English 215 Fall 2015Essay 1 What is rea.docx

English 215
Fall 2015Essay 1: What is “real” about race?
Essay question:
If race is an “illusion,” without biological reality, were Rachel
Dolezal’s actions acceptable or unacceptable? Why or why not?
Directions: In the beginning of your essay, paraphrase the
overall message of “Race – The Power of an Illusion Part I” and
explain the Rachel Dolezal controversy. Then, present your
perspective on the essay question, and support it with facts and
ideas from the source materials. Finally, finish your essay with
a conclusion that states your message on this topic – what
should we understand about race after reading your essay?
Source Materials:
· You may use any of the materials posted on iLearn, including
those we did not discuss. You must use the documentary film as
one of your sources out of a minimum of three sources total.
· Paraphrase the material you use in your essay. You may also
include 2-3 well-chosen quotations.
· Cite all paraphrases and quotations using APA format, and
include an APA list of references at the end of your essay
· Note: For this essay, please only use the sources on iLearn.
All material in your essay should come from these sources; no
others should be used.
Length: Your essay should be a minimum of 2.5 pages
(approximately 750 words) and a maximum of 3.5 pages
(approximately 1000 words), not including references page.
Format: Your essay should be a minimum of 2.5 pages
(approximately 750 words) and a maximum of 3.5 pages
(approximately 1000 words), not including references page.

Use 12 point font and double-space. Leave 1.5 inch margins on
the left & right, and 1-inch margins on the top & bottom.
Please leave a ragged (unjustified) right side.
Important Notes:
· Plagiarized work on any drafts, including proofreading, will
result in an essay grade of No Credit. You must submit your
final draft to TurnItIn.com(through iLearn) by the due date.
· You must turn in all drafts of your essay (including a
proofreading draft) in a flat, two-pocket folder.
DUE DATES:
Idea draft (in class): Tuesday, 9/8
Final Draft (in a folder with ALL drafts): Thursday, 9/17
Optional conferences are available with Lisa or Sofia by
appointment.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
For most of its 100-year existence, Oreo
was America’s best loved cookie, but today
it is a global brand. Faced with stagnation
in the domestic market, Kraft Foods moved
it into emerging markets where it made
some mistakes, learnt from them and
ultimately triumphed. This case study
looks at the strategies used to win over
customers in China and India.
By STEPHEN CLEMENTS, TANVI JAIN, SHERENE JOSE,
BENJAMIN KOELLMANN
March 31 2013 BUSINESS TODAY 109

CASE STUDY Oreo
SMA RT
spurred Kraft to turn to international
markets. With China and India rep-
resenting possibly the jewels in the
crown of international target mar-
kets due to their sheer size, Oreo was
launched in China in 1996.
The China launch was based on
the implicit assumption that what
made it successful in its home market
would be a winning formula in any
other market. However, after almost
a decade in China, Oreo cookies were
not a hit as anticipated, according to
Lorna Davis, in charge of the global
biscuit division at Kraft. And the
team even considered pulling Oreo
out of the Chinese market altogether.
In 2005, Kraft decided to re-
search the Chinese market to under-
stand why the Oreo cookie that was
so successful in most countries had
failed to resonate with the Chinese.
Research showed the Chinese were
not historically big cookie eaters.
According to Davis, Chinese con-
sumers liked the contrast of sweet
and bitter but “they said it was a little
bit too sweet and a little bit too bit-
ter”. Without the emotional attach-
ment of American consumers who

grew up with the cookie, the taste
and shape could be quite alien. In
addition, 72 cents for a pack of 14
Oreos was too expensive for the
value-conscious Chinese.
Kraft’s Chinese division used this
information to formulate a modified
recipe, making the cookie more
chocolatey and the cream less cloy-
ing. Kraft developed 20 prototypes of
reduced-sugar Oreos and tested
them with Chinese consumers before
arriving at a formula that tasted
right. They also introduced different
packages, including smaller packets
for just 29 cents to cater to Chinese
buying habits.
The changes had a positive im-
pact on sales and prompted the com-
pany to ask some basic questions
challenging the core attributes of the
traditional Oreo cookie. Why does an
Oreo have to be black and white?
And why should an Oreo be round?
This line of questioning and an
ambition to capture a greater share
of the Chinese biscuit market led
C KIE
XECUTIVE SUMMARY:
or most of its 100-year existence, Oreo

