Whatever Happened To Rachel Dolezal?

May 2024 ยท 1 minute read

When it was revealed that Rachel Dolezal's birth parents were white, her life immediately fell apart. Accused of being a "race faker," she lost her work at East Washington University and was forced to resign from the presidency of the Spokane NAACP. However, to the surprise of many, though Dolezal had been exposed and become a figure of much derision, she stood her ground and set about attempting to justify the behavior that so many deemed disingenuous and bizarre.

"How I feel is more powerful than how I was born," she told The Guardian. "I mean that not in the sense of having some easy way out. This has been a lifelong journey. This is not something that I cash in, cash out, change up, do at a convenience level or to freak people out or to make people happy. If somebody asked me how I identify, I identify as Black. Nothing about whiteness describes who I am." In a flurry of TV appearances and other interviews, Dolezal argued that she genuinely felt that she was Black and that what she did was a result of her being "transracial," which commentators saw as an attempt to parallel her actions with the transgender experience, which was gaining media attention in the 2010s.

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