Molly Littlewood McKibbin - Rethinking Rachel Doležal and Transracial Theory

Molly Littlewood McKibbin

Rethinking Rachel Doleal and Transracial Theory

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Rethinking Rachel Doleal and Transracial Theory

In this unbridled and cogently, incisively argued meditation on transracialism through Rachel Doleal, Molly Littlewood McKibbin presents readers with the tools to begin to reimagine what is possible. Taking a deeply informed stance on the possibilities that arise when taking seriously the fissures in race and racial identity, McKibbin reckons majestically with how to approach a world in which race is of significant importance yet needs to be handled with care and complexity. And she comes correct, in the vernacular meaning of the phrase: as she thinks through this thorny issue, she shows her work, addresses key counterarguments, and does not mince words when it comes to advocating for a more complex assessment of race. This brief book is indispensable for the contemporary moment.

Marquis Bey, Assistant Professor, African American Studies and English, Northwestern University

Molly Littlewood McKibbin is a courageous thinker. She takes on a fraught topicthe possibility or not of transracial identityabout which advocates and opponents are screaming past each other, and deals with it carefully, calmly, methodically, to see what it might teach us. She wisely avoids the authenticity question, and focuses instead on the ways people are talking about the phenomenon, for and against. There is wise counsel here for those who would read and think, and a model for civil discourse.

Paul Spickard, Distinguished Professor of History, Black Studies, and Asian American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

The author provides us with a stimulating and provocative analysis of socially defined racial boundaries. She provides answers to why they exist, why people find them so important, and how they are still defended in the 21st century. This is an important work that deserves attention.

Joseph L. Graves Jr, author of The Emperors New Clothes (2001); The Race Myth (2005); Racism, Not Race (2021, co-author)

The history of race is simultaneously a history of Black peoples subjugation and fetishization. In Rethinking Rachael Doleal, McKibbin moves between the history of race and racism, enactments and performances of raced-identity and various claims of authenticity and its opposite to provide an account of our racial present in which race as an idea and a practice meets blackness and Black people in what is at heart an account of Black peoples ongoing struggles to narrate themselves fully to others. Race remains a site for struggle and liberation as this book so clearly demonstrates.

Rinaldo Walcott, author of The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom

Part I outlines particular challenges we are currently facingconceptually, linguistically, politically, and theoreticallyin our recent effort to theorize potential transracial identity. The concerns Part I addresses include: how Doleals case might be understood alongside the identities of other racial nonconformists; what we think black identity consists of and how our language and concepts for race need to be clarified; whether ancestry and phenotype should continue to dominate our discourse; and the relevance of political orientation and action to racial identity; and the implications of motive and intention for racial identity.