Rachel Dolezal identifies as black. Is that even a thing?
You’ve likely heard of Rachel Dolezal – the white civil activist who spent the past decade pretending to be black – over the past week.
The 37-year-old stood down as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People’s Spokane chapter after her parents “outed” her as Caucasian last week.
Her parents revealed Rachel is actually of Czech, Swedish and German descent, with a trace of Native American ancestry.
Speaking for the first time since the furore, Ms Dolezal told reporters on Tuesday she had identified “as black” since age five.
Dolezal would not admit that she had deceived people, the New York Times reports.
Related: Why did Rachel Dolezal pretend that she was African American?
“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.
Here, after being shown a photo of black man, Ms Dolezal identifies him as her father:
Ms Dolezal explained that she publicly identified a black man as her father because “we connected on a very intimate level as a family”.
She has a biological son – now 13 – with her former husband, who is black, and is the guardian of her adopted black brother, 21-year-old Izaiah.
Ms Dolezal said Izaiah sees her as his “real mum” so she “certainly can’t be seen as white and be Izaiah’s mum”.
“I have really gone there with the experience, in terms of the being a mother of two black sons, and really owning what it means to experience and live blackness.”
Top Comments
I know people with 1/248th Aboriginal ancestry who take pride in it. As far as I'm concerned, she's pretty Black and was doing a good job advocating for African Americans. Let her be.
But she's not black at all... not one little bit. She's german, swiss and czech? Her parents have come out and said she's not even a little bit African American. Go ahead and advocate for minorities, but advocating for minority as a majority is fine too.
But there is a difference. Rachel Donezal doesn't have one drop of African American blood in her and has to resort to spray tans etc in order to take on an appearance that is usually associated with persons of African American ancestry. It must be very hurtful for her parents who have been completely rejected by Rachel because they have told the truth about their daughter and refuse to go along with her fabricated persona.
Let's not make that comparison. During the colonisation of Australia, mixed race aboriginal children were taken away from their families in the hope that the race could be "bred out". If someone tried to do that to my ancestors I would be proudly shouting out my heritage no matter how insignificant it might seem to you. Completely different situation to this.