When Rachel Dolezal was forced to step down from the presidency of the local branch of the NAACP in Spokane, Wash., in 2015 because she was not (as she had claimed) African-American, it spurred a debate on the nature of race and cultural appropriation which was long past due.
Yet, playwright Henry David Hwang had already addressed the issue, and with a minority population which if anything is even more likely to face casual appropriation, in “Yellow Face,” which had its premiere in Los Angeles in 2007.