In a bizarre twist, a woman serving as president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington has been exposed as a white woman masquerading as a black woman.
According to Rachel Dolezal’s parents, Dolezal — who serves as chair of the city’s police oversight commission in Spokane and is an adjunct professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University — just really identifies with the African American culture but shouldn’t be deceiving people. We agree!
On Thursday, Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal sat down with?11Alive’s Spokane sister station, KREM 2 News?so that they could let people know the truth; their daughter is definitely Caucasian — specifically of?German and Czech ancestry. They even showed the birth certificate and childhood photos.
"Our daughter is Caucasian" say parents of Spokane NAACP President Rachel Dolezal. pic.twitter.com/6VHxm9v4Wt
— Taylor Viydo (@KREMTaylor) June 11, 2015
Born and raised in?Troy, Montana, Rachel had black adopted siblings — Ezra, Izaiah, Zachariah and Esther — growing up and strongly identified with the black culture.?She later attended school in Mississippi and was very involved with the black community there.
At one point, Rachel?Dolezal married and later divorced a black man. Her parents said that after her?2004 divorce, Rachel began claiming to be the daughter of biracial parents. They’re perplexed at the change in her physical appearance but they don’t know how she’s actually doing it.
From Ruthanne Dolezal:
“Rachel has wanted to be somebody she’s not. She’s chosen not to just be herself but to represent herself as an African American woman or a biracial person. And that’s simply not true,” said Ruthanne Dolezal.
The Dolezals say that Rachel recently has begun to distance herself from the family. I bet! Hard to explain that to folks who think her parents are biracial, eh?
Rachel claims that’she doesn’t?speak to her parents because of an “on-going legal issue.”
“There is a lawsuit that’s been going on for almost a year, once I supported my sister and allegations against her older brother,” said Rachel.
No biggie, though. She doesn’t consider her biological parents to be her real parents anyhow, she says. She apparently tells people that this man is her father:
According to her mom, though, he’s someone else entirely. From CSA Press:
The person in the photo is Albert Wilkerson – a black man who lived in North Idaho and volunteered at the Human Rights Education Institute several years ago when Dolezal was in charge of the organization’s education programs. A similar picture was posted on Dolezal’s personal Facebook page in December, with a comment made from Dolezal’s account on the social media platform: “L-R: Me, my oldest son Izaiah, and my Dad.”
WTF?
The reason all of this is coming to light is because Rachel Dolezal is caught up in what appears to be a very suspicious situation involving threats by mail.?She claims that hate mail that included photos of lynchings and references to local hate cases was sent to the Spokane NAACP’s P.O. box, but the post office is baffled because it’s missing a date stamp and barcode.
The Spokane Police Department released an eleven page report into their findings thus far. Here are some of the details?via 11 Alive:
Postal officials told SPD officers that a letter or package would never be put in a mail box purposefully without those things even if it was hand delivered to the post office. Postal workers said it is possible that the letter could have gotten stuck to another letter and thus missed the scanner and postal marking. But they said the chances of this happening were extremely low.
Staff said the only other way for a unprocessed letter to land in a PO Box would be if it were placed there by someone with a key or a USPS employee was involved.
Security cameras at the Rosewood Post Office were not working at the time the letter was received according to the police report. But police said they have ruled out postal employees as suspects.
Dolezal is trying to pin the blame on “right wing groups.” To be sure, we can count on this kind of stuff coming from them sometimes, but in this case, there’s just too much conflicting information. For example, mail has been forwarded from the P.O. box to the new NAACP location since January, and Dolezal reported that she received the letter at the P.O. box in February. You can read much more about this and other alleged hate crimes targeting this Caucasian lady (see what I did there?) at 11 Alive.
Twitter is, predictably, going nuts with this. Some of the best (and worst):
Just saw "outed as white" used in a sentence. It was the predicate. It was not a joke. Today is weird. #RachelDolezal
— Ill Scott-Heron (@Felonious_munk) June 12, 2015
I wonder what color #RachelDolezal thought the dress was?
— Michael Skolnik (@MichaelSkolnik) June 12, 2015
I applaud #RachelDolezal for having the courage to be who she was born to be. Give her an ESPY. #transracial
— Tony & Lightning ?? (@tonybalogna) June 12, 2015
Here she is claiming she’s going with her “natural look.” Yeah, just about as natural as my silky blonde locks are!
Her REAL natural look is a lot like what I pay big bucks to achieve:
She’s even brought her kids into this insane deception. One of the boys she claims is her “son” is actually one of her adopted siblings, according to her parents. She did admit to that when confronted, saying:
“He used to be my brother, but I have full custody of him now.”
OK, lady, well he’s STILL your brother.
By the way, she says we just shouldn’t even believe her parents because they abused her when she was a child. She said that she’s open to a DNA test, and that she was born in a tepee in Montana, and her family hunted with bows and arrows and later lived in South Africa.
The crazy thing is that while she’s denying her parentage, she’s stealing the real life stories of her parents for herself. They lived in a tepee for a while before she was born. They traveled to Africa for missionary work. Not her. They say she never once even visited.
It’s really very sad and disturbing to see someone be so delusional, isn’t it? I think she got caught up in the attention she got as a victim of numerous hate crimes. She even mentions the hate crimes against her in her Eastern Washington University bio. But honestly, who knows which were real and which weren’t? It seems she may have fabricated some of them (all of them?) as many are oddly lacking in any sort of evidence and no suspects have ever been identified.
She desperately needs attention and has been willing to do anything she had to do to draw attention to herself. Want to know what’s really sad? She’s totally accomplished in her own right. Her dad said this in an interview with CDA Press:
Dolezal’s father, Larry, told The Press by email Wednesday that Dolezal worked hard at her education. She graduated with a 4.0 GPA and was one of many co-valedictorians from Christian Liberty Academy Satellite School.
“We chose the option with parental oversight and a complete high school transcript processed through CLASS,” Larry wrote. “Rachel required minimal supervision, because she was a highly motivated and responsible student.”
He noted that his daughter graduated with high honors at the top of her class and received many awards for her work while she was earning her bachelor’s degree from Belhaven and then her Master of Fine Arts degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C.
“She worked hard at her education and went above and beyond completing her art assignments,” Larry wrote. “There is much positive we could share regarding Rachel’s stellar academic and art achievements. We are saddened she has chosen to misrepresent her ethnicity.”
I think what this Twitter user said sums it up.
Yet to know if #RachelDolezal 's deception was benign or nefarious or the product of mental illness. Or a combination of 2 of the 3.
— Danielle Noneya (@MsDannah) June 12, 2015
Here’s a video clip, which is a short version of the entire interview. It’s also embedded below this short video.
All images are from social media and therefore considered fair use.
