This article analyzes Rachel Dolezal’s autobiography In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World as a means to excavate the contours of an emergent Emotive race regime—a regime from which claimants to transracial identities base their sense of belonging. I argue that this Emotive regime repurposes Aristotelian ethos as a referent for racial identity, and I then show the entailments of this change in referent with respect to theories of racial reproduction. I conclude by cautioning…
Read moreThis article analyzes Rachel Dolezal’s autobiography In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World as a means to excavate the contours of an emergent Emotive race regime—a regime from which claimants to transracial identities base their sense of belonging. I argue that this Emotive regime repurposes Aristotelian ethos as a referent for racial identity, and I then show the entailments of this change in referent with respect to theories of racial reproduction. I conclude by cautioning that existing theories of racial constructivism may provide the theoretical backdrop to those who claim transracial identities.