spurred Kra
markets. W
resenting p
c o n of inO
n March 6, 2012, the fa-
mous cookie brand, Oreo,
celebrated its 100th birth-
day. From humble begin-
nings in a Nabisco bakery in New
York City, Oreo has grown to become
the bestselling cookie brand of the
21st century generating $1.5 billion
in global annual revenues. Currently
owned by Kraft Foods Inc, Oreo is
one of the company’s dozen billion-
dollar brands.
Until the mid-1990s, Oreo
largely focused on the US market – as
reflected in one of its popular adver-
tising slogans from the 1980s,
“America’s Best Loved Cookie”. But
the dominant position in the US lim-
ited growth opportunities and
March 31
33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333
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I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y S R I S T I
108 BUSINESS TODAY March 31 2013
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Initially, successful brands begin with a tight core brand
proposition which is often unique at the level of the prod-
uct or product features. Just as McDonald’s was about ham-
burgers and Starbucks about coffee, Oreo was about its
distinctive cookie. As time goes by, consumers change and
the company needs growth. Sooner or later, the brand faces
an existentialist dilemma. Staying faithful to the traditional
proposition would lead to brand irrelevance, while
expanding it too much would lead to brand incoherence.
Continued success requires the brand to redefine its
core, finding in it a proposition that is still faithful to tradi-
tion, and yet encompasses modernity in a manner to keep
the brand relevant, differentiated and credible. The rise of
emerging markets with their different consumption pat-
terns and greater diversity of income distribution questions
the core proposition of many developed world brands. Just
as McDonald’s had to realise it was about clean, affordable
fast food and not hamburgers, Oreo had to go through a
candid self-exploration. The new Oreo brand proposition
is richer and more elaborate while allowing for brand
growth and innovation.
Similarly, Starbucks realised that when China was going
to be its second home market, coffee was not essential to the
core proposition. This required a change in the logo and the
word ‘coffee’ was dropped from it. In China, more than
coffee, people line up at Starbucks for cold refreshments.
However, brands are like rubber bands and can only be
stretched so far in the short run. In the long run, they
can often be more flexible than their brand managers.

Kraft to remake the product in 2006
and introduce an Oreo that looked
almost nothing like the original. The
new Chinese Oreo consisted of four
layers of crispy wafers filled with va-
nilla and chocolate cream, coated in
chocolate. The local innovations
continued and Oreo products in
China today include Oreo green tea
ice cream and Oreo Double-Fruit.
Another challenge for Kraft in
China was introducing the typical
twist, lick and dunk ritual used by
American consumers to enjoy their
Oreos. Americans traditionally twist
open their Oreo cookies, lick the
cream inside and then dunk it in
milk. Such behaviour was consid-
ered a “strangely American habit”,
according to Davis. But the team
noticed China’s growing thirst for
milk which Kraft tapped with a
grassroots marketing campaign to
tell Chinese consumers about the
American tradition of pairing milk
with cookies. A product tailored for
the Chinese market and a campaign
to market the American style of pair-
ing Oreos with milk paid off and
Oreos became the bestselling cookies
of that country.
The lessons from the Chinese
market have shaped the way Kraft
has approached Oreo’s launch in

India. Oreo entered India through
the import route and was initially
priced at `50 (about $1) for a pack of
14. But sales were insignificant
BRANDS FACE AN
EXISTENTIALIST DILEMMA
“The new
Oreo brand
proposition is
richer and more
elaborate while
allowing for
brand growth
and innovation”
PROF NIRMALYA KUMAR,
Professor of Marketing and
Director of the Aditya Birla India
Centre at London Business School
CASE STUDY Oreo
partly because of limited availability
and awareness, but also because
they were prohibitively expensive for
the value-conscious Indian masses.
Learning from the Chinese success
story, the company under global CEO
Irene Rosenfeld took localisation
strategies seriously from 2007 on-
wards. The $19.1-billion acquisition
of Cadbury in 2009 provided Kraft
the local foothold it needed in India.

Unlike the Chinese, Indians love
their biscuits. Nielsen says India is
the world’s biggest market for bis-
cuits with a market share of 22 per
cent in volumes compared with 13
per cent in the US. While the lion’s
share of this market is for low-cost
glucose biscuits led by Parle-G, pre-
mium creams account for a substan-
tial chunk valued at around `5,500
crore ($1.1 billion). The way to the
Indian consumer’s stomach is
through competitive pricing, high
volumes and strong distribution, es-
pecially in rural areas.
Oreo developed a launch strategy
around taking on existing market
leaders in the cream segment –
Britannia, Parle and ITC. Internally,
they even have an acronym for this
strategy – TLD (Take Leaders Down).
The focus was to target the top 10
million households which account
for 70 per cent of cream biscuit con-
sumption. Oreo launched in India in
March 2011. It entered the market
March 31 2013 BUSINESS TODAY 111
T his is a good example of marketing excellence in three As in
India: Availability, Affordability and
Adaptability. The key to success in the Indian market is to
pursue a balanced marketing effort in terms of the three As.

Availability is a function of distribution and value
networks, which generates brand awareness when it goes
along with well-devised advertising campaigns.
Affordable pricing is one of the strategic value
propositions Kraft (Cadbury) is offering to valued
consumers in India. Better or more-for-less is the
mandate for the value proposition in this category.
Arguably, where Oreo India made a difference in is the fact
that it successfully overcame a real challenge each and
every marketer faces to realise affordable pricing
with profitability.
Excellence in adaptability to local culture also helped
Oreo capture a share of mouths and minds. One of the key
success factors for Oreo in India is replicating the learning
from China in terms of the intangible brand promise more
than tangible benefits like taste. The notion of togetherness
fits the Indian context of valuing the family and resonates
with the nuclear family in the expanding middle class.
Togetherness has successfully created emotional bonding
not only between the brand and consumers, but also
between parents and children when they experience the
brand through product consumption.
When Oreo enters smaller towns, it will be able to enjoy
a sweet taste of the future as the case proves the existence
of global or universal consumers in India.
AVAILABILITY, AFFORDABILITY
AND ADAPTABILITY ARE KEY
“Affordable
pricing is
one of the

strategic value
propositions
Kraft is
offering valued
customers in
India”
HIROSHI OMATA,
CEO, Dentsu Marcom
e
s
e
e
s
s
d
n
”
A,
m
h
A
Adap
pursu
Av
nnnennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn tw
along
Af
propo

consu
mand
A
AVA
AN
Premium creams
account for a huge
chunk of India’s total
biscuit market and are
valued at around
`5,500Cr
India is the world’s
biggest market
for biscuits with
a market share of
22% compared with
13% in the US
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BT receives scores of responses to its case studies.
Below is the best one on Burberry in the Feb 3, 2013 issueBEST
OF THE LOT

