A few days ago, the news about Rachel Dolezal, an activist in African American human right issues that claimed to be black, is actually pure Caucasian with “a faint trace of Native American” ancestry blow out the internet. 

At first I thought she was certainly just crazy when I saw how different her appearance is compare to her teenage year, and as I read through the news about how she made different kind of story for her background.

At the time I heard she said “I identified myself as black”, I just felt that was ridiculous.  What’s that mean?  Is that mean the she thinks she can chose her own race?  However, as I read more about her story, and think about that, I found myself can understand her to some degree.

As an artist and activist, she lives and works closely with the black community from a young.  While as we say a black community, they have their own kind of culture and tradition.  She maybe really feel accepted and connected to the culture, and want to fit in better. 

When we feel connected and belong to a group of people, we want to tell others that we are part of them.  But for things like race, it seems no matter how closely if you feel to the culture, you can’t use a word that tells people you belong to that culture. 

Maybe in the future race would be more like for culture, instead of biologically what a person is. 

Just on a side note, although I can understand Racheal Dolezal, clearly I don’t think what she did was right.