The NAACP and the good folk in Spokane can handle the Dolezal matter without our help

The NAACP is a well-established and internationally-recognized civil rights organization, which has been integrated from its very first days over a century ago

I've never actually joined it myself, but it's the sort of organization to which I'd be proud to belong: I know they've been effective for years, because as a child I regularly heard wackos froth hatefully about the NAACP; and I know they're still effective today, because here in NC I see the wonderful Moral Monday movement they helped launch and continue to support

The NAACP is a large organization, with many chapters, and sometimes strange things happen. Here in NC, in the 1990s, the head of a local NAACP chapter decided he was a neo-confederate, started babbling about the "love between the African who was here in the Southland and his master," spoke of slavery as a wonderful "institution of learning," and began to appear in public with a white supremist, wearing a mock hood and joking about the klan. The NAACP, of course, took the chapter back and put it back on track. I expect I'll never know the full story there

I don't have any insight into the situation in Spokane. But the regional organization has made a public statement:

I'll take that at face value, as far as it goes. I don't know how far it goes. Viewed as political speech, it might mean many different things. But I don't need to know how far it goes or exactly what it means: I don't know Dolezal or her history; and I'm not a member of the NAACP. I don't have any opinion on the personalities involved; and I don't know what approach the local NAACP wants to take with regard to local cultural conditions

I do know that solidarity matters; and I know that many Americans have no idea just how important solidarity really is