The curious story of Rachel Dolezal has transfixed the nation, as though we are passing by a mirror and looking at ourselves.

In a sense, we are. We are peering into the racial reflection of the nation and discovering what truths and lies are beneath the surface.

Is someone black merely because of the color of their skin and their curly hair or braids?

Is someone white simply because their parents say so?

Or is race a mindset, a set of experiences or a particular social and cultural understanding?

And, like Rachel Dolezal, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and rapper Eminem, is someone who appropriates the outward cultural markers of what appears to be a race different from their own a fraud?

What makes Ms. Dolezal’s case so different is that she, a “white” woman, was passing for “black.”

In a society built on white privilege, and the false notion of white racial superiority and its “merit” of opportunity, we are more acclimated to light-complexioned black people passing for white. This nation’s history of racial mixing, dating back to the rapes of slavery, has given rise to a wide range of hues that allows “passing” to happen.

We all know of light-complexioned black people and many dark-complexioned white people, some of whom call themselves part Cherokee or Spanish or Italian. Quietly mixed in that are numerous instances of white people passing for black.

In “The Color of Water,” James McBride poignantly writes about his mother passing for black after growing up in Suffolk and having her first child by a black boyfriend. She later married a black man in 1942, and raised several more children in Harlem, where the couple made their home. She went as “black” to protect her children and to escape from an abusive family.

As Ms. Dolezal said in her interview Tuesday with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, some of her decisions involving her racial identity were made “for survival reasons or to protect the people I love.”

Clearly, there are many disturbing elements in Ms. Dolezal’s background and history. Among them, allegations of sexual abuse involving her older, white biological brother and her younger adopted black siblings. The case is now in a Colorado court.

While her story, like the complexities of race, will continue to be peeled back like the layers of an onion, we are dismayed that in revelations so far, Ms. Dolezal seems to be a racial chameleon, changing colors when it suits her best.

She talks about coloring pictures of herself with brown crayons as a child, acknowledges suing Howard University for racial discrimination as a white woman and more recently, coiffed in braids or natural hair, is seen leading marches as the Spokane Branch NAACP president and claiming an unrelated black man as her father.

On a city form to serve on a Spokane police oversight commission, she marked that she is black, white and Native American.

If Ms. Dolezal submits a DNA swab and finds even a small percentage of her ancestors are African, does that legitimize her claims of blackness? In the court of public opinion, would that exonerate her of perpetrating a fraud? We believe not.

We are perplexed as to why she felt it imperative to adopt “blackness” in her role with the NAACP. The NAACP never has mandated that one must be of African descent to understand or deeply care about the issues of justice and equality impacting communities of color across the nation — the backbone of its mission.

In fact, the organization’s highest honor, the Spingarn Medal, is named for Joel E. Spingarn, a white man who served in national leadership positions from 1914 until his death in 1939. He then was succeeded as president by his brother, Arthur B. Spingarn, another white man, who served in that role on the national board until 1966.

NAACP officials, in backing Ms. Dolezal, stated early on in this strange saga that race was neither a requirement nor disqualifier for membership and leadership in the NAACP.

Now, however, Ms. Dolezal has become a distraction — her lack of credibility a liability in the fight for justice — and we are glad that she stepped down from the organization.

While we are trying hard to understand Ms. Dolezal’s motivations, we are clear on several points.

Race is not something you change when you want like a hairdo, pocketbook or pair of shoes. It’s something you live with every day like a birthmark, or a mole: You — and others — can view it either as a beauty mark or a cancer. 

As popular culture has shown us, everybody wants to be black until the police show up. Then the divisions become crystal clear.

And until this country sees race and deals with race differently, what Ms. Dolezal did will be considered offensive.

The boundaries were set long ago by those who established the legal and social demarcations of race — dating to the crazy “one drop” rule that could determine your future, your fate and whether you were in or out.

If America were truly a “colorblind” society, with opportunity or privilege not being reserved largely for folks of the lighter hue, then perhaps the notion of being transracial — or moving seamlessly between races or cultures in your family ancestral line — would work.

If that were the case, then many black people would be checking lots of different boxes under racial profile. And our community would be more tolerant of people like Justice Thomas, Eminem and Ms. Dolezal.

Because many of the nation’s problems are tied up with race — employment discrimination; unequal pay; wealth gaps; educational disparities in funding, discipline, opportunity and achievement; school-to-prison pipelines; disparate sentencing; and curtailed voting rights, to name just a few — we are forced to choose a side, and part of that involves racial identity.

Our fear, however, is that one day, someone like President Obama, who legitimately can claim being biracial by birth, will wake up one morning and decide he is white. Then where will we be? Who will fight the fight?

For America to move forward, we must embrace and celebrate race. But until race becomes a love song played by America on “repeat,” and is not the nasty-gram of a bill collector whose ugly racial reminder can be more damaging than just a simple buzz kill, then Ms. Dolezal will continue to make people angry.