Korlaorgan.jpg
(20.3KB, 250x250) Closer to topic but still distinct: Transracial identity is an interesting subject to compare with. Especially with extreme or historical cases.
<Korla Pandit
>After moving to California in the late 1940s and getting involved in show business, Redd became known as "Korla Pandit", claimed as a French-Indian musician from New Delhi, India. However, Redd was actually a light-skinned African-American man from Missouri who passed as a native of India.
>Two years after Pandit's death, R.J. Smith, magazine editor of Los Angeles, published an article revealing Pandit's true ancestry.
>During his life, Pandit kept in touch with his family of origin, but he wore his turban and did not bring his sons when visiting with them. According to Pandit's nephew, Ernest Redd, "Among the family we knew what he was doing and very little was said about it. There was times when he would come by, and it was kind of like a sneak visit. He might come at night sometime and be gone before we got up. He had to separate himself from the family to a certain extent. They would go to see him play, but they wouldn't speak to him. They would go to his show and then they would leave, and the family would greet him at a later time". Having met members of Pandit's extended family of origin, Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs wrote his family "felt he was very authentic and were very close to him". Pandit's sons heard rumors about their father's African-American background, but they rejected this information, insisting their father was the son of a New Delhi Brahmin. Shari died of cancer in December 2000, prior to the publication of Smith's exposé.
<Nkechi Amare Diallo
Nkechi Amare Diallo (born Rachel Anne Dolezal [still using that name in professional life]) is an American former college instructor and activist known for presenting herself as a black woman, while also being born to white parents.
>Dolezal was president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, from 2014 until June 2015, when she resigned in the midst of controversy over her racial identity. She was the subject of public scrutiny when her parents publicly stated that she was pretending to be black but was actually white.
>[...] Her brother Ezra Dolezal [] compared his sister's behavior to blackface and said "she's basically creating more racism"
>In a February 2017 interview with The Guardian, Dolezal reasoned that race is more fluid than gender because race is an entirely social construct. She stated, "I feel that I was born with the essential essence of who I am, whether it matches my anatomy and complexion or not ... I've never questioned being a girl or woman, for example, but whiteness has always felt foreign to me, for as long as I can remember." She added, "I didn't choose to feel this way or be this way, I just am. What other choice is there than to be exactly who we are?" Critics took issue with Dolezal's logic. The Guardian columnist Claire Hynes wrote, "Dolezal is correct to argue that race is largely a social construct rather than a science", but "what defines people of colour is a limited ability to control how we are viewed, and a lack of freedom to 'write our own stories'."
