Lily Cade Is Right

Let’s play a game. 

What if we lived in the dimension where Rachel Dolezal is a cultural hero? What matters in the definition of “race” is not parentage, or history, or the way you look, or how others perceive and respond to you, but only how you feel, on the inside. Trans Blacks are Blacks! 

For some time, science has been capable of manipulating the DNA of living organisms. Could a viral vector be used to induce the body to produce eumelanin or to regulate its production? Perhaps an extensive, expensive surgical process akin to a full body tattoo? Lip fillers, silicone ass implants, and Facial Africanization Surgery are medically necessary procedures that save Trans Black Lives. As a last resort, one can always use facepaint. Tar, maybe. Coal. Trans Blacks are Blacks, full stop. 

Trans Blacks, being, by literally any reasonal definition, the diametric opposite of black people, begin to dominate certain positions of power. Trans Blacks are more exciting than regular old black people, and have vastly more money, which they earned while presenting as Cis Whites. Trans Blacks were always Black! What matters is not what others percieve, but only how you want to be percieved. Though they remain underrepresented on professional sports teams, they are seen with far greater frequency than “Cis Blacks” in corporate boardrooms, the tech industry, and the media. America’s brands fall all over themselves centering Trans Blacks in their advertisements.

Entertainers past their primes scrape second fifteen minutes out of Transracial journeys. Every online publication publishes essays by Trans Black writers on the subject of The Black Experience, which they obviously understand better than Cis Blacks. Trans Black influencers dominate the social media space, garnering millions of views for their pantomime performances of cultural stereotypes about African Americans. “Day 13 as a Negress! Sweet Baby Jesus, this here is some fried chicken! Oh Lordy! Nigga, I tell you what, I’m finna sit down right here and eat me some of this fried chicken and some of this watermelon! It feels so good to be Black!”

What? How dare you say that’s offensive. What right have you to police Black People! Jequeela Washington, nee Steve Adams, is just expressing her racial identity! What are you, a biological essentialist? You’re the one who’s a bigot. 

Trans Black academicians rise to positions of power in the African American Studies Departments of major Universities, where they become famous for works of scholarship decoupling race and heritage. Race, after all, is a social construct. A “race” is whatever society agrees a “race” is. In the Old South, the “One Drop Rule” was that one drop of black blood made a person black. Indeed, one can observe many Black identified individuals with skin tones in what we might call the “white range.” Without an extensively documented anscestory chart, and even with it, given the prevalence of extra-marital coupling in even the most conservative human societies, one knows only ones immediate anscestors. There is no way to disprove one drop of black blood. Even a DNA test only screens for certain markers and no DNA test can explain the full complexity of human identity. The palentological record indicates that every human being alive today is descended from African tribespeople, so technically all Americans are African Americans. The One Drop Rule is a racist artifact of a brutal system of oppresion. Blackness is not about blood. It’s about culture. A Black Person is anyone who identifies as Black. Each individual has a sincerly felt and in-born racial identity which is sometimes the same and sometimes different from that individual’s race assigned at birth, and sometimes changes many times throughout an individual’s lifetime, which doesn’t make it any less valid. The Oppressed/Oppressor Class Dynamic is defined by Racial Identity, not “Race”. “Race” is a spectrum. “Race” is an outdated concept.

The low hanging fruit who become early grades schoolteachers eat up Transracial Theory and transmit it to the children they teach. They believe they are doing the right thing. They believe this is the next step in the evolution of a truly anti-racist society. A dumbed down, candy coated, didactic version of Transracial Theory is transmitted to students through role play exercises, picture books about the Transracial Experience, formal lessons, assemblies and field trips. People who Identify as White oppress People who Identify as Black on the basis of their Racial Identity. Some people have a Racial Identity which matches their race-assigned-at-birth, but sometimes the doctor makes a mistake. Sometimes, a Black soul is born into what bigots would call a “white body.”

How might you know whether you are Trans Racial? There is no one definition of the Trans Racial Experience because race is a social construct, but most Trans Racial people feel either “cultural dysphoria” – that is, a state of psychological discomfort with their natal family or natal community and a corresponding euphoria at interacting with the true and correct identified community – or “body dysphoria” – a similar state of psychological discomfort with physical features associated with the race-assigned-at-birth. Some feel both and some feel neither. Trans Racial people transcend racist notions about genealogical categories. They are the most oppressed identity group in society because they face racism on multiple axes – both from PWIAWs whose very Whiteness is defined by their oppression of Blackness, and from Cis Black PWIABs who haven’t yet unlearned their bigoted, essentialist notions about what it means to be Black which were handed down to them by a white supremacist culture. 

What did you just say? I’ll have you know that “Wigger” is a slur. How dare you. Wee-a-boo? What? That is profoundly offensive! Trans Japanese People are almost as oppressed as Trans Black People. What do you mean it seems like Trans Black People are either pathetic posers or sadistic nihilists getting off on the humiliation of “actual black people”? There’s no such thing as “actual black people.” Cis Black People oppress Trans Black People, not the other way around. Transphobes like you should be banned from the Internet.

The earliest Trans Blacks bear similarities to Dolezal – individuals of European heritage who had been passing as Cis Blacks because they were living in a Cis Supremacist society which denied the existence of Trans Blacks or the validity of their Black Experience. As the Identity becomes more accepted, people with no connection with a Cis Black Community begin to identify as Black. They are given opportunities and funding earmarked for Black People. Attention whoring parents drag well-groomed Trans Black children before the cameras, all those cameras, the talk shows and the reality shows and social media’s endless scroll. Pediatricians’ Associations all agree: children are aware of their Racial Identity as early as one year old, they just don’t know how to express it yet. Does your growing fetus seem to kick more vigorously when you put on that hip hop playlist? Does your freshly weaned infant show a surprising affinity for soul food? Does your kindergartener role play as a Black sports hero or television character? Any of these might be signs of a budding Trans Racial Identity. 

At school, children who do identify as Transracial are coddled, praised, and treated to extra attention from their teachers. School policies are written to assure that once a Transracial identity is expressed, school employees do everything in their power to affirm it, including calling the child by a new “Black” name, allowing the child to change into “Black” attire in a special “Transition Closet”, putting the child in touch with adult members of the Transracial Community, buying the child cosmetics, transporting to or allowing the child to leave school grounds for medical appointments with Transracial Services Providers, and keeping all of it a secret from the parents. Parents who call bullshit are pilloried. Those who refuse their Trans Black children access to Race Affirming Care risk having those children taken away by the State. People who question the validity of Transracial Theory risk losing their jobs. 

Jequeela Washington is appointed Secretary of Education. She is the first Trans Black Trans Woman appointed to a cabinet position. Her swearing in is a historic victory for diversity and equity. Her tears of Black joy run her Race Affirming Makeup. “My nigga, Martin Luther King, that nigga had a dream, and today, his dream has been realized. Finally his Black chil’ren, all them little Black chil’ren, whether they be trans or cis, are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character! Free at last. Free at last. Oh Lord, my people free at last! Y’all got some fried chicken up in here? Mama Jequeela on her period and she gonna get crazy if she don’t get some fried chicken!”

Would you accept this?

Why or why not? 

What is the difference between Rachel Dolezal and Kaitlyn Jenner?  

What is the difference between Jequeela Washington and Rachel Levine?