As for 'transracial' vs 'transsexual' or 'transgender' whatever...
I'll leave this one for someone with a little more knowhow on the subject to do some research. I'd be very interested in reading some real science on this, as I'm pretty damn sure that 'transracial' isn't very deeply studied out there... I mean, maybe someone's looked into it on the basis of Michael jackson or something? or in an assimilatory sense... but probably not quite so hard in the psychological sense...
In this case though, it seems this lady mostly used her fake blackness to try to get shit... she sued Howard University on the basis that she was black when they denied her shit, she furthered her career on the basis that she was black. It's akin to a guy becoming a woman in order to win a bunch of gold medals at the olympics or become the WNBA's lebron.. People who are transgender are generally out of the spotlight as much as they can be, and aren't trying to further themselves on such a basis... So thats's where the biggest difference is here.