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Jessica Krug. Rachel Dolezal. Many have taken it upon themselves to absorb Blackness as an identity and while most are caught up in the inherent question of “HOW?”, my mind tends to focus more on the important question of “WHY?”
This is my initial hypothesis, it will likely change as I research:
Blackfishing is a form of combining Munchausen’s/ Munchausen’s by Proxy. White women aged 20–40 are the demographic most likely to exhibit extreme symptoms of both of these mental illnesses.
Blackfishing allows them to claim the victimhood aspect of Blackness in relation to white global domination AND be praised for being “6F passing” and still “fighting the good fight”, allowing them to be both victim and recipient of the praise of someone being a maternalistic caretaker/stakeholder of truer victims. In addition, unattractive white women instant increase in market value in terms of desirability politics as “light-skinned” or “racially ambiguous” WOC or Black women in comparison to being an otherwise unattractive #6F American, just as a single mother of a sick child who’s child’s father left has a higher market value than a single mother who’s co-parenting with their child’s father (Re: DeeDee Blanchard).
Because white women lack the ability to see BIPOC identities outside of their own ethnocentric and eurocentric view of these groups as perpetual victims and they lack the ability to have empathy for these groups without absorbing them into their otherwise vacuous, shallow, and empty identities as white Americans, white women thereby become the ultimate victims in their own twisted minds when they become Blackfishes.
This is a much more preferred form of Munchausen’s because it requires no self-harm, increases (rather than diminishes) one’s “dating market value”, provides an outlet to receive the psychological satisfaction of both forms of Munchausen’s including Munchausen’s by proxy without needing to have children or harm family members because it gives them an outlet to remove themselves from their family entirely. Most Munchassen’s sufferers were abused as children and so an outlet to distance from one’s birth family entirely is preferable, if available, option.
This isn’t an attempt to assuage the harm of Blackfishing on BIPOC, but rather to widen the conversation about this pathology. Munchausen’s is by definition harmful to one’s self and the affected persons or groups affected by this person’s faking of their conditions, and in this case- their identities. It is an inherent draining of resources for affected groups at best and a threat to the lives of those touched by this person at worst.
