Stepping down from her job as president of the Spokane NAACP chapter for misrepresenting herself as African American, 37-year-old Rachel Dolezal created a media frenzy trying to figure out what happened. Reports indicate her parents, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal, went public as her birth parents that Rachel was not African American, despite curling her hair and bronzing her skin. Unable to grasp her motives for misrepresenting her race, Dolezal refused to answer press questions about her race or that of her parents. Refusing interviews, Dolezal released a statement to the media: “Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights and will do everything in my power to help and assist, whether it means stepping up or stepping down, because this is not about me . . “ said Rachel, diverting attention away from the issue of racial misrepresentation to the NAACP.
Telling NBC’s Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” that she identified with being African American, Rachel tried to reconcile the facts about her parents with her own internal world where she deluded herself that she was black. “I identify as black,” Dolezal told Lauer. “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon” said Rachel, rejecting the idea that she misrepresented her race. Dolezal told MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry she was black. “Are you black?” asked Harris-Perry. “Yes,” said Rachel. “I certainly don’t stay out in the sun,” Rachel said. “But I don’t put on a blackface as a performance,” hinting at how deep her racial identity confusion goes. Like a gender-identity disorder, widely publicized by 65-year-old Olympic gold-medal-winning decathlete Bruce Jenner, now Caitlin, Rachel shows signs of racial identity confusion.
Graduating in 2002 with a masters degree from traditional black college Howard University in Washington, D.C., Dolezal, considered herself deeply connected to the African American Community. She grew up with her parents, Larry and Ruthanne, adopting four African American children. “From a very young age,” Dolezal said. “I felt a very, I don’t know, spiritual, visceral, just very instinctual connection with ‘Black is beautiful’ and, you know, just the black experience and wanting to celebrate that—and I didn’t know how to articulate that as a young child,” said Rachel, showing more signs of racial identity confusion. Some reports indicate that Rachel’s parents outed her because of a legal case against their 39-year-old son Joshua, who was accused of four counts of child sexual abuse, where Rachel tried to help the victim. Estranged from her parents since her divorce in 2004, Rachel had no contact.
Getting handle on Rachel’s shenanigans, Rachel filed a lawsuit, alleging racial discrimination at Howard University the year she graduated, claiming she was denied teaching posts and scholarships because she was white. While dismissed in 2004, the lawsuit clearly identified Dolezal as white, despite her claims to the contrary, including marrying and having two children with an African American man, despite divorcing. Dolezal told Lauer she didn’t understand why her parents “are in a rush to whitewash some of the work that I have done and who I am and how I have identified,” forgetting the molestation charges against her 39-year-old brother, Joshua. Rachel’s brother Ezra told “Fox and Friends” his sister made the situation so complicated. “She could’ve easily said, ‘I may be considered black now but I wasn’t born black,” said Ezra, puzzled by her sister’s deception.
Rachel’s concerted attempt to curl her hair and bronze her skin pulled the wool over on her Spokane, Washington NAACP colleagues. “The NAACP is not concerned with racial identity of our leadership but the institutional integrity of our advocacy. Our focus must be on issues, not individuals,” said Cornell Williams Brooks, president of the NAACP national office. Forced to resign June 15, Rachel couldn’t understand the hubbub over her misrepresentation. “We are her birth parents,” her father Larry said Friday. “We do not understand why she feels it’s necessary to misrepresent her ethnicity,” referring to Rachel’s black identity. Whatever’s going on in her family, it’s difficult to watch Rachel’s parents denouncing their daughter. Giving few insights, her brother Ezra admitted Rachel took him aside asked him “not to blow her cover,” before she took the job with the NAACP.
Looking for an identity, Rachel found it in the black community, doing her utmost to live, study and work as if she were African American. Devoting herself to African American history, Rachel taught black studies at Eastern Washington University, becoming an expert on civil rights. “Our members who looked up to her, appreciated her leadership, are pained, very disappointed,” said Brooks, dismayed that the NAACP lost a loyal, hard-working employee because of what looks like deception. Showing how far Rachel convinced herself she was black, she disowned her parents after her divorce in 2004. “She didn’t consider them her parents, and, you know, if we were to talk about them, they were Larry and Ruthanne, not Mom and Dad,” said Zach Dolezal, Rachel’s brother. With that kind of self-deception, it’s no wonder Rachel saw herself as African American.
