A great interview and wonderfully written piece on the biggest white savior culture vulture there is. Nicole Chung called it “the only thing you need to read about Dolezal ever again”. I wasn’t familiar with the work of Ijeoma Oluo but I have quickly become a superfan.
The dismissive and condescending attitude toward any black people who see blackness differently than she does is woven throughout her comments in our conversation. It is not just our pettiness, it is also our lack of education that is preventing us from getting on Dolezal’s level of racial understanding. She informs me multiple times that black people have rejected her because they simply haven’t learned yet that race is a social construct created by white supremacists, they simply don’t know any better and don’t want to: “I’ve done my research, I think a lot of people, though, haven’t probably read those books and maybe never will.”
I might quote this piece all night long. Please go read and then erase Rachel from your minds forever.
Can I just say everyone needs to actually click on this link and read this article? It’s the beast writing on this chick I’ve seen… ever. It also serves as a remedy for the actual pain we feel from her existence.
This journalism has made my day
Tag: damn
people on this website don’t seem to realize that for some people/populations the pressure to take psych meds is just as great or greater than the pressure to not take them and that “you don’t have to take medication if you don’t want to” is just as important a message as “you can take medication if it helps you”
My dad worked for Kaiser as an allergy doctor for many years before he retired, and when he was still practicing, he would routinely come home with stories of having to re-diagnose patients who had been misdiagnosed by other doctors. Quite a few of those patients came to him after weeks or months of taking completely unnecessary medications as the result of having been misdiagnosed by former doctors.
The medical industry’s a lot more imperfect than people on this site think it is. The branch of medicine dealing with mental health has a really long, dark history of over/mis-pathologizing, and even wrongfully institutionalizing women, queer people, people of color, etc.
Not to mention the medical industry, like every other industry in the US, is a for-profit industry. It is legal in the US for pharmaceutical companies to give doctors money for promoting their drugs.
Imma say that again:
It is legal in the US for pharmaceutical companies to give doctors money to promote their drugs.
[source: CBS News] [source: NPR]
Studies estimate pharmaceuticals are the fourth leading cause of death in the US: [source: Harvard.edu] [source: Medical News Today] [FDA.gov]
So use your judgement.
Thoughtfulfangirling 