A thought-provoking documentary on woman’s betrayal
We usually watch movies to be entertained and documentaries to understand people or issues. The new Netflix original documentary about Rachel Dolezal — the former president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP who was outed as Caucasian in 2015 — turns this calculation on its head.
“The Rachel Divide,” directed by Laura Brownson, succeeds as gawk-worthy fare that delves into the gritty details of the life of a woman who presented herself as African-American, and as such, fought for blacks’ civil rights.
It also spotlights how this posturing led Dolezal to become a pariah in her profession, her community and her own family.
Approaching the film with the question of why someone would so publicly lie about his or her race, one develops a clear answer.
Let’s put it this way: The story begins with Dolezal being ambushed by a local TV investigative reporter who asks her, “Are you African-American?” Dolezal responds, “I don’t understand the question.”
At the end of this one-hourand-45-minute cringe-fest, Dolezal — seemingly earnestly — still does not understand the question.
To hear Dolezal tell it, she was born feeling black and her parents tried to snuff out her “true identity.”
When they adopted four African-American children, a teenaged Dolezal began to see it as her calling to be their ambassador to a black culture that she felt her parents wanted no part of.
She eventually attended Howard University (on scholarship), became an Africana studies professor, married an African-American man and had a child from this marriage.
After that marriage dissolved — Dolezal describes it as unhappy at least in part because her husband did not approve of her black identity — she transformed from a blonde, blue-eyed daughter of Czech, German and Swedish descendants and young mother of three sons to a fully black-presenting woman who claimed she had a black father.
Yes, she took to calling an elderly, black acquaintance her father.
Former colleagues, friends and acquaintances of Dolezal complain that her identity seemed to revolve around the perils her sons faced in an America in which young black men are at risk due to poor economic prospects and danger at the hands of law enforcement.
Yet for how much Dolezal seems to care for Franklin and Izaiah — and her biracial son, Langston, whom she gives birth to during the filming of the documentary — she can’t seem to help herself from continuing to hurt and endanger the whole family by repeatedly thrusting them into the cross-hairs of the negative attention she purports to hate.
At one point, Franklin asks pointedly, “Why don’t you just let it go away?”
Viewers know the answer all too well: Dolezal cannot bear to be ignored.
She has such a deep need to be in the limelight that it probably never occurs to her that her humiliating TV appearances, release of a poorly selling book, steady stream of meticulously art-directed social media posts and this very documentary have a negative impact on her sons.
This is why someone could lie about her race and then, when it’s all said and done, still not be able to understand why anyone is upset.
But though the documentary may not have succeeded in nudging Rachel Dolezal toward the lessons of humility and self-reflection, it has absolutely excelled at telling an incredibly fascinating and thought-provoking story.
Ultimately, “The Rachel Divide” deserves a wide audience.
Not really for Dolezal, but for the many black women and men who get to explain in their own words how deeply painful and humiliating Dolezal’s actions were to them — and how her actions continue to harm the movement for racial justice in this country.