Noted MC and activist Talib Kweli spoke to Rolling Stone about the topic on everyone’s lips: Rachel Dolezal and her years-long insistence (including her interview with the Today show on Tuesday morning) that she, a white woman, identifies as black. “Cool story, but that’s not a real thing,” says Kweli, “because at any time, she could go back. That is a privilege that people of color do not have.”
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Kweli notes the inconsistency in Dolezal’s actions, that “she tried to take advantage of [Howard University] by suing them, and then later she advanced her career by playing black. She has a history of taking advantage of the situation.”
“Every quote-unquote ‘positive’ thing she did to help people,” he adds, “she could have done without pretending she was a black woman.”
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“When you lie,” the rapper concluded, “that’s crossing the line. You’re not a friend or an ally to the movement. You’re an enemy. Maybe you’re not as dangerous an enemy as killer cops, but you’re not down with us at all.”
Read the full piece at Rolling Stone.