Race is a big issue in the US. Always was, and seems like it always will be. And this week has been no exception.

Overnight, a young white man, Dylann Roof, walked into an iconic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and allegedly opened fire, killing nine people.

Fox News’s response was to reject any suggestion the shooting was a “hate crime”, before bringing on that time-honoured icon of white American dialogue – the Uncle Tom.

Bishop E W Jackson, from Chesepeake in Virginia (a mere 500km away), appeared on a morning Fox news program to explain, to nods of approval from the three white Fox news anchors, that the violence wasn’t about race. It was about Christianity.

Never mind the fact the shooter – pictured on his Facebook page wearing a shirt bearing the flag of apartheid South Africa – told the church gathering he had to kill the people who were “raping and killing” children in his neighbourhood.

If it was about Christianity – and obviously it wasn’t – but if it was, it begs the question why Fox News has refused to brand the attack an act of terrorism?

Of course, this shooting is just the latest race debate to grip the US.

Amid growing attention at the number of black men killed by white cops, the US media took a breather last week to focus its white-hot gaze on Rachel Dolezal, the president of the Spokane chapter for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who was recently outed as a white woman.

The story was still making headlines on Thursday.

Dolezal was, apparently, born white but in the last decade at least, has identified as black, with spray tans and hair weaves to strengthen her “cultural identity”.

I must admit that when the story first broke, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, Dolezal was clearly working hard to make life better for black people, and was accepted by the black community as well. This is evidenced by the position she held at the NAACP. Granted, they obviously didn’t know she was really white, but they were clearly impressed by the power of her advocacy.

My views started to shift a few days into the scandal, when it was revealed Dolezal had tried unsuccessfully to sue a black university for allegedly discriminating against her on the basis she was white. No matter how you personally identify, if you’re going to work with black people, then your mantra should be “do no harm”. Dolezal clearly failed that simple test.

In Australia, we’re unlikely to have a “Rachel Dolezal” scandal of our own.

Aboriginal Australia has had the occasional imposter – that’s inevitable. But it’s also pretty rare, and for a number of very good reasons.

Firstly, there’s real no advantage to be gained from identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t receive free houses and free cars. Our children aren’t paid to go to school. We don’t receive a “special allowance” to feed our dogs (which, according to some, explains why blackfellas have so many). On every social indicator, our communities remain profoundly disadvantaged. But therein also lies our strength.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community is small. There’s just over half a million of us. As far as individual families go, most of us know who most of the rest of us are. It’s why when right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt took aim at people like Larissa Behrendt, the late Pat Eatock, Mark McMillan and others, no one in the Aboriginal community even bothered to question their Aboriginality.

One of the really great things about Aboriginal culture – the key feature that the white man has never been able to break – is that we know who our families are, we know where we all fit, and we participate strongly in family and community life. We always have, and we always will.

Of course, the problems confronting the US are quite a bit more stark. While there now exists a genuine opportunity for a fair dinkum debate on race relations, rather than the distraction that was the Dolezal saga, it will be interesting to see if Dylann Roof’s alleged slaughter of nine innocent black people grips the American media the way the Dolezal story did.

Or is there more currency in a white woman imitating black people, than a white man eliminating them?