Ambarish Jambhorkar, [email protected]
The way smartphone sales are going north – as per CBS news
the world has
one billion active users – and data use is overtaking voice
revenue, social
media marketing is the future for branding and advertis-
ing This means customer approach will be precise in
STP (Segmentation, Targeting & Positioning). Also, as
discussed in the HBR issue of July-Aug’12 (Tweet Me
Friend Me Make Me Buy – Barbara Giamanco and Kent
Gregoire) this is the time when the right use of social
marketing management should be taught in business
schools as a subject. I think Indian companies should
start early and gain early.
Ambarish Jambhorkar wins a copy of Marketing as Strategy by
Nirmalya Kumar
a s C a d b u r y O r e o s b e c a u s e
Cadbury is a stronger brand name
than Kraft, and initially focused
on generating awareness and
rapid trials. The product was
sweetened to suit the Indian pal-
ate and Kraft exploited Cadbury’s
network of 1.2 million stores.
The Made in India tag meant
using locally-sourced ingredients,
modification of the recipe to suit
I n d i a n t a s t e s a n d p o s s i b l y
cheaper ingredients, a smaller
size and competitive prices. Oreo
launched its traditional chocolate
cookie with vanilla cream at `5 for a

pack of three to drive impulse pur-
chases and trials, `10 for a pack of
seven and `20 for a pack of 14 for
heavy usage. The cookie looks the
same as its international counter-
part with a motif of 12 florets and 12
dashes.
The company maintained the
heritage of the bitter chocolate
cookie with sweet vanilla cream to
stand out from me-too products and
meet customer expectations of hav-
ing the real thing. Kraft initially
chose to outsource its manufactur-
ing for the Indian market instead of
using Cadbury factories.
Communication and advertising
have been consistent across the world
as the core customer remains the
same. The company focused on using
the togetherness concept to sell Oreos
in India, with television forming the
main medium of communication al-
though other media are also being
tapped. Oreo India’s Facebook page is
one of the fastest growing in the
world. The company also went on a
bus tour to push the concept of to-
getherness among families across
nine cities and it used a smaller vehi-
cle for a similar campaign across 450
small towns. Oreo is driving point-of-
purchase sales with store displays

and in-store promotions in a bid to
overtake market leader Britannia
Good Day’s distribution.
With a strategy focused on rapid
brand awareness and extensive dis-
tribution, the Oreo India launch
story has been a success so far.
Its market share has grown
from a little over one per cent
after its debut to a massive 30
per cent of the cream biscuit
market. As awareness of the
Oreo brand grows in India,
Kraft is looking to shift from the
Cadbury distribution network to
a wider wholesale channel. It is
also eyeing kirana stores and
small towns apart from modern
stores in big cities.
Today, Oreo is more than just an
American brand. It is present in more
than 100 countries, with China oc-
cupying the No. 2 slot. Seven years
ago, this was highly improbable. ~
(This case study is from the Aditya
Birla India Centre of London Business
School.)
What can we learn from Kraft
Food’s experiences in India and China?
Write to [email protected]com

or post your comments at www.
businesstoday.in/casestudy-oreo. Your
views will be published in our online
edition. The best response will win a
copy of Marketing as Strategy by
Nirmalya Kumar. Previous case
studies are at www.businesstoday.in/
casestudy.
The Made in
India tag meant
using locally-sourced
ingredients and
modifi cation of the
recipe to suit
Indian tastes
CASE STUDY Oreo
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6 3/8/2013 5:40:56 PM3/8/2013 5:40:56 PM
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America’s
‘Postracial’
Fantasy
By
ANNA
HOLMES
JUNE 30, 2015
The New York Times Magazine
On Father’s Day, my dad and I had brunch with some close
friends of mine. The
conversation soon turned to their two sons: their likes, their
dislikes, their habit of
disrupting classmates during nap time at nursery school. At one
point, as I ran my hand
through one of the boys’ silky brown hair, I asked whether they
consider their kids
biracial. (The father is white; the mother is South Asian.)
Before they could respond, the
children’s paternal grandmother, in town for a visit, replied as
if the answer were the
most obvious thing in the world: ‘‘They’re white.’’
I was taken aback, but I also realized she had a point: The two
boys, who have big brown
eyes and just a blush of olive in their skin, are already — and
will probably continue to
be — regarded as white first, South Asian a distant second.
Nothing in their appearance

