to pay a “Bill of Costs” of $2,728.50, she was ordered to pay the university nearly $1,000.00 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing.

The unfolding background reveals a tragic obsession (and transformation) with race. That obsession would lead to the alleged falsification of information on government forms. It is also unclear whether this controversy will produce criminal charges.

Source: Smoking Gun

198 thoughts on “Discredited NAACP Official Once Sued Howard University Over Reverse Discrimination”

  2. Off topic discussions of guns, horses and dogs are always welcome. ‘Please do not mention any hate crimes while we are busy bashing this woman for identifying as black for three days straight.’

    So sorry to throw water on your blazing outrage.

    1. ” ‘Please do not mention any hate crimes while we are busy bashing this woman for identifying as black for three days straight.’ ”

      When someone tells us they identify as black they are telling us something about their internal state. No one can prove or dis prove that. No one can reasonably criticize that.

      When one tells us they are black they are inviting us to make assumptions about their life experience. Perhaps we are the ones who are the problem for making the assumptions. But I believe that, over a very broad, range we ought to be able to make reasonable assumptions based on the words our acquaintances use.

      Many made assumptions about Rachel based on the belief that she was black, that she was whipped and abused as a child, that her ‘dad’ was an African American retired police officer. None of that is true. Rachel hustled most everyone she came in contact with from early adulthood on.

      We might wonder if any of that matters, aside from the resentment that some might feel for being mislead by Rachel. That depends. That depends on the context of the lies and the purpose Rachel makes of her lies. I will point out that it might make a great deal of difference to some whether they led by someone who fairly states they identify as black, whether they are led by someone who has actually lived their struggle, or whether they are led by someone who pretends to be black.

      As for the discussion of Rachel Dolezal: some believe Rachel’s example and rationalizations are an opening to have some of the most serious public discussions of the meaning of race, identity and racism we have had so far. I think I agree.

  3. Karen, As I remarked yesterday evening, this has been a good, civil, substantive, thread.

  4. Karen, Superb comment on slavery. And the red herring is classic negative attention seeking behavior, best scoffed at, and then ignored. Really pitiful when you get to the core.

  5. I meant to add above that her false claim of having been whipped like a slave in South Africa was the last straw for me, and led to my opinion above of stealing black history.

    She’s toxic.

    It is irresponsible to keep giving her a platform to make money based on lying.

  6. Wait, are we not allowed to comment on the topic of this thread? Do all of us first have to filter through current events and list life and death scenarios, and all violent crime, before we can discuss the topic at hand?

    That was called a red herring, or what I like to call a “false hare.”

  7. There’s been another thing gnawing at me about this woman’s deception.

    I’ve always looked at the descendants of slaves as a legacy of fortitude. 40% of slaves died on the forced march from the interior of Africa to the coast, where they were sold to Europeans. Then they were packed like sardines in the most horrific, claustrophobic conditions. They were chained by the neck and feet on decks with 18 inches of headroom. They couldn’t even lie on their sides. They just lay there in the dark, unable to move more than a few inches, stifling in the stench of vomit and feces. 30% more died on those evil boats, which trailed sharks. Sometimes they suffocated to death. And then they got here to the US, and the colonies enacted laws to keep them from fraternizing with the indentured servants. They enacted punishments worthy of Jeffrey Dahmer, because these people just would not give up. In NY in the 1600s, they roasted a man alive for 10 hours for participating in a rebellion. They also made it illegal for any slaves to congregate in groups larger than 2. The VA Slave Code of the 1700s allowed for dismemberment of slaves who participated in rebellions, in order to terrify others from emulating them. Striking a white person would cost a slave his ears. Possession of any firearm was punishable by death. At this time, any runaway was allowed to be killed on sight by anyone, by any means they chose. Faced with the very real threat of death, torture, and mutilation, many slaves STILL risked it all to try to see the family sold away from them, or run away. Old newspapers have so many references to runaways that clearly this was never a defeated people. Even those who were unable to leave did little subversive acts of rebellion – ruining the master’s things, slow work, any little symbolic act of defiance.

    So people who really are descended from slaves are the product of an incredibly resilient, resourceful, iron willed people. I know with certainty that I would not have survived either the march or the sail, let alone any of the treatment they faced here during the time of slavery. Those survivors had real strength and courage.

    For her to pretend to have been descended from one of those survivors is just offensive on a whole new level. (Of course, I don’t know if she claimed to have been fathered by a recent immigrant.) Lying about having descended from slaves makes a mockery of everything they endured. She could have just emulated the culture without lying about who she was.

  8. A Syrian air strike killed 16 people yesterday, including 13 children.

  9. Boko Haram slaughtered 38 people in Niger today. Provincialism is myopia.

  12. 145 comments on Dolezal in this thread alone. Not one mention of 9 black worshipers being gunned down in their church by a white supremacist.

  13. BFM – those were great op-eds.

    According to those articles, she said in an interview that her parents moved the family to South Africa, where they beat her with baboon whips, used to drive baboons away. She said they would leave scars, and she was beaten like a slave.

    Except that the entire story was also a lie. She never lived in South Africa.

    This woman really has a problem.

    Also, one of the links led to an interview with the parents. They claim that they were contacted by a journalist from the Coeur d’Alene Press trying to reach her parents. I wonder if it was because of this public interview Dolezal had given where she claimed they had beaten her like a slave. In any case, when the journalist called, they told him everything, and certainly didn’t lie for her.

    So Dolezal’s claim that her parents outed her to protect their son may also be a complete lie.

    1. @Paul C. Schulte:

      Jonathan Capehart at WAPO

      http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/06/15/caitlyn-jenner-and-rachel-dolezal-clash-of-identity-and-authenticity/

      and Charles M. Blow at NYT

      http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/opinion/charles-blow-the-delusions-of-dolezal.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

      reach very different conclusions from the op-eds you mention about Rachel Dolezal.

      Capehart concludes: “Dolezal is nothing but a cultural carpetbagger living a lie.”.

      Blow believes “Dolezal’s performance of blackness may have been born of affinity, but it was based on a lie — one she has never sufficiently recanted — and her feeble attempts to use professorial language and faux-intellectual obfuscations only add insult to the cultural injury.”

  16. Tyger Gilbert, I’m not promoting racism with my comments. But the fact that we can look at and receive information such as skin color and process that information does indeed make us smarter. Now, what we do with that information is another issue. I doubt any of us would be willing to swap our brain for a mouse brain. The idea of being “color blind” is to be not a very aware being.

  17. Smarter, Jim22? Discrimination based upon skin color is not a product of higher intelligence but of the lower brain where fear and self-doubt and other negative emotions exist. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not a rational response. All too often, humans don’t behave even as reasonably as animals, and could learn a lot from their behavior. But that’s a discussion for another day.

  18. Tyger Gilbert, I guess my reply would be, we are smarter than mice. Being able to think beyond, food, survival and sex opens up a whole new can of worms.

  19. The birth place or cradel of man is linked to Ethiopia. She might very well have a valid claim.

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