This brand of ‘transracialism’ is still very much a niche phenomenon. For now, RCTA seems to be confined to a small contingent of Very Online teens, who likely have a whole host of other personal problems going on. It is likely just another passing TikTok fad, akin to the recent craze for adopting ‘neopronouns’ (like ‘zie’, ‘hir’ and ‘xe’) or to the time when masses of teenage girls
convinced themselves they had Tourette’s.

This is not the first time white people have pretended to be another group for clout, online or otherwise. In fact, in recent years, race-faking has become something of an epidemic, especially in North America. Transracial characters like ‘Jess La Bombalera’ (real name Jessica Krug), ‘Raquel Saraswati’ (Rachel Seidel) and, of course, the infamous Rachel Dolezal have garnered international attention. Except, in all of these cases, they had tried to keep their true identities hidden. These were, generally speaking, people whose adopted identities had helped them rise through the ranks of academia or political activism. …

Yet, despite the many similarities with the transgender movement, those who want to ‘change’ their race have largely been ridiculed and denounced in the media. The same outlets that celebrate gender transitioning, and who bend over backwards to use preferred pronouns, are far more sceptical about transracialism. Last month, NBC News even called in the experts to confirm that people cannot, in fact, change their race.

[Why not? Race has a much weaker connection to objective biology than sex identity. Thanks to global migration over eons, there’s no such thing as a “pure” ethnicity. Sex, on the other hand, is firmly binary in biology. Yet, the media pretends that sex isn’t binary while racial identity is fixed. It’s absurd. — Ed]