would suggest otherwise, and who’s to say whether, once they
realize that people see
them as white, they will feel the need to set the record straight?
Most people prefer the
straightforward to the complex — especially when it comes to
conversations about race.
A Pew Research Center study released in June, ‘‘Multiracial in
America,’’ reports that
‘‘biracial adults who are white and Asian say they have more in
common with whites
than they do with Asians’’ and ‘‘are more likely to say they feel
accepted by whites than
by Asians.’’ While 76 percent of all mixed-race Americans
claim that their backgrounds
have made ‘‘no difference’’ in their lives, the data and
anecdotes included in the study
nevertheless underscore how, for a fair number of us, words like
‘‘multiracial’’ and
‘‘biracial’’ are awkward and inadequate, denoting identities that
are fluid for some and
fixed for others.
This is especially true, I think, for the progeny of mixed-race
black-white relationships:
As the daughter of an African-American father and a white
mother, born with olive skin,
light eyes and thick, curly hair, I have been aware of a tension
between the way the
outside world sees me, the way the government sees me (I was
already 27 when the
census changed its options so Americans could check off two or
more races) and the
ways in which I see myself. Sometimes identifying as black
feels like a choice; other
times, it is a choice made for me.

Just a few years ago, the election of Barack Obama signaled to
some that the country had
arrived at a new reckoning with old categories, that many of
America’s racial wounds
had healed, or that at least it was possible to move on from
them. The term ‘‘postracial’’
was everywhere: in thousands of newspaper articles and op-ed
essays and on the lips of
political pundits like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, who proudly
said that he forgot, for a
moment, that Obama was black. Books were published on
subjects like ‘‘postracial
cinema,’’ the ‘‘postracial church’’ and ‘‘postracial black
leadership.’’ Data from 2008-9
showed that one in seven new marriages was between spouses of
different racial or ethnic
backgrounds. And an article from The New York Times in 2011
noted that some people
felt that ‘‘the blending of the races is a step toward
transcending race, to a place where
America is free of bigotry, prejudice and programs like
affirmative action.’’
The word ‘‘postracial’’ has been around since at least the early
1970s, when an article in
this newspaper used it to describe a coalition of Southern
government officials who
believed that their region had ‘‘entered an era in which race
relations are soon to be
replaced as a major concern.’’ That didn’t happen. When a 21-
year-old white supremacist
was charged in the fatal shootings of nine African-Americans in

Charleston, S.C., on
June 17, it was a stark reminder that the past half decade has
provided little evidence of
reckoning or repair. According to a recent Gallup poll, more
black Americans in 2015
than in 2014 regard race relations as one of the most pressing
problems in the United
States. As for the term ‘‘postracial,’’ well, it has mostly
disappeared from the
conversation, except as sarcastic shorthand.
This is probably how it should be. When people talked about
being ‘‘postracial,’’ they
were often really talking about being ‘‘postblack’’ — or, more
charitably, ‘‘post-racist--
against-blacks.’’ After all, blackness is seen as an opposite to
the default — the ideal —
of whiteness, and chattel slavery and the legacies it left behind
continue to shape
American society. Sometimes it seems as if the desire for a
‘‘postracial’’ America is an
attempt by white people to liberate themselves from the burden
of having to deal with
that legacy.
As a child born a few years after Loving v. Virginia — the 1967
Supreme Court case that
effectively ended miscegenation laws — to a mixed-race couple,
I was keenly aware of
the ways in which many people, especially liberal white people,
saw me as an avatar for a
colorblind civilization in which the best of white and black
America banded together to
move beyond this country’s shameful history by birthing
beautiful beige-colored babies. I
was subject to a certain inquisitiveness, though well meaning,

that I found irritating and
doubted was directed at my darker-skinned brothers and sisters:
questions about which
parent was black and which was white; incredulity about my
hazel eyes; inquiries about
whether I consider myself African-American.
I was a curiosity, and a comfort: a black girl who was just white
enough to seem familiar,
not foreign, someone who could serve as an emissary or a
bridge between blackness and
whiteness. It’s true that I can move about the world in ways that
many other black people
cannot; for one thing, I am rarely racially profiled. My choice,
if you can call it that, to
identify as black is much different from that of, say, my father
or even my own sister,
whose skin is at least three shades darker than mine. The
eagerness with which people
gravitate toward me is not shown to many of the other black
people I know. These ex-
periences led me to suspect that the breathless ‘‘postracial’’
commentary that attached
itself to our current president had as much to do with the fact
that he is biracial as with
the fact that he is black. His blood relationship to whiteness and
its attendant privileges
serve as a chaser to the difficult-to-swallow prospect that a
black man might achieve
ownership of the Oval Office.
My interactions with the world also underscored that biracial
children are not in any way

created equal — others’ interpretations of us are informed by
assumptions based on
appearance. Few black-white biracial Americans, compared with
multiracial Asian--
whites, have the privilege of easily ‘‘passing’’: Our blackness
defines us and marks us in
a way that mixed-race parentage in others does not. As the Pew
survey explains, children
of Native American-white parents make up over half of the
country’s multiracial
population and, like Asian-white children, are usually thought
of as white. The survey
also reports that although the number of black-white biracial
Americans more than
doubled from 2000 to 2010, 69 percent of them say that most
others see them solely as
black; ‘‘for multiracial adults with a black background,’’ Pew
notes, ‘‘experiences with
discrimination closely mirror those of single-race blacks.’’
On June 11, the same day that the Pew report was released,
another provocative narrative
about racial politics emerged: that of Rachel Dolezal, a 37-year-
old white woman and
N.A.A.C.P. leader in Spokane, Wash., who had been
masquerading as black for over a
decade. Some commentators dispassionately proposed that
Dolezal’s charade was yet
another iteration of the white American tradition of co-opting
the black American
experience; others, like many of my biracial black-white
friends, expressed outrage about
her identity theft. Dolezal got to indulge in the myth of the self-
made American, of
choosing whom she wanted to be. But unlike actual black
people, she could discard her

