There's a professor in the Africana Studies department who doesn't think you should come and speak because, as a white person, you have no authority to speak about racism or issues that affect black people," Wise told International Business Times he was informed by the department head. He learned who that professor was the day the Dolezal story broke when he got a text from the department head revealing that it was Dolezal who had objected to his visit.
"For a real black person to have that perspective, although I disagree, I understand it," Wise told IBTimes. "But for this woman to say I don't have the authority as a white person [to talk about racism], it's like, well, I guess if I put on a spray tan and pretend to be black, she would say, OK, please come on down."
Wise went on to give his talk on February 24, entitled "Combating Racism: From Ferguson to the voting booth to the border," and prefaced his remarks by making clear -- joking that it was already visible -- that he was speaking as a white man.
Dolezal was quoted in the Gonzaga Bulletin as saying that her primary reason for disliking the film "The Help" was all the profit its white author Kathryn Stockett was making. "Follow the money trail," Dolezal said. "A white woman makes millions off of a black woman's story."
In January, Rosa Clemente, a black Puerto Rican community organizer, activist, and journalist, who was vice presidential running mate of Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney in 2008, was invited to speak at EWU. The night before Clemente's talk, at a dinner with EWU faculty that included Dolezal, the conversation turned to the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality. In a Facebook post, Clemente wrote of Dolezal, "She was very clear that BLM movement should only be for Black i.e. African Americans only. I disagreed."
"It was so twisted because Rosa Clemente, yes, she's Latina, but she's also black," Wise told IBTimes. "There are black Latinas, which apparently Rachel Dolezal doesn't get. They're not mutually exclusive categories. This is someone who seeks to police the boundaries of blackness -- and she makes sure that she's within the circle."
Have we found Time’s Person Of The Year? As a colleague of mine said concerning the whole Rachel Dolezal fiasco, “she's the gift that keeps on giving.” In this case, she didn’t want Tim Wise, an antiracism scholar, to come to Eastern Washington University, where she was an adjunct professor teaching Africana Studies. Regardless, he delivered his lecture on February 24. Wise recounted what has become a bizarre incident concerning Dolezal to the International Business Times [emphasis mine]:
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