[UPDATED] White woman says she feels Filipino, insists she's "transracial"

But that's not how this shit works.



This is a joke, right? Or maybe some kind of performance art? A Florida woman claims that although she was born white, deep down inside she feels Filipino, and now identifies as "transracial."

A Tampa woman calling herself "Ja Du," who was born white, tells WTSP that she now considers herself Filipino. She insists that she is transracial -- someone born one race, but identifies with another.

"Whenever I'm around the music, around the food, I feel like I'm in my own skin," Ja Du says. "I'd watch the History Channel sometimes for hours you know whenever it came to that and you know nothing else intrigued me more but things about Filipino culture."

No, Ja Du. No.

An Open Letter: Why Co-opting "Transracial" in the Case of Rachel Dolezal is Problematic

Please direct all media inquiries to Kimberly McKee, PhD at mckee.kimberly@gmail.com.



This past weekend the world took to social media to dissect the events surrounding Rachel Dolezal, the former president of Spokane's NAACP chapter who came under heavy scrutiny for falsely representing herself as black. As part of this real-time discussion, the term transracial is being co-opted to describe Dolezal identifying as black despite being born white.

As members of the adoption community -- particularly those of us who identify as transracial adoptees -- we are deeply alarmed by the gross mischaracterization of this term. We find the misuse of "transracial," describing the phenomenon of a white woman assuming perceived markers of "blackness" in order to pass as "black," to be erroneous, ahistorical, and dangerous.