Many of us refer to the work performed by the United States Postal Service as "snail mail," because it's so much slower than email or even texting. Though we may laugh at how long it takes for a letter to move through their system, the system itself is somewhat efficient.
Rachel Dolezal has claimed over the years that she's been on the receiving end of various hate-related intimidation tactics. From finding a noose outside her front door to receiving threatening mail in her PO Box. In the end it was discovered that the noose belonged to a hunter who used it to cure meat. And the letter? After an extensive investigation, the Post Office determined that the letter never went through their system and the only way it would have ended up in the NAACP box was if someone who had a key placed it there.
And there is so much more. For a timeline of Dolezal's hate crime claims look here.
Not a single one of these claims has lead to an arrest. The investigations have always ended with inconclusive results. When I first heard about this story - a woman who misled others about her own heritage in order to adopt another - I wondered what was missing in her life to make her long so desperately to be someone else. Then, as pieces began to unfold, I realized there was something else there, hidden behind the jokes about her hair, her birth parents claiming she's really white, and the ensuing circus.
In the dark shadows of this story is a woman either so hungry for attention or so unbalanced that she may have fabricated (or even created) incidents of hate and intimidation. Did she think it was exciting? Fun?
Over the years I've read several stories and watched videos of the victims of hate crimes coming forward to share their stories. None of them have acted as though they'd just gotten off of a thrill ride at an amusement park. Something fundamental may be broken in Dolezal's mind, something completely unrelated to the color of her skin.
0 comments:
Post a Comment