Article 1: "just be yourself" is terrible advice Article 2: Rachel Dolezal steps down from chair position because a lot of people didn't like how she decided to not be herself. Eh... EDIT: UPDATE: IN FACT (this was just too good to not add): from a jezebel article quoting another article“It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,” Ruthanne Dolezal said.
Actually I find my issue with Rachel Dolezal is that she's 'being herself' as it were. Where who she is is manipulative and dishonest, and ignorant of why living in blackface and lying about your family is an extraordinarily bad idea, or malicious enough not to care.
Sap though i may be, I do generally believe that humans are inherently good people or at least not inherently bad. As a result I confess I do have trouble with the assertion that someone, anyone, is lying because they were just born a liar, and so on.
My much longer reply got deleted, so I'll try to be shorter. Dolezal is being herself not because she was born a liar, but because she became one over time and rather than evaluate, and try to become someone else (i.e. stop lying to get things) she continued to do so. She learned that lying works, and was uncritical of who that made her as a person. JBY is advice that encourages tunnel vision, and an undue faith in the rightness of who we are at a given time simply because it's who we are right now. That's what makes it bad advice. Dolezal believes in the validity of her attempt to 'become black'. She believes that rather than being a liar, she's 'trans-racial'. What she sees as transitioning to being black, the rest of the world sees as blackface and costuming, and then lying about it. Hence, as long as she continues the charade (blackface, costuming, paying a black man to pretend to be her dad) she is a liar. That said the pretend father and the lies about her adopted siblings make me think malice might be involved too.