McGreal finds it admirable that Dolezal isn’t letting the rest of us stop her from believing she’s black, that blackness is a choice. And in his piece, he asks that we admire her too, or at least acknowledge the humanity in such stark determination.

This plea to the public to understand Rachel Dolezal is something we should all be accustomed to by now. We see it every day, and we call it journalism when we should be calling it something else. It may not represent all of the other work from these writers or these publications, but it’s there all the same. And it may seem dramatic and unnecessarily harsh to link Rachel Dolezal to the white terrorists plaguing this country, but the link lies in their treatment and their reception by a media that bends over backwards to provide nuance to white people, at all times, no matter the cost. Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Dear, and those who came before him—and those who are surely coming after him—will be recipients of the “lone wolf” narrative. They are “gentle” men with a history of violence. Or, they are men for whom mental illness is the issue, and their killings represent a grand opportunity to finally talk about mental health in this country, just as Dolezal’s story—though it may be troubling—represents the chance to talk about identity in America. It’s the same nuance that was granted to Josh Duggar and the family, church and officers of the law who stood behind him—the stories are only perceived as complex and the perpetrators as inherently human because they are presented as such.

Such a presentation wouldn’t be problematic at all if black men, women and children received such treatment. Instead, black victims of violent crimes are not even granted such nuance, as we saw most recently with CNN’s treatment of Freddie Gray. The Guardian’s McGreal is aware of this, and it must be said that a story like this piece on Mike Brown proves as much. Why, then—when it’s so clear that there are so many black Americans in need of equal representation in the media—interview Dolezal?

Perhaps the best thing that comes out of both the Broadly and Guardian articles is that we now know for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Rachel Dolezal is white. Reporters are digging deep to present what was a strange figure in as humane a way as possible. They’re asking about her difficult childhood, and demanding that we do the same. They’re interviewing family, friends, co-workers and children to present a full picture of a woman they believe has been misrepresented. Would that they’d been asked to do such digging to produce a lengthy story on Sandra Bland, complete with artwork from her youth and images of her home. Would that they’d done been told to do such hefty work for a compelling and nuanced tale about one (or all) of the 13 women sexually assaulted by Daniel Holtzclaw. Where are the moving narratives of so many black women, who did not pretend to be black, but are still “reduced” to raising their children on food stamps Why aren’t we treated to stories about their baby showers and their home towns?

It’s the fact that we are not (and probably never will be)—it’s that very specific marginalization that unfortunately, unites so many American blacks. Not hip hop or jazz playing at a party, not throwback Mike Jones lyrics, and not even skin color (there are, really, too many variations to count)—but a marginalization that we did not choose, any more than Rachel Dolezal chose the white parents to whom she was born. Others have called it, simply The Struggle, and it cannot be chosen, learned or adopted. You cannot transition into it, hard as you may try, because it appeals to some deep longing within you.

So, although Black Twitter attempted some lighthearted laughs at this story a few months back, it’s no small thing, that a white woman—even one who believes she is black—is still considered to be a worthy subject of a journalistic story, more so than any other black woman, doing anything notable. And it’s not unrelated to the fact that, in 2015, a white man who commits mass murder can receive more empathetically composed news headlines than a murdered black child. Black lives, minds and stories still do not matter as much as white’s and these recent articles (from publications that could surely stand for more articles about identity as experienced by actual black women) are more proof of that.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has noted that “there are no racists in America,” at leasts, not according to those who believe themselves to be white Americans. Those same whites would find it difficult to believe that two stories written with lovely prose and accompanying images—stories that capture the fascinating life of a woman on the long road to both motherhood and perhaps certain self-realization—could be racist, or at least reflections of such. But what else can you call these pleas to explore more white privilege (including the privilege to, apparently, choose your race)? What else do you call this drive to simultaneously uplift a white woman who is either a lifelong liar, or a troubled product of fanatics (who, perhaps, went on to become fanatical in her own way), while denouncing the many black men and women who spoke out against her? Is it still journalism? Or is all this nuance for Rachel Dolezal merely white privilege and more racist storytelling pretending to be something else, and asking that we respect it because of supposed good intentions? Perhaps, like Dolezal, these publications and their writers mean well, but that doesn’t make them less deserving of our criticism.