US CIVIL RIGHTS activist Rachel Dolezal has been campaigning on race issues and identifying as a black woman for many years.
The problem is… she’s white.
Dolezal is the subject of media scrutiny today after it emerged that her parents, who are both white, are keen to expose her ‘dishonesty’.
The issue has led to accusations of cultural appropriation and extreme fraudulence by Dolezal, while others have compared her case to that of Caitlyn Jenner, who revealed her trans identity on the cover of Vanity Fair recently.
It’s also led to bona fide confusion about whether or not the idea of being born in the ‘wrong coloured skin’ is a possibility or a reality.
#WrongSkin
Sheffield student Godfrey Elfwick has joined the debate, claiming to be #WrongSkin or #TransBlack and saying that 10 per cent of people are born this way. Elfwick offers no basis for that statistic. He refers to himself as “born white in the wrong skin” and as a “genderqueer Muslim atheist”.
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Elfwick has been identifying as #WrongSkin on Twitter for at least 6 months, responding to a question earlier this year about why being born black or white ‘feels different’ with:
I can’t explain it. How does a trans person know he or she is born in the wrong body.
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Hoaxer
Elfwick has been outed as a ‘hoaxer’ once already this year, after being invited to appear on a the BBC’s World Have Your Say programme about Star Wars.
He was invited on to talk about having never seen any of the films in the franchise before, but was cut off by the show’s presenter after describing Star Wars as “rooted in homophobia and casual racial stereotypes”.
Elfwick has also been described elsewhere as a ‘satirist‘ and someone who “was not to be taken entirely seriously”.
Unlike Rachel Dolezal, Elfwick says that he was born white to white parents. Dolezal has claimed that she was born to a black father but raised by a white stepfather, something her parents refute.
Elfwick’s earlier tweets about identifying as black appear to date back to late last year, when he tweeted about tanning to change his skin colour and experiencing racism.
The claims about #WrongSkin are causing considerable confusion and prompting ridicule.
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