putative blackness at any time, which made her performance all
the more offensive and
absurd. The spectacle of a naturally blond Montana native
parading around broadcast and
cable news studios insisting that she didn’t identify as white
reinforced the fact that for
many Americans, blackness is impossible to divorce from ideas
of what blackness looks
like. (In Dolezal’s case, that meant well-applied bronzer, braids
and a weave.)
Being — or appearing — biracial is a real Rorschach test with
regard to how our ideas
about race have evolved. For every person who hardly bats an
eye at the idea of a light-
skinned biracial woman identifying as African-American,
there’s another person waiting
to inform her that she doesn’t ‘‘look very black’’ (the white
husband of a Korean--
American friend) or that she is not actually black at all (an
African-American
entrepreneur in a professional women’s association to which I
belong). Which is why,
when people I meet ask me, ‘‘What are you?’’ my usual
response is to look at them with
amusement and shoot back, ‘‘What do you think I am?’’
Credibility of local NAACP leader Rachel
Dolezal questioned
June

11,
2015
Staff reports
The Spokesman-Review
A family photo shows Rachel Dolezal’s family at her wedding
reception in Jackson,
Mississippi on May 21, 2000. Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal
identified the people in the
photo as: Back row: Ruthanne (mother), Kevin & Rachel, Larry
(father), Peggy &
Herman (Larry’s parents); Front Row, our (Larry and
Ruthanne’s) adopted children:
Ezra, Izaiah, Esther and Zachariah.
Controversy is swirling around one of the Inland Northwest’s
most prominent civil rights
activists, with family members of Rachel Dolezal saying the
local leader of the NAACP
has been falsely portraying herself as black for years.
Dolezal, 37, avoided answering questions directly about her
race and ethnicity Thursday,
saying, “I feel like I owe my executive committee a
conversation” before engaging in a
broader discussion with the community about what she
described as a “multi-layered”
issue.
“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said after being
contacted at Eastern
Washington University, where she’s a part-time professor in the

Africana Studies
Program. “There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know
that everyone would
understand that.”
Later, in an apparent reference to studies tracing the scientific
origins of human life to
Africa, Dolezal added: “We’re all from the African continent.”
Dolezal is credited with re-energizing the Spokane chapter of
the NAACP. She also
serves as chairwoman of the city’s Office of Police Ombudsman
Commission, where she
identified herself as white, black and American Indian in her
application for the volunteer
appointment, and previously was education director for the
Human Rights Education
Institute in Coeur d’Alene.
In recent days, questions have arisen about her background and
her numerous complaints
to police of harassment. Members of her family are challenging
her very identity, saying
she has misrepresented major portions of her life.
Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, said Thursday by phone
from her home in
Northwest Montana that she has had no contact with her
daughter in years. She said her
daughter began to “disguise herself” in 2006 or 2007, after the
family had adopted four
African-American children and Rachel Dolezal had shown an
interest in portrait art.

“It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,” Ruthanne
Dolezal said. “Her
effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community
would have been so
much more viable, and she would have been more effective if
she had just been honest
with everybody.”
Rachel Dolezal dismisses the controversy as little more than an
ugly byproduct of
contentious litigation between other family members over
allegations of past abuse that
has divided the family. She’s particularly suspicious of the
timing, noting that the
allegations broke on her son’s birthday and come as the
Colorado lawsuit filed by her
sister against their brother nears a key juncture.
Ruthanne Dolezal, however, said while the family has long been
aware of some of their
daughter’s racial and ethnic claims in the Inland Northwest,
they didn’t comment until
being contacted by the media.
Ruthanne Dolezal said the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish
and German. She said the
family does have some “faint traces” of Native American
heritage as well. She provided a
copy of her daughter’s Montana birth certificate listing herself
and Larry Dolezal as
Rachel’s parents.
Meanwhile, an inquiry is being opened at Spokane City Hall,
where Dolezal identified
herself in her application to the Office of Police Ombudsman
Commission as having

several ethnic origins, including white, black and American
Indian.
“We are gathering facts to determine if any city policies related
to volunteer boards and
commissions have been violated,” Mayor David Condon and
Council President Ben
Stuckart said in a joint statement. “That information will be
reviewed by the City
Council, which has oversight of city boards and commissions.”
Dolezal was appointed to the oversight board by Condon.
Stuckart said the council will meet soon to discuss the
developments and that he didn’t
want to speak for the group until then. “But if this is true I’ll be
very disappointed,” he
said Thursday morning.
Eastern Washington University, where Dolezal was described by
President Mary
Cullinan in March as “an inspiring role model for EWU
students,” moved to distance
itself from the controversy Thursday.
“At this time, it’s not appropriate for us to comment on a
personal issue,” said university
spokesman Dave Meany.
Some people at organizations Dolezal is or has been associated
with say they’ve had
questions about her representations about herself for some time.
A private investigator in
Kootenai County has been looking into her background recently.

