The race you are or want to be

A local president of the NAACP has resigned because, it turns out, she isn't African-American. Not that being African-American is a requirement for the office, but it just came across as unseemly that someone would fake their own race, perhaps to gain the office she held.

For decades, a few Americans with African-descended ancestors, were able to "pass" into white society because of their fair skins and other European features. This feat repudiated the legal claim in some Southern states that any African ancestry made a person "colored" and excluded them from white society with its privileges and opportunities.

Rachel Dolezal went the other way and gained status as a leader of the NAACP. She has resigned her position but has not explained or apologized for her misleading racial switch. A news network commentator referred to her feat as "transracial," a play on the popular "transgender" moniker for people who claim to have been assigned the "wrong" gender at birth. Some researchers have supported this type of claim, insisting that gender should not be based on genitalia but on self-identity and feelings.

If Bruce Jenner, a former male Olympic champion, can become a woman, why can't Dolezal, a former blond and fair-skinned woman, become African-American, based on her self-determined racial identity? And if racial identity is transient, what's the point of asking race questions on census forms and having race-based scholarships and electoral redistricting?

The NAACP, to its credit, proclaims that there is no racial qualification for leadership in the NAACP, and throughout its history the NAACP has had leaders who were Caucasians. The uproar over Dolezal's faking her blackness, however, shows that Americans are still sensitive about race.

Incumbent's withdrawal creates new dynamic

Bob Thaxton's decision to withdraw from the District 6 Wilson City Council race leaves a wide-open race for the seat Thaxton held for 16 years. Thaxton, a retired Army helicopter pilot, earned a reputation as a no-holds-barred, straight-talking, cards-on-the-table type. He could sometimes be cantankerous, but you never had to doubt where he stood on major issues, and he didn't have to take a poll to decide his position.

The 6th is the city's "swing" district with a roughly equal number of black and white residents. The city has a slight majority of racial minorities. Three council districts are majority white, and three are majority black. Voters in the 6th District get to decide which racial group will hold the majority on the seven-member City Council. Blacks have held the majority for only one term since the 3-3-1 alignment was devised.

Thaxton's withdrawal means a newcomer will represent District 6. Thaxton has endorsed Logan Liles, a former Wilson County Board of Education member, but it's unclear how much clout that endorsement will hold. The four candidates still in the race are divided, it seems appropriately, equally by race. Two whites — Logan Liles and Daryl Barber — face two blacks — Brenda Avery and George Pope. The racial groups are divided into more mainstream and more controversial parts. Liles and Avery are the more mainstream candidates while Barber, who once ran for mayor and has been a frequent critic of local and national political figures in letters to the editor, and Pope, a former bombastic radio host, are the more controversial. Liles and Avery, a frequent companion of Councilman A.P. Coleman, would fit in with other council members. It's hard to imagine Barber and Pope — especially Pope, whose caustic broadcast criticism of Mayor Bruce Rose went beyond even fringe politics — going along and getting along.

Winners of this year's council race will get the task of redrawing district lines after the 2010 census. An appropriate question for council candidates should be whether they would support reforms to create some at-large council districts. With the electorate roughly equally divided by race, at-large districts should not provide an advantage to either race. A revised council with four members elected by districts (two majority white and two majority black) and three members elected at-large would give voters more options and more clout at the polls. And it would save District 6 voters from the burden of deciding whether City Council would be majority-white or majority-black.