NAACP leader in race controversy
Woman falsely claims to be black: critics
SPOKANE, Was h. — Rachel Dolezal leads the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, teaches African studies to college students and sits on a police oversight commission.
But the 37-year-old artist and activist with dark curly hair and light-brown skin now finds herself at the centre of a furor over racial identity after family members said she has falsely portrayed herself as black for years when she is actually white. As proof, they produced pictures of her as a blond, blue-eyed child.
The city is also investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she applied to be on the police board. And police Friday said they were suspending investigations in to racial harassment complaints filed by Dolezal, including one from earlier this year in which she said she received hat email at her office.
The NAACP issued a statement Friday supporting Dolezal, who has been a longtime figure in Spokane’s human-rights community.
“One’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership,” the group said. “In every corner of this country, the NAACP remains committed to securing political, educational and economic justice for all people.”
Dolezal did not return several telephone messages left Friday by The Associated Press.
Thursday, she avoided answering questions directly about her race and ethnicity in an interview with The Spokesman-Review newspaper.
“That question is not as easy as it seems, ”she said.“There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.”
“We’re all from the African continent,” she added.
Dr. Camille Zubrinsky Charles, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in racial-identity issues, said people can identify with people of other races without doing what Dolezal did. Maybe she “saw her whiteness as a barrier to doing the advocacy work in the social justice world,” said Charles, who is black.
Ruthanne Dolezal of Troy, Mon., told reporters this week she has had no contact with her daughter in years .She said Rachelbeganto “disguise herself” after her parents adopted four African-American children more than a decade ago. Rachel later married and divorced a black man and graduated from historically black Howard University.
Ruthanne Dolezal also showed reporters pictures of her daughter as a child, with blond hair, blue eyes and straight hair.
Her daughter dismissed the controversy, saying it arose from litigation between other relatives who have divided the family.
Ruthanne Dolezal said the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German, with a trace of Native American heritage. She produced a copy of her daughter’s Montana birth certificate listing herself and Larry Dolezal as Rachel’s parents.