Also this week, Spokane police files on Dolezal’s report that
she received a hate mail
package and other mailing in late February and March were
released. Police records say
the initial package Dolezal reported receiving did not bear a
date stamp or bar code,
which Dolezal herself told police when she reported it.
Investigators interviewed postal
workers, who said it was either very unlikely or impossible that
the package could have
been processed through the post office, and that the only other
alternative was that it had
been put there by someone with a key.
However, several other pieces of mail sent in the same
handwriting and style, and with
the writer identifying himself in the same way as “War Pig
(Ret.),” have been received by
Dolezal, the Spokane Valley Police Department and The
Spokesman-Review. Those
other letters were date-stamped and postmarked from Oakland,
California.
It was not clear from the reports, released through a public
records request Wednesday, if
the police investigation into the letter has concluded or was
ongoing. Dolezal said
Wednesday she believes it has reached an end, at least for the
time being.
“They’re not going any further. … I didn’t hear the word
closed, but I did hear there’s
nothing more they can do at this time,” she said.
Dolezal said she received a key to the post office box when she

became president of the
NAACP earlier this year. Asked about the possibility that she
had put the package there
herself, she said, “That’s such bullshit. What mother would
terrorize her own children?”
She said she was not questioned about that possibility by police,
and was bothered by
initial media reports about the package. “Nobody’s ever come
out and said (they suspect
me) directly, but I am bothered by the subtle implication,” she
said.
Neumaier said he was suspicious of several incidents Dolezal
reported in Coeur d’Alene,
including her discovery of a swastika on the door of the Human
Rights Education
Institute when the organization’s security camera was
“mysteriously turned off.”
“None of them passed the smell test,” he said.
He said that after Dolezal left the institute and he saw her
gaining prominence in Spokane
– becoming head of the NAACP, chairman of the police
ombudsman oversight
commission, teaching at Eastern Washington University, and
speaking frequently in
public on racism and justice issues – that he became worried
that there might be
“blowback” for the institute for not doing a better job of vetting
her.
Part of Neumaier’s job on the board is to look at complaints of

human rights violations
and help victims take action and seek justice.
“In all of these incidents (she reported in Coeur d’Alene), she
was the sole witness to
events that, when put under scrutiny, don’t hold up,” he said.
Dolezal has made many reports of harassment and other crimes
to police. None have
resulted in arrests or charges – but neither have any included
direct claims that she
fabricated them. In some cases, such as a report that a noose
was left on her porch in
Spokane, there were other witnesses.
Ruthanne Dolezal said her message to her daughter is simple.
“I would say, ‘I love you, and honesty is the best policy,’.” she
said. “I firmly believe that
the truth is in everyone’s best interest.”
OPINION
COMMENTARY / WORLD
If Rachel Dolezal is a crazy liar, what is Obama?
BY TED RALL
JUN 25, 2015ARTICLE HISTORY

NEW YORK – Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane leader of the
NAACP who was born white but
pretends to be (or “identifies as”) black, is widely assumed to
be a lying con artist, suffering from
psychological problems, or both. Many Americans, especially
blacks who suffer at the hands of
systemic racial discrimination, were furious at what they saw as
Dolezal’s lack of — forgive me
— skin in the game.
Unlike dark-skinned African-Americans pulled over by racist
policemen for a broken taillight,
she could opt out any time. Indeed, she did exactly that when
she sued her alma mater, the
historically black Howard University, for race discrimination —
because she was white.
Dolezel has stepped down from her unpaid post where, by all
accounts, she did a magnificent
job. But what about another case of racial slumming that is not
dissimilar from Dolezal’s, but far
more prominent?
I speak here — though few others dare — of President Barack
Obama.
Obama, as everyone knows, had a black Kenyan father and a
white American mother. Growing
up in Hawaii, where so many people have multiple racial
identities that they call themselves
“chop suey” or “poi dog,” meaning “mixed” or “mutt,” Obama
chose to sublimate his white
ancestry and identify as fully black because he didn’t want to
be, as friends remember, a “tragic
mulatto” who had to suck up to whites.

Choosing which half of your family you prefer to identify with
isn’t unusual. My mother is
French and my father is American of German ancestry. I feel
very French — I speak and read the
language, listen to French music, follow French news, have dual
French-American citizenship. I
always assumed that was because my father wasn’t around while
I was growing up, so he lost his
chance to influence me. (But I’ve never denied his paternity, or
the parts of my personality I
believe came from him.)
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Anyway, Obama’s situation was the reverse of mine. Like me,
he was raised by his mom. The
time he spent with his father could be measured in hours. If
he’d followed the path of least
resistance in terms of cultural influence, he would have
identified as white. Instead, he took on
the race of the father who left him.
Granted: Race is a largely a cultural and political construction.
Still, within the racial construct in
which Obama and I (we’re almost the same age, and went to
Columbia at the same time) grew
up, he was and is biracial.
Why’d he ditch the biracial moniker?
The Census Bureau began identifying multiracial Americans in
2000. (You check off two or more
boxes for race, as applicable.) In 2000, 6.8 million Americans

