Transracial (identity)

A well-known example of a self-identified transracial person is Rachel Dolezal, a woman of white ancestry who identifies as black.[1][2] She successfully passed as black, to the extent that she took over leadership of the Spokane branch of the NAACP in 2014, a year before her "outing" in 2015.

Korla Pandit, an African-American musician who was born John Roland Redd. He posed as an Indian from New Delhi in both his public and private life.[3]

Martina Big, who was featured on Maury in September 2017, is another woman of white ancestry who identifies as black.[4][5] Big has had tanning injections administered by a physician to darken her skin and hair.[4][5]

Ja Du, a trans woman who was born Caucasian but now considers herself Filipina, created a Facebook page and community for others who self-identify as transracial.[6][7][8]

Margaret Seltzer, a white suburbanite wrote under the assumed name of Margaret Jones a fictitious memoir about a half-Native American girl raised by a disadvantaged African American family.[9]

Jessica A. Krug, an associate professor of history and Africana Studies at George Washington University, revealed on September 3, 2020 that she, born to white parents, had been passing as a black woman for her entire professional life.[10][11]

A black teenage woman named Treasure gained national attention when she appeared on Dr. Phil. She claimed that she was white because several of her body parts would resemble a white instead of a black person's.[12]

In April 2017, the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia published an academic paper in support of recognizing transracialism and drawing parallels between transracial and transgender identity.[1] Publication of this paper resulted in considerable controversy. The subject was also explored in Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities, a 2016 book by UCLA sociology professor Rogers Brubaker, who argues that the phenomenon, though offensive to many, is psychologically real to many people, and has many examples throughout history.[13][14]

Historically, transracial has been used to describe parents who adopt a child of a different race.[15][16][17]

The use of the term to describe changing racial identity has been criticized by members of the transracial adoption community. Kevin H. Vollmers, executive director of an adoption non-profit, said the term is being "appropriated and co-opted" and that this is a "slap in the face" to transracial adoptees.[17] In June 2015, about two dozen transracial adoptees, transracial parents and academics published an open letter in which they condemned the new usage as "erroneous, ahistorical, and dangerous."[17][18][19]

• Black Like Me
• Ethnic plastic surgery
• Good hair
• Otherkin
• Passing (racial identity)
• Transabled (body integrity dysphoria)
• Transhumanism
• Grey Owl, white Englishman who posed as a First Nations man.
• Lobsang Rampa
• Transgender

• Brubaker, Rogers (2016). Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-17235-4.
• Dolezal, Rachel (2017). In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World. with Storms Reback. Dallas: BenBella Books. ISBN 978-1-944648-17-6.