Iron Eyes Cody–ne Espera Oscar de Corti–was a Sicilian-American who acted in an impressive 200+ movies or TV shows, (plus numerous commercials.) But the most interesting thing about Cody is that nearly all of his roles were American Indians. You know that commercial of an Indian chief who cries at the sight of litter? That’s Iron Eyes Cody.
For all intents and purposes, Cody lived life about as much like an Indian as a non-Indian could manage. He married an Indian woman, went by an Indian name, adopted two Indian children, and told people he was an Indian. He seems to have been a decent and enough guy that he didn’t piss off important people who could have made a stink about his ethnic background, even if they did politely point it out on occasion.
Apparently Cody’s Sicilian features looked sufficiently like an Indian to satisfy Hollywood audiences; I have no idea whether he looked like an Indian to actual Indians. (Experience suggests that there is no particular “look” to Indians other than hair color, given that “Indian” includes a great many ethnic groups, and individuals with a fair variety of African and European admixture, so you get everything from the almost blond-kid holding up her tribal citizenship card on the Cherokee Nation website to Radmilla Cody, 46th Miss Navajo.)
Michael Jackson is a far better known but much less certain case of transracial identity. He may have wanted to look like a white guy (or gal,) or he may have just been coping with vitiligo. Or maybe he just wanted to look however he wanted to look.
And now we have Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane NAACP, up for her 2 seconds of internet fame and notoriety. Mrs. Dolezal appears to have been basically portraying herself as a black person, despite actually being a white person.
So Mrs. Dolezal really likes black people, likes learning about black people and being around black people and thinking of herself as a black person? I don’t give a shit. People can think whatever they want about themselves as far as I’m concerned.
But for the sake of argument, let’s have one. Can a person be, legitimately, transracial, ethnic, or cultural? Does it matter if they were raised in the culture (say, by adoption?) Does it matter if they look like the culture in question? Or are there some essential parts of racial/ethnic/cultural identity that an outsider simply can’t experience?
What does it mean to be anything at all?
