Rachel Dolezal, the white person who claimed she was “trans-racial” is accused of welfare fraud. Last week, Dolezal was charged with theft by welfare fraud, perjury and false verification for public assistance, court documents show. She is accused of making false statements to get about $9,000 in food and child care assistance. There is a certain irony in this that underscores her duplicitous nature and the sometimes perverse incentives of leftist morality. Thankfully, there is also a measure of poetic justice in the most recent development.
The irony comes from how conservatives have been saying she is a fraud for years. She made headlines when the media published pictures of her that showed she was whiter than milk.
‘In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.’ On the many ways and times from childhood on she felt uncomfortable in her skin and felt she in all actuality is Black but trapped in the wrong ethnicity. (Credit: Facebook/The Black Files Network)
Some extra tanning sessions and a new ethnic hairstyle later…and she got a position as an adjunct instructor teaching African-American studies and a leadership position with the NAACP. Now, though, she got caught lying on government forms, and basically underreporting incomewhich makes her the fraud in the eyes of the government that she always was to conservatives.
That extra income she didn’t report is part of the poetic justice. Unfortunately, racism still exists in America, but there are at least two areas where being a minority actually helps. These include politics and academia. Much like Elizabeth Warren, who was a middling law professor with an average academic career before she suddenly found Native American heritage. Pocahontas then became a Harvard professor, senator, and is now a leading figure in the Democratic Party.
Dolezal had a career without note before she found her trans-racial heritage and suddenly catapulted herself forward into fairly lucrative deals in academia, politics, and publishing.
This included a book deal that helped her net almost over $83,000 in unreported income. Much like the Greek heroes that fall because of hubris, she used her (faked) status as a persecuted black person to get a book deal, but the income from her book deal ended up making her guilty of defrauding the government. To add insult to injury (for her), it was claims of being on public assistance during her book tour that prompted investigations of her finances and disclosures to the government.
Most importantly, there are many people out there who don’t get ahead by lying. They spend countless hours honing their craft or going blind in archives in order to produce solid arguments and books. For academics and politicians that work hard to succeed based on the merits of their arguments, and strength of their research or writing, it is incredibly satisfying to see a fraud on so many levels receive criminal charges and to have her unearned success be the cause of her downfall. At the end of the day this case is more symbolic than anything. It should remind us that it is the strength of a person’s arguments, and content of their character that matters more than skin color.
