Changing Identities: Are Race and Gender Analogous?

Analogies don’t compare two identical things—if they did, they wouldn’t be analogies. Analogies compare things similar in certain important respects. Analogies can illuminate latent prejudices and inconsistencies in our thought. Lawyers who appealed to arguments in support of interracial marriage in the battle for same-sex marriage rights appreciated this point.

But analogies can be controversial—especially when it comes to matters of sex, gender, and race. Perhaps nowhere today are analogies more controversial than when invoked between transracial and transgender identity. I learned this firsthand when I published an article defending transracial identity by way of analogy to transgender identity in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia. The springboard for my article was the uproar over former NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal (aka Nkeche Diallo). Dolezal self-identifies as Black but was born to White parents. In my article I argued that the ethical arguments in rightful support of transgender identities extend also to transracial identities.

My argument was not well-received, to put it mildly. An Open Letter to Hypatia urging the retraction of my peer-reviewed article came swiftly, accumulating hundreds of signatories and finding support among feminist luminaries the likes of Judith Butler. A group of Hypatia’s own editors responded to the campaign by denouncing my article. Controversy over my article was so heated that news of it spread from the rarefied world of academic philosophy into the New York Times. I was widely misinterpreted as saying that transgender and transracial identities are the same, or that gender and race are constructed in exactly the same way. Some also took me to be saying that transracial individuals should be eligible for the exact same entitlements and benefits as Black Americans, such as government subsidies for racialized minority-owned businesses, or college scholarships aimed to redress centuries of inequality. This was not my argument. Rather, I sought to show merely that the differences between transgender and transracial identity do not warrant the wholesale rejection of the latter.

But do “transracial” people—those who identify as members of a race to which they have no recent ancestral ties—even exist? Many will be familiar with Rachel Dolezal (who still identifies as Black). But far fewer are familiar with the less-publicly discussed stories of people like academic Ronnie Gladden. Gladden presents as a stereotypically phenotypic Black man but self-identifies as a White woman. They write movingly about their identification as both transgender and transracial. Although the shape transracial identity takes today may be different, contrary to popular opinion, transracialism is also not entirely novel. As scholars like Lewis Gordon remind us, history is full of people whose racial identifications and classifications came apart from their recent ancestries. Moreover, Gladden is not the only person to identify as transracial, nor indeed as transgracial. Born White and male, Ja Du also identifies as transgracial, specifically as a woman and as Filipina. And to much backlash, British influencer Oli London recently shared their identity as non-binary and Korean. London has undergone numerous surgeries in an effort to align their public presentation with their transracial identity. 

Importantly, my understanding of transracialism excludes people who are insincere in how they self-identify, or who identify as another race only for the sake of imagined or anticipated benefits. If it’s true that academic Jessica Krug only identified as Afro-Latinx to gain imagined benefits, such as credibility in her publications on race, then she is not truly transracial.

Many questions arise here. Are these individuals transracial or transcultural? What even is race? What is culture? How do identities form—racial, cultural, gender, or otherwise? These are important questions—questions I treat far more fully in my current project on changing identities. But thankfully, we don’t need to settle these deep questions to be able to demonstrate respect for people’s self-identities. Sometimes respecting people’s self-identities will imply something rather minimal—that is, not subjecting them to ridicule, calling them crazy, shaming them publicly, etc. Other times it will mean something more, depending on how a transracial individual asks to be accommodated. The point here is that the most important questions in this domain are ethical; they are questions about what transracial people are owed, what they owe to themselves, and what they owe to others.

Accordingly, in thinking about the ethics of transracialism, we need to take into account not only an individual’s wishes, but also the relevant group members’ own valid interests as well. For instance, there is an egregious history of Black degradation and cultural exploitation in the United States. In light of this history, those who identify or disidentify as members of a marginalized group need to avoid perpetuating such racist dynamics. In this regard, there is a world of difference between someone like Gladden, who indicates no disrespect toward Black people, and Treasure Richards. The latter is an African American teenager who discussed her self-identification as White on Dr. Phil. Treasure said explicitly racist and degrading things about Black people, including that they are “all ugly” and that it feels good for her to “put down African Americans because it helps them stay in their place.” Recently, Treasure’s sister publicly stated that Treasure’s claims were false, and that she sought a Dr. Phil appearance so she could “go viral.” 

What is more, respectful treatment doesn’t mean treating every member of an identity category exactly the same in all circumstances. For the most part, Jewish converts should be treated the same as Jews born of ancestors who survived the Holocaust. But in some cases, it makes sense to treat them differently. A researcher studying the effects of intergenerational trauma on Jews can have legitimate reasons to limit her study to those Jews who, say, grew up in a household with a Holocaust survivor. Similarly, a researcher studying risk factors for Tay-Sachs disease can have legitimate reasons to limit their study to people who are born Ashkenazi but not Sephardic Jews, given the relatively higher percentage of Ashkenazi Jews who carry the Tay-Sachs gene. In short, different classifications matter for different purposes.

Some object that accepting transracial identity will undermine social efforts to reverse centuries of social inequalities, such as subsidies for racialized minority-owned businesses, reparations, or affirmative action programs. But this objection fails to distinguish between types of morally permissible treatment. It can be morally right to recognize a transracial Black person’s private race for the purpose of respecting her self-identity. But it can be morally wrong to award her reparations intended for documentable descendants of enslaved African Americans. In some cases, it may be morally right to extend an affirmative action policy to a transracial Black person. There are several justifications for affirmative action after all—some that apply to certain people more than others. Imagine a policy that seeks to implement affirmative action to counteract ongoing anti-Black racial discrimination. For the purposes of this policy, implementers might care less about someone’s family history, and more that they are currently identified and treated as Black. (In this context, I’ve found legal scholar Camille Rich’s distinction between private race and documentary race helpful.) 

I will end by pointing out another reason to think twice before simply invalidating transracial identities—a problem best understood from the vantage point of the individual.

Intersectionality reminds us that it can be especially hard to live at the nexus between marginalized identities. At least one reason it can be hard is that it’s not easy to be accepted for only part of who one is. “We accept you as gay, but not as trans” will not feel like much of an acceptance of who one is. Consider here Gladden’s own self-description:

Due to my internalized transgender and transracial collisions, I am slowly expressing elements of my transgracial tensions. My “inner white woman” is at the center of my identity constitution, which most often harmonizes with my core instincts and deepest authentic sense of self; I have been aware of this truth since the age of four. It is my internal standard.

How should a just society treat the identity claim of a person like Gladden? Or, to pose Gladden’s own question, “What are the implications when the intensity of transgressive race and gender dynamics collide and thus result in the embodiment within a single individual?” Does justice really imply that we should respect Gladden’s identification as a woman, but not as White? As I see it, how—not whether—to respect people’s identities depends not on general views about “transgender” or “transracial” identity. Rather, it depends on answers to ethical questions about how to balance respect for specific individuals like Gladden with our obligations to members of the racialized groups people seek to leave or join.

Rebecca Tuvel

Rebecca Tuvel is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. Tuvel specializes in feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and ethics. Her current book project on changing identities explores the metaphysics and ethics of transracial and transcultural identification.