Black Like Her Analysis

This picture, taken on October 10th, 2017, on Broadway Avenue by Jaime Danies - Senior Photographer at Columbia Spectator -, shows a reality students from Columbia University faced two weeks ago. Gathered with community members, they protested in response to Tommy Robinson’s speech. Mr. Robinson, who gained his fame by performing grotesquely unfounded and unethical attacks on people, is a white-supremacist with - to say the least - some polemical views on immigration and culture, especially regarding Muslims. “Among these were the falsehoods that Islam “cannot assimilate” into British culture, that it “promotes violence”, and that it had wreaked “destruction” on [Tommy’s] hometown, Luton.” (confere) Still, his defense claims that “he has nothing
Hate speech, for example, might be considered violence by oppressed groups. However, empathy has its limits, and for a group of people who have never experienced oppression, hate speech may not be considered violence, simply because they might not understand how violent are words and actions that minimize and demolish one’s culture and identity. In his essay Black Like Her, Jelani Cobb tells the history of Rachel Dolezal - former “president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the National Association of Colored People and professor of Africana studies, [who] was unveiled as a white woman [after] some years presenting herself and identifying as black.” (confere) For a naive reader, the fact that Mrs. Dolezal has identified herself as black for several years does not seem that relevant. After all, black or white, she was supporting and representing black people’s cause. Nonetheless, when Rachel, who “is not black - by lineage or lifelong experience” (confere), identify herself as a black woman “[to take] advantage of the reasons that she would, at least among black people, be taken at her word regarding her identity” (confere), she is not only appropriating black culture but also minimizing a culture that “was formed in a crucible of degradation”