A few weeks ago I woke up and saw my Twitter timeline for the first time in about four or five days. I had on one of my blackouts to guard my time. It was filled with weave jokes, black and white memes, and little outrage about the term transracial. It took me a minute to get up to speed on Rachel Dolezal.

So here is my second step in new direction for #DaRundown South. In this episode I wanted to look into the behavior of Rachel Dolezal as she took over the headlines on the nightly news, The Today Show, and lead to plenty of “old people on Skype” calls on TV. This is a white woman who basically rose up the ranks of black society, like an undercover cop infiltrating a caretel, to be the head of a NAACP chapter in Spokane, WA. I know it might be a little late but I take more time to digest what’s going on. I had more questions than answers. I was more interested on how we got here in the first place.

Professor Wizdom Powell of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health

I wanted to know the role that having black adopted siblings played in her getting here. Why were parents so easily convinced to out her? Why was she so convincing playing black and how loyal can a hair stylist be?  To get some answers I enlisted the help of Professor Wizdom Powell, PhD, She works at University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan (Go Blue) and now does research at the school with their own blue. According to her university profile the research focuses primarily on investigating psychosocial determinants of African American men’s mental and physical health across the life-course. Within the field she investigates the contribution of gender (e.g., social constructions of masculinity), intergenerational transmission, socioeconomic status, socioenvironmental processes (e.g., racial discrimination), health-related attitudes (e.g., medical mistrust) and behavior to African American men’s mental and physical health status. She is also a contributor as mental health expert for the website BlackDoctor.org where you can find some of her published work.

Read Dr. Powell “Breath, Eyes & Memory: How We Find Healing After Race-Related Trauma”

With her assistance I got educated on few things and you can too by listening to this episode. If you want to get in contact learn more  with Professor Wizdom scroll to the end of the post for the link

Download #DRDS 42: Rachel Dolezal,  Charleston Shooting and More w/ UNC’s Wizdom Powell

Topics

5:35 Intro to Professor Wizdom Powell

9:55 Black by Generation

15:51 Rachel Dolezal Timeline

30:11 How did Rachel pull it off?

35:03 Black Female Psyche

40:25 Charleston Church Shooting/Systemic Racism

47:49 Outro/Parting words

Learn more or get in touch with Professor Wizdom Powell

Read Professor Wizdom Powell’s complete profile here

Twitter @wizdomisms

Email: wizdomp@email.unc.edu

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