On her MSNBC show today, Melissa Harris-Perry struggled to justify the controversial racial deceit by Rachel Dolezal, the white Spokane NAACP leader who has been pretending to be black for years.

“Is it possible that she might actually be black?” Harris-Perry questioned her guest Alyson Hobbs, wondering whether there could be a special "category of blackness" for people who have succeeded in “the achievement of blackness despite one’s parentage.”

"It's absolutely possible," Hobbs replied, "I mean, why not?"

Because it doesn't make any sense, that's why not. What is "the achievement of blackness"? There is no achievement in skin color; you are simply born into it. And the only way Dolezal could justify her lie "despite her parentage” is simply by despicably claiming that her white birth father is her stepfather.

Hobbs played along by saying that Dolezal's identity is "multi-layered" and "complicated," and that there is “certainly a chance that [Dolezal] identifies as a black woman and that there could be authenticity to that.”

Neither woman paused to explain how fraud and deceit could ever constitute "authenticity," but then, for progressives, words mean whatever they want them to mean in any given context.

As for Dolezal herself, she recently gave an interview about the controversy, saying to those who have called her out on her lies, "I don't give two sh*ts what you guys think" and that "I would say that if I was asked I would definitely say that yes, I do consider myself to be black."

It's revealing that she said she "considers" herself black, not that she is black.

Imagine the progressive screams of "cultural appropriation!" "white privilege!" and even "racism!" if Rachel Dolezal were a conservative. The left already refuses to accept black conservatives as authentically black. But because she's a liberal, and because the left is all about racial division and identity politics, they must bend over backwards to justify her.