Following the whole Rachel Dolezal thing, Kelly Osbourne has angered her fans by dressing up as the disgraced activist and academic (if you’ve been hiding under a rock, most of Rachel Dolezal’s adult life has been thrown into question after her parents revealed she’s been posing as black for the past ten years and she’s unashamedly sticking by her convictions that she is black because she says she is).
Kelly donned a wig and a snarl and did look a lot like Rachel, so uploaded it to Instagram with the hashtag #CallMeRachel (drawing a direct comparison between what Rachel has done and what Caitlyn Jenner has done, when they’re entirely different) and #MyCasualLook.
All this while bigger, more shocking race issues unfold in America after a 21-year-old white man went into an historic black church in Charleston, shooting and killing nine black people.
But what did fans take umbrage with? The fact that Kelly Osbourne quit her role on E!’s Fashion Police after co-presenter Giuliana Rancic hyped up racist stereotypes by speculating that singer Zendaya’s dreadlocks smelled of weed and patchouli. (Giuliana apologised afterwards – and it was actually a pretty spot-on, heartfelt apology where she said she would seek to learn how to become a more accepting person - Zendaya accepted it).
The fans say that to be so frustrated at Giuliana’s racism and then go on to mock an issue that is highly contentious right now is hypocritical. Fans chimed in with comments like: ‘I have to call it - hypocrite. #doublestandard’ and ‘Yet Zendaya is a protected species Kelly... why? Do you not see the hypocrisy in what you are doing????’, reports The Mirror.
Kelly’s given no comment on the issue, but has deleted her post, replacing it with a split image of her dad, Ozzy, in the height of his hair-rock fame, on the left, and her-as-Rachel on the right, along with a #TBT tag. Needless to say, she doesn’t look like her dad, she looks like Rachel Dolezal, and people know it, commenting stuff like: ‘oh hey it’s Rachel Dolezal or whatever’ and ‘ She may not be black but, she is mocking what just happened. Not funny when Rancic said something “racial” yet, totally okay for Kelly to do this? #RaceBaiter #Hypocrite’.
Maybe she can just say that she identifies as Rachel Dolezal just because she says so.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.