While Rachel Dolezal made the talk show circuit rounds Tuesday, a group of University of Portland students turned her story into the day's lesson.

Students in assistant professor Deana Julka's social psychology class had been studying prejudice the day the former Spokane NAACP chapter president's parents said she is white.

Deana JulkaJerome Hart 

The Oregonian spoke with Julka, who earned her Ph.D at Notre Dame University and specializes in cultural psychology, about what the world can learn from Dolezal's story.

Why do you think her story has captivated the world?

I brought it up to my students, and exactly 50 percent of them are racial minorities, and they do not have a strong reaction at all. I couldn't get a strong reaction from any of them. I said, 'Let's look at some of these comments.' In written format, when people have cloak of anonymity, they can say things. But people are definitely speaking out with identification as well.

Part of it I would guess is the racial climate today, intensified by issues of law enforcement and race. It definitely feels like stuff is just simmering in terms of race. At the same time, we have acceptance of different gender identities, and that doesn't seem to evoke a similar response at all.

What was the class?

It's a social psychology class, and we were just studying prejudice the day before. We watched a video on Jane Elliott's Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., she devised this experiment where she split the class by brown eyes and blue eyes. And she said everyone with brown eyes has power. Everyone with blue eyes does not. She also did it with college kids, and one of the white students got up to leave and said, 'I'm not doing this. I don't want to go through this.' And the black students said, 'That's what we feel like everyday, but we can't just leave.'

That's what some people have said is the problem with Dolezal's logic, that African Americans can't become white.

Exactly.

What are some possible reasons a person would want to align themselves with a different ethnic group?

It's hard to know her motivations entirely. Looking at her childhood, it does appear that having four adopted African American siblings, that would certainly impact being able to experience things with them, maybe see injustice from a very early age. It does appear that issues of injustice have been important to her.

It does appear that she potentially lied on different forms. It could be that she feels this fluidity of racial identity. She identifies with African American community, values and traditions.

She has said she considers herself "black," not necessarily African American. Is there a way to be culturally, while not ethnically, black or another minority?

Researchers often make a distinction between race, which is strictly biological, and ethnicity, which includes traditions and religion. It is possible to dis-identify from a group that you're born into. You can dis-identify from being female or male. You can distance yourself from your race, and say you feel like you don't really fit in and adopt more of the cultural behaviors of a different ethnicity. I don't know that there has been much research done on identifying with a group that's not your biological base. One of my students brought up Michael Jackson, but I don't believe he ever said he was white.

Dolezal is saying what she has done is not blackface because she has "really gone there with the experience." Is there a difference?

I'm guessing people will disagree whether she can really entirely do it. I'm a white woman, so my response and my sensitivities might be very different than someone with a different background. I've heard the blackface comment, too. It does appear if you look at her history that she has embraced this. It sounds like nobody is questioning her work or her true desire to affect change.

What do you think of her saying that because she is raising a black son, she could not be seen as white and still be his mom?

She herself has parents who raised four African American children. It does appear that there is some family conflict. That comment would probably hit them pretty hard because they, while being white, have raised four African American children.

I also have friends who have adopted or are in biracial couples, and I don't think they have experienced that as a problem. A lot of research shows that adopted parents are even more aware of addressing culture and making sure that's a priority to expose them to traditions and really honor that. I think at least until recently, in adoptions, there was a preference given to the same race, so there does seem to still be a concern that there could be challenges.

What, if anything, can we learn from this story? Is she just a one-off or does her story say something great about the human condition?

I think it does raise questions of how fluid race or ethnicity are. It's a good starting point for discussing race. Opening up discussions of race is a good thing. Some of the questions that come up as we're listening to her, that can be a really good element in addressing conflict. I recently read an article that said peace is not just lack of conflict. It's managed conflict. If nothing else, this is getting a conversation going that is really uncomfortable for a lot of people, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

-- Casey Parks

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cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks