“Trans black” woman Rachel Dolezal — former NAACP official and author of a new book In Full Color, who now goes by the name of Nkechi Amare Diallo — journeyed to South Africa to get in touch with her racial roots and explain to black South Africans how hard it was to be “authentic black” despite being completely white. Apparently, her trans-racial spiel went over about as well there as it did here.
Dolezal/Diallo was invited by a self-identified “bishop” to speak at the inaugural Quest for Non Racial South African Society Dialogue in Johannesburg last week in front of a largely black audience of students from the University of Johannesburg as well as various activists. According to The Daily Mail, the response was enthusiastic but in all the wrong ways.
When Dolezal gave the audience her standard self-description — that she was “born to white parents” but is “trans black” with an “authentic black identity” — the students reportedly “tutted loudly and shook their heads in disbelief.”
The Daily Mail provides some highlights of the reactions from not only black South Africans but one white transgender advocate whose organization operates in South Africa. One particular comment sums up the reception of Dolezal succinctly:
“Only a white person could claim blackness and tour the world talking to blacks about blackness,” said one attendee of Dolezal’s talk.
And that’s a rather polite example. Here’s the reaction of Lebo Ramafoko, the head of the South Africa-based Soul City Institute for Social Justice:
“She is just sick or a fraud. Can you imagine a black person from Africa being given a visa and this special treatment to go to America or to London claiming to be white and having the red carpet rolled out for them?” the social justice activist wrote. “This is just another example of white supremacy, why must we have to listen to her?”
And then there is Marion Stevens, whom The Daily Mail describes as “a white feminist” who runs a pro-transgender organization in the country, who was fuming over Dolezal’s “audacious” attempt to equate her desire to be black with the transgender movement.
“If she is going to use transgenderism to back up her notion of trans-racialism, she is barking up the wrong planet,” said Stevens. “It is audacious of her to come to South Africa where she has no appreciation of our history, to perform black feminism. Having her here is the last thing we need.”
Well, at least one person seems to have bought Dolezal’s/Diallo’s “trans black” premise fully: black South African “bishop” Clyde Ramalaine (he’s actually just an owner of a communications business), who said he finds it “amazing that Bruce Jenner can be celebrated on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine and yet no one has ever said to him ‘but you deceived people all those years, you were in a male locker room, you slept with women.’
“No one accuses Bruce Jenner of living a lie, or calls him a fraud. He is celebrated for his bravery in being truthful about his true identity,” Ramalaine continued. “Yet Rachel is vilified, is treated as a pariah, accused of lying about who she really was.”
As Jazz Shaw points out, the fact that Ramalaine hilariously uses all the masculine descriptions of Jenner doesn’t exactly help his argument. Apparently, he’s buying Jenner’s self-identity about as much as the South Africans who attended Dolezal’s “trans-racial” lecture.
More from The Daily Wire on Dolezal:
MUST READ: Rachel Dolezal Has A New Book Coming Out About He She Became ‘Woke’