declared themselves as having
mixed-race ancestry. Not Obama — in 2010, as president, he
declared himself solely African-
American.
Sorry, mom.
How is this different than Rachel Dolezal? Both of them
identify themselves as blacker than they
are genetically: Dolezel 100 percent more, Obama 50 percent
more. Why is Dolezal, an obscure
woman who worked hard to fight for blacks, catching more crap
than Obama, arguably the
world’s most powerful man, who has been roundly criticized for
sitting on his hands when black
Americans come under attack, as they did in a Charleston
church this month?
If Dolezal is “transracial,” as she told an interview, so is
Obama.
“I think his choice (to declare himself African-American and
not biracial) will have political,
social and cultural ramifications,” Michele Hughes, president of
the Chicago Biracial Families
Network, said after stories about Obama’s census declaration
appeared. Certainly, it sent a
message to biracial children: The president of the United States
is ashamed of his biracial
heritage, and maybe you should be too.
“Aren’t people supposed to fill out their census forms
accurately? Why else are we doing it? If
everyone put down on the form how they ‘identified,’ I don’t
know what kind of count we’d
wind up with, but clearly it would not reflect the racial makeup

of the United States. As many
have argued, race is an almost useless construct, so that might
not matter, except in one very
important area: If every biracial person chose one race, as
Obama did, or as people had to do
before the forms were changed in 2000, the census would
portray a society more divided than it
actually is,” Elizabeth Chang, who identifies as biracial (and
actually is biracial) wrote in The
Washington Post in 2010. “If the most powerful person in this
country says that because society
thinks he looks black, he is black, it sends a message that
biracial children have to identify with
the side they most resemble.”
It also endorses the hoary “single drop of blood” rule, which
dates to slavery and dictates that if
you’re 0.1 percent black, the law, and American culture,
considers you 100 percent black.
As I said, I’m not personally vested in this discussion. But I
dislike hypocrisy, particularly in the
context of media pile-ons against average citizens while
objectively much bigger targets stand
around watching, untouched by the flinging mud. If Dolezal is
scum for lying about her race, so
is Obama.
Half-scum, anyway.
Ted Rall is a writer and political cartoonist. © 2015 Ted Rall
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What Rachel Dolezal has in common with 650,000 Americans
Ross, Janell. Weblog post. Washington Post – Blogs, WP
Company LLC d/b/a
The Washington Post. Jun 15, 2015.
I
t's probably fair to say that many Americans are flabbergasted
by Rachel Dolezal, the
reportedly race-shifting and now-former president of the
NAACP's Spokane chapter.
Some are offended, others bemused. Either way, it seems that
the share of
Americans utterly aghast at the Dolezal story might turn out to
be one of the great
unifying experiences of 2015.
But for all the conversations ignited since Dolezal's parents
appear to have outed
their daughter as a white woman, there is one thing that's been
lost: What Dolezal did
and said as a self-made black woman and vocal combatant of
injustice is unusual,
but the contemporary phenomenon of race-shifting is not.
It really is not.
In fact, between 2000 and 2010 (the nation's two most recent
Census counts) the
share of people who identified themselves as part Native
American grew by a
whopping 39 percent in a single decade, nearly four times faster
than the nation's

population as a whole. That's nearly 650,000 people who were
multi-racial in 2012
who did not consider themselves thus in 2000. Racial shifting is
real.
And just to be clear, we aren't talking about a Native American
baby boom or surge in
people who identified as being of multiracial heritage because
of changes made to
Census forms. The latter happened for the first time in 2000, not
2010.
The vast majority of this change -- according to U.S. Census
staff and population
experts around the country -- happened as a result of shifting
racial identification
among adults. We're talking about 644,986 people who, for the
most part, described
themselves as white on the 2000 Census and then described
themselves as white
and Native American in 2010.
(A small share of this group of "new" partial Native Americans
described themselves
as black and Native American or Asian and Native American)
And this phenomenon isn't actually new. Social scientists who
study populations and
the forces shaping them typically expect a racial group to grow
or shrink in size
based on four pretty logical factors: 1) People die, 2) people are
born, 3) people
move to the United States and 4) people move to new states or
cities within it all the

time. But in every census since 1960, when the U.S. Census
first gave Americans the
opportunity to self-identify their race at all, the size of the
country's Native
American/Alaska Native population has grown exponentially at
a rate that far
outpaces the net total of all the deaths, births and international
or domestic relocation
in the United States.
Experts point to a number of factors, including everything from
shrinking stigma, if not
a certain cultural cache, attached to a multiracial identity. Then
there is technology's
capacity to connect people to previously unknown ancestors,
living relatives and the
particulars of their genetic inheritance. And this phenomenon
might be a function of
something more rapacious.
The leader of a Tennessee tribe not recognized by the federal
government told me
that after meeting a number of people who have begun to
describe themselves as
part Native American in the past decade that he suspects some
of these people are
hoping that their claims will lead to tribal membership. And, he
told me, at least some
of these people hope that maybe one day in the not too distant
future, a share of the
profits from future tribal businesses, such as casinos, will
follow.
Of course, no one can say with certainty whether that's true of
most or even some of

the people who identified as partially Native American in 2010
that did not do so in
2000.
But the shift is mostly just on paper. In a report released last
week, analysts at the
Pew Research Center found that Americans who describe
themselves as white and
Native American make up the largest share of the country's
multiracial population.
But only a small fraction of these same people told Pew's
researchers that they
described themselves as anything other than white in their day-
to-day lives.
Race continues to shape and sometimes distort life in the United
States. Clear racial
disparities persist in everything from health and education
outcomes to household
wealth and interest rates paid on just about every type of loan
that you can imagine.
People of color live shorter lives and, in many cases, more
difficult and expensive
ones than white Americans.
Maybe some of the country's census-form-only multiracial
Americans fear what life
would become if they no longer fall clearly on the white side of
the nation's racial
ledger. Perhaps others worry that they will face the kind of
ridicule and questions
about integrity that have dogged Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-
Mass.) since her claims of
Native American ancestry (she said she is one-32nd Cherokee)
have become public
knowledge.

