I was born black and male, but now I identify a white woman – I know race is not real

Dr. Ronnie Gladden, like many young ladies, dreamed of living a Pride & Prejudice lifestyle, wanted to be like Snow White, and wanted to wear the same clothes as Elle Fanning.

Ronnie dreamed of having blonde hair that lightened in the summer and of tanning while lounging in the sun.

But since Ronnie was a black youngster growing up on Cincinnati’s west side, these goals weren’t your average ones.

Ronnie, who is currently middle-aged, is an actor, public speaker, and tenured English professor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. He uses these roles to advocate for what he refers to as a “transgracial” identity.

Ronnie, who uses the pronoun they, claims that despite being born black and male, she now identifies as a white woman despite appearances, claiming that she has a “repressed White female identity” that is aching to be unleashed.

 

Ronnie belongs to a small but well-known group of persons who identify as “transgracial”—that is, both transgender and transracial.

Although the concept of “changing” one’s race is quite contentious, transracial people think that race is a social construct and thus a “choice.”

The former NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal is a well-known example of a transracial person. In 2015, she revealed that she was a white woman with a predominantly European family.

She claimed that the “idea of race is a lie,” which sparked controversy on social media and around the world.

When she asserted that ethnicity is not biological in an interview with BBC’s Newsnight that year, she linked being “transracial” to being transgender, which many X (formerly Twitter) users to accuse her of exploiting “white privilege” to support her claims.

Rachel reaffirmed her transracial identification in a 2019 documentary, calling herself ‘unapologetically Black’ in spite of the criticism.

Dr. Ronnie Gladden’s work has been commended by Rachel, who said it “encourages us to expand our concept of acceptance and inclusion.”

Dr. Ronnie, who graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a doctorate in educational leadership, believes that racial differences are not biological or innate.

 

The internal struggle of living with incongruent identities is described in Dr. Ronnie’s book White Girl Within.

Transgender feelings began for Dr. Ronnie (shown) when he was four years old and have persisted throughout his life.

According to them, race is a social construct that is influenced by how individuals view and interact with one another as well as how they treat themselves.

In their book, Ronnie states, “I know race is not real.” “The only reason it is so is because society says so.”

At the age of 19, Ronnie had surgery, including “some work on the lips” and her first nose job.

They admit that their look does not convey to the outside world their inner sense of being a white woman, even if they apply foundation that is lighter than their skin tone.

“My complexion is fairly brown,” Ronnie recently stated on BBC Radio 4. I have thick hair. It has waves and twists. is engaged in a variety of activities, yet I consider that to be a manifestation of my thoughts.

Ronnie explained in the same interview that she had felt like a white woman since she was a very small child.

They aspired to be like their white girl classmates as early as four years old, when they were in preschool.

“I recall […] being outside in the playground and wanting to animate in the same way that I saw my classmates – in the way that their hair would respond to the wind and flap around,” the scholar stated. It was the pink cheeks that I desired.

Ronnie elaborated on the experience at a TedX session, saying: “I appear to be black and male, but on the inside, I have a white girl inside of me.”

“I knew at the time […] that I was attracted to the white female aesthetic,” they added. I felt a strong connection to the bone shape, hair texture, skin tone, social cues, and mathematics of all of it.

 

Rachel Dolezal, who identifies as a Black woman while seeming white and having European ancestry, has applauded Dr. Ronnie Gladden’s work.

This insight was “surprising, perplexing, daunting, and extremely inconvenient, to say the very least,” according to Ronnie.

They told Medium that they fell into “the depths of a depression and a minor oblivion” due to the “psychological weight” of that realization.

“People might say that it would’make sense that you would feel like that’s how you should look’ as a young child surrounded by mostly white children,” Ronnie said.

But the emotion has persisted throughout adulthood.

Dr. Gladden was exposed to violence during their childhood and adolescence, including the middle school murder of their half-sister. The author has reported that their father was abusive in addition to other childhood trauma.

“I thought that there was a power of beauty, a power of skin,” they add poignantly, describing how they felt they could have resisted the abuse if they had been a white girl.

The author claims that they could have used “that kind of authority embodied within white femaleness” to convey the message to “back the hell off.”

They’ve given transitioning from the inside out a lot of thought, according to Ronnie, who has been in therapy for nearly 20 years.

In their book White Girl Within: Letters of Self-Discovery Between a Transgender and Transracial Black Man and His Inner Female, they went into great length about this.

The book is a collection of letters that Dr. Gladden wrote while posing as a white woman and a black man.

Ronnie describes the feeling as ‘insistent, continuous and persistent throughout the years’. As a child, they saw themselves’reflected’ in a variety of women, such as actress Anne Hathaway, rock musician Joan Jett, and Full House character Kimmy Gibler.

They have said that their broad education was a path that improved their mental well-being.

Ronnie continued to work in academics after attending the University of Cambridge’s International Summer Schools, where they traveled extensively to teach, perform, and mentor.

Dr. Ronnie has written about how, by middle age, they were still dealing with “unfinished business” regarding maintaining these separate identities, even though they had first experienced the feelings of being a white female at the age of four.

Nevertheless, Ronnie wrote: “I know the light of my White femaleness swirls and lurks about through all the noir.” I assumed that things would always have to be this way.

The scholar, who frequently addresses K–12 schools, colleges, and nonprofit organizations on identity, diversity, and inclusion, discussed how transgender identities have been portrayed in popular culture during their TedX session.

They mentioned Whoopi Goldberg, who played a white male in the film The Associate, as one of them.

Additionally, they mentioned Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of Mystique in the Marvel film series, stating that “she was able to represent an amalgamation of different kinds of races, ethnicities, and even species through her character Mystique.”

 

The book includes a number of letters that Ronnie wrote to themselves on accepting their transgender status.

“They are a female brought along into the time of an adult season,” Dr. Ronnie wrote in their book, explaining how they came to be their own selves.

However, they acknowledge that their development “was not linear” and that they are still “working to get caught up with everything,” indicating that the road is not simple.

‘My voice, my appearance, my acts, my stride – and my time’ are some of them.

“Ronnie, your life and form always eclipse me,” they said, describing their embrace of their identity. I am, in fact, a White girl. And I’ve been your White girl for a very long time. I can see that I am who I am.

The subtext is everywhere. Those three-dimensional white women’s eyes are what see me buried in you. They sense it and are aware of it.