Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means if you click on the link and purchase an item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.
Rachel Dolezal finally opened up and sat down with TODAY’s Matt Lauer and told said, “I identify as black.” Just last week a video of a reporter asking Dolezal about her race went viral and the African studies professor was forced to step down from her position as the president of the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington over the controversy. “I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair.” But she claims she was not deceitful.
“I do take exception to that because it’s a little more complex than me identifying as black or answering a question of, are you black or white?” she said on Today. Dolezal’s parents were contacted over the racial discrepancy they confirmed that Rachel is in fact white. She has not been in contact with her family in years.
You can identify with whatever you want, but when you check black on that application form and you knowingly know you aren’t then u are deceitful. She claims that she was considered transracial, then biracial and then a ‘black woman’ in interviews and she never corrected the reports. “There are probably a couple of interviews that I would do differently if circumstances, in retrospect, I knew what I know now. But overall, my life has been one of survival and the decisions that I have made along the way, including my identification, have been to survive and to carry forward in my journey and life continuum.”
By the way, her father denies the claim she drew herself with a brown crayon when she was five. He says her racial identity crisis began in her 20s and 30s.
Photo from Today