And this, of course, brings us back to Dolezal.
What appears to divide Dolezal from many -- if not most -- of
the Americans who
described themselves on 2010 Census forms as more than one
race are two things:
1) Dolezal appears to have taken great pains to hide her white
roots, and 2) at the
very least, she exploited the uncertain parameters of race and its
fraught meaning to
lend her work and opinions credibility. At the worst, she totally
invented a new racial
identity.
Why Dolezal felt that she could not do the same work as a white
woman remains
unclear. The history of the NAACP, in particular, makes this
difficult to understand.
But in truth, if blackness had value for Dolezal, it's almost
certain that whiteness also
has some value for millions of other Americans.
That choice simply seems more logical because of persistent
racial inequality.
Still, as round two of the great national examination of
Dolezal's psyche begins, there
is good reason to ask yourself, your neighbors and your friends
about their heritage
and how, if at all, it differs from the racial identity they
publicly embrace. And know
this: Their answers today might be different than they will be in
2020, when the next

Census happens.
Consider this from a special report on racial shifting compiled
by a team of
demographic experts for the U.S. Census bureau in 2014:
In research on identity change and response change, part-
American Indians have
been shown to shift responses more often than people with
black, Asian, white,
and/or Hispanic heritage ... Are American Indians
fundamentally different? ... We
think not. Instead, we see American Indians as representing the
vanguard; other
groups may well follow in their path. For example, Asian- and
Hispanic-Americans
have recently been experiencing high levels of interracial
unions ... and both groups
are moving in the direction of having highly mixed populations
... like American
Indians. Questions of identity, socially-defined group
boundaries, and measurement
are likely to expand for many race/ethnic groups in coming
years. Pacific Islanders
and multiple-race respondents from all race groups already
show a high level of race
response change across the 2000 to 2010 period.
It seems that this might be a nation full of racial shifters after
all.
Word count: 1165
Copyright WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post Jun
15, 2015

The damage Rachel Dolezal has done
By Jonathan Capehart June 12
The Washington Post
The fascinating Rachel Dolezal story has more layers than one
of those
flaky Pillsbury biscuits. She’s the president of the Spokane,
Wash.,
chapter of the NAACP and a professor of African American
studies at
Eastern Washington University, who was outed as not actually
being
African American. Her years of deception came to an end after
her
inability to answer a simple question at the end of an interview
with
KXLY television reporter Jeff Humphrey. “Are you an African
American?” he asked. After a long, blinkless and blank stare,
Dolezal
said, “I don’t understand the question.”
Chil’, please!
Dolezal most definitely understood the question, which is why
she took
flight 16 seconds after Humphrey’s query. She posted a picture
of herself
last January with a black man on her Facebook page who she
claimed
was her father. And she checked “African American” and all the
other
race choices on an application for a public position in Spokane.
Those

turned out to be two loose threads that quickly unraveled once
pulled by
Humphrey and Dolezal’s own white parents.
“There seems to be some question of how Rachel is representing
her
identity and ethnicity,” Lawrence Dolezal, Rachel’s father told
The Post.
“We are definitely her birth parents. We are both of Caucasian
and
European descent — Czech, German and a few other things.”
Turns out Dolezal has been frontin’ (as we used to say back in
the 1980s
to describe people who fake aspects of their personalities or
lives) since
she went to Howard University on a full scholarship in the
1990s. Seems
the historically black college thought she was black, too.
“[E]ver since
then she’s been involved in social justice advocacy for African
Americans,” Dolezal’s father told The Post. “She assimilated
into that
culture so strongly that that’s where she transferred her
identity.”
And this gets to the larger issue here. A white person
identifying
strongly with African Americans and African American culture
is not a
problem at all. The more the merrier in understanding who we
are and
our place in this nation’s history. A white person running a
chapter of

the NAACP is not a problem, either. That’s someone so down
with the
cause that they are putting their time, energy and clout into
public
activism on behalf of fellow Americans. But a white person
pretending
to be black and running a chapter of the NAACP is a big
problem.
Dolezal’s brother Ezra was right when he told The Post, “Back
in the
early 1900s, what she did would be considered highly racist.”
Blackface
remains highly racist, no matter how down with the cause a
white
person is. But Dolezal’s mother nails it when she told the
Spokesman-
Review newspaper, “Her effectiveness in the causes of the
African-
American community would have been so much more viable,
and she
would have been more effective if she had just been honest with
everybody.”
Instead Dolezal is a laughingstock and has made a mockery of
the work
she said she cared about.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @Capehartj
Jonathan Capehart is a member of the Post editorial board and

writes about
politics and social issues for the PostPartisan blog.

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