A weekend headline from NBC News drew criticism and mockery after the outlet reaffirmed the “reality” of gender transitions while simultaneously debunking an online trend of people changing their race.
Inside The Online World of People Who Think They Can Change Their Race, reads the NBC headline published Sunday. The article that follows examines the growing TikTok subculture of “Race Change to Another” (RCTA), in which people attempt to change their appearance and genetics to take on the features of another race or ethnicity—primarily Japanese or East Asian.
“Practitioners of what they call ‘race change to another,’ or RCTA, purport to be able to manifest physical changes in their appearance and even their genetics to become a different race. They tune in to subliminal videos that claim can give them an ‘East Asian appearance’ or ‘Korean DNA.’”
Unfortunately, NBC has some bad news for these people: “Experts underscore that it is simply impossible to change your race.” Calling on a lineup of professors, historians, psychologists, activists, influencers, and racial studies experts, NBC provides an extensive explanation for why RCTA is both impossible and harmful to minorities.
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First, NBC takes time to clarify that race has nothing to do with genetics but is instead a social construct propped up by racism. “[Experts] contend that even though race is a cultural construct, it is impossible to change your race because of the systemic inequalities inherent to being born into a certain race,” the article says. In fact, RCTA’s popularity among White Westerners was a particular sticking point for NBC’s experts, many of whom say the trend is a form of “cultural appropriation” and harmful “fetishization.” One psychologist attributes it to racial guilt stemming from “engaging in racism…or not having lived up to a nonracist ideal.” This so-called “White shame” can lead people to try to escape their race.
“It doesn’t ever really work, because it’s not doing anything,” said Queens College assistant Professor Jamie Cohen. “But they have convinced themselves that it works because there’s other people who have convinced themselves, as well.”
However, despite the fact that most of these same arguments could easily be applied to transgenderism, NBC says there’s no comparison between the two.
And to prove it…they turn to a Black transgender activist.
Writer and activist Tiq Milan says race is a social construct that exists to create hierarchies in society, while gender identity has always existed. “When it comes to who we are as racialized people, it is how we present to the world, but it’s also how people treat you,” Milan said. “It’s not just putting on the hair and the makeup and talking and walking [in] a kind of way. That is fetishizing, and it’s objectifying, and it reduces the beautiful and complicated cultures of people of color.”
Milan does not address the fact that critics of transgenderism might also see a trans person as “fetishizing and objectifying” women…but the internet quickly pointed this out.
Imagine thinking you could change some innate characteristic about yourself.
— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) July 31, 2023
This article argues that your race is fixed from birth and can't be changed.
It also argues that race isn't real — it's just a social construct.
It also argues that the reason you can't change your race is because race isn't real. https://t.co/uVoWuWdWJv
— Seth Dillon (@SethDillon) July 30, 2023
This is crazy. Next thing you know, people will attempt to change their sex! https://t.co/IQyoVBeHUI
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸 (@ChristinaPushaw) July 30, 2023
But amid all the humorous feedback remains the fact that transracialism and transgenderism alike are a struggle for those who find themselves engaging in it. If any helpful advice for these people is to be found in NBC’s article, it comes at the very end courtesy of Kevin Nadal, a professor of psychology at City University of New York: to anyone struggling with racial identity—and also gender identity, though NBC refuses to admit it— “I would say the same thing that I would say to somebody who’s struggling with any part of their identity. Talk about what it is that makes you want to change that part of you.”
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