If progressive social activists are largely pissed, conservatives are yukking it up, and for obvious reasons. Dolezal is an embarrassment and confirmation of conservatives’ sense that most left-wing, liberal, or progressive race-based discourse is a form of special pleading, of trying to explain away relatively negative outcomes for African Americans in a country that is no longer racist and where race no longer matters. As anyone who has caught five or 10 minutes of Al Sharpton over the past 20 or so years can attest, conservatives aren’t all wrong. The country is massively less racist than it was just a few decades ago and race is clearly less of a factor for good or ill than it ever has been. To argue, however, that certain systemic issues don’t disproportionately affect black Americans is to wish away the drug war, criminal justice questions, dumb labor and licensing laws, and other continuing problems related to race.

But it turns out that what conservatives dig most about Dolezal is that she is a punchline regarding not racial misrepresentation but gender identity. Hence, conservative folks are using Dolezal’s unmasking to yet again mock Caitlyn Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion and reality TV star formerly known as Bruce.