Another View

Of the white woman, Rachel Dolezal, passing for black.

An excerpt from the Vox - (Bold is mine)

White people have been passing for black for centuries. A historian explains.

Dara Lind:On the other hand, that gets into another criticism — that in order to make white people care about black issues, it takes a white person pretending to be black.

Baz Dreisinger:Of course! That's the criticism that's leveled at John Howard Griffin (the white man who passed for black and is the author of Black Like Me) all the time. Frankly the same thing is true of so many experiences. We think about the success of Orange Is The New Black — no criticism of that book per se, but how many prison memoirs are there by nonwhite people who are incarcerated that didn't get that level of attention? This happens all the time, that it takes a white person to translate for a white mainstream audience. That's partly why John Howard Griffin, I think, fell out of favor. because it was like, "We don't need that translator anymore." So it's certainly a big problem.

It would have been a far more radical thing for her to just say, "Hi, I'm white, and I identify with these causes, with this culture, in whatever way that I do; yes, I teach Africana studies and I'm not of that descent, because it doesn't take being of that descent to care about these issues on an intellectual, cultural, or moral basis." That would be a far more radical thing to do, because it's saying you don't have to be it to care about it. I don't have to be female to care about women's rights issues. I don't have to be black to care about black rights issues. I don't have to be incarcerated in order to care about issues around incarceration. I bring that up because that's the primary work I do now, and my next book is about global mass incarceration. I've never been incarcerated, I don't have family members who are incarcerated. I have friends who are, but I think most people do in this day and age. But that doesn't mean that I can't care about it in a profound way.

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/15/8784327/passing-white-black