Rachel Dolezal did us a favor. Her black-white switcheroo upset conventional mindsets about racial stereotypes, identity politics, cultural relativism and the nature of the individual. Dolezal tried to play the race card both ways, suing for discrimination because she was white, presenting herself as black to gain promotion at the NAACP. Her argument was that race doesn’t constitute identity; identity is subjective. In other words, “black” and “white” are in the eyes of the beholder.

Of course, this was unacceptable to African-Americans, who don’t think the realities of racism should be hijacked for crass, opportunistic purposes. Being black is not a matter of choice and mere style, they say. “I wonder what race Rachel would become if she got stopped by the police,” one writer mused.

Dolezal’s metamorphosis caught commentators off-guard. Was it a pathetic, insignificant masquerade or a heinous insult to black experience of oppression? Race is such a sensitive, explosive issue, that anyone who ventures an opinion is certain to offend or outrage someone. So they tiptoed around the subject of her black impersonation. One writer concluded that since Dolezal didn’t hurt anyone but herself, she should be left alone to deal with her humiliation. Comedian Dave Chappelle said he wouldn’t be cracking jokes about Dolezal. “There’s an emotional context for black people when they see her and white people when they see her,” he said, whatever that meant.

Actually, the Dolezal story isn’t that unusual. The subject of race always provokes paradoxes, double talk and a kind of intellectual miscegenation. William Styron was attacked by black writers for his Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, “The Confessions of Nat Turner.” They accused him of “cultural appropriation” and trespassing on their turf. Only an African-American could understand and tell the story of the man who led a slave revolt in 1831, they said. Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White Negro,” presented another perspective — the phenomenon of white hipsters who rejected the dominant culture’s conformity, idealized black culture and adopted it as their own. Philip Roth offered another wrinkle in “The Human Stain,” where a black college professor who passes for white gets in trouble with the PC police for using a racial epithet.

The Dolezal episode seems commonplace in the company of other racial perversions. Obsession with race gave rise to a caste system classifying people as “quadroons,” “octoroons,” “mulattoes.” “griffes.” In “The Commitments,” pale-faced members of an Irish rock band seeking soul credentials proclaim, “I’m black and I’m proud.” Today, some find cause for contention in the nuances of “Black lives matter” versus “All lives matter.” One writer criticized whites who presume to speak for blacks as “racist anti-racists.”

The most interesting aspect of the Dolezal case is the friction between group identity and individual identity. Identity politics may be a way minorities can win power, but it subordinates the individual to the group. There may be no scientific basis for racial differences, but we persist in assigning them — from “white supremacy” to “black is beautiful.” In a sense, Rachel Dolezal was doing what everyone does: trying to construct a persona that will permit survival and promote success. “Know thyself,” said Socrates. Easier said than done, since the self is a work in progress, ever-changing, contradictory, imperfectly known even by its creator, the enigmatic, evasive “I.”

— George Gurley, a resident of rural Baldwin City, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.