‘Black’ woman in row over civil rights role quits after parents say she is white
A BRANCH leader of a major African American rights group has resigned, days after her parents said she was a white woman posing as black.
The furore has sparked fierce debate in the US over racial identity and divided the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) itself.
“In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organisational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP,” Rachel Dolezal, who was elected the Spokane, Washington, chapter’s president last year, said on the group’s Facebook page.
“Please know I will never stop fighting for human rights.”
City authorities, meanwhile, are investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she won an app oi nt ment to Spokane’s police oversight board. On her application, she said her ethnic origins included white, black and American Indian.
Ms Dolezal, 37, who has a light brown complexion and dark curly hair, graduated from historically black Howard University, teaches African studies at a local university and was married to a black man.
For years she publicly described herself as black and complained repeatedly of being the victim of racial hatred in the heavily white region.
The uproar began last week after Ms Dolezal’s parents said their daughter was white with a trace of Native American heritage and produced photos of her as a girl with fair skin and straight blonde hair.
Her mother, Ruthanne Dolezal, said she had had no contact with her daughter in several years. She said Rachel began to “disguise herself” as black after her parents adopted four black children more than a decade ago.
Rachel Dolezal initially dismissed the controversy, saying it arose from a legal dispute that has divided the family, and repeatedly sidestepped questions about her race.
“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said. “There’s a lot of complexities.”
Late last week, the national NAACP stood by her, saying “one’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership”.
But Ms Dolezal came under increasing pressure from local chapter members to resign.