Four takeaways on ‘ The Rachel Divide’
On the fence about Netflix doc on Rachel Dolezal? Pull up a chair and read on.
“All my mom did is say she was black, and people lost their minds.”
This is how Franklin, the then- 13- year- old son of Rachel Dolezal describes the socio- political brouhaha his mother created almost three years ago when it was revealed that she — a woman who identifies as black and led the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Wash. — was born to biological parents who are white. The interview is in Laura Brownson’s documentary, “The Rachel Divide,” which recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now streaming on Netflix.
But as many will recall from the year or so after Dolezal’s rise to notoriety in 2015, the conversation is a lot more complex and polarizing.
“The Rachel Divide” attempts to capture the hubbub, starting from just a month and a half after the story went public until she legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo in 2016.
After Netf lix announced this year that the film would be premiering on its platform, many on social media, still exhausted from Dolezal’s arguable over- exposure, including multiple media tours and a memoir — “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World” published last year — verbalized their discontent. Above all, many hoped Dolezal had not been paid for participating in the film.
Netf lix clarified that on Twitter. “Like all subjects for our documentaries, Rachel Dolezal did not receive any payment for this project. We worked with f ilmmakers Laura Brownson and Roger Ross Williams, who wanted to explore Dolezal’s life as a microcosm for a larger conversation about race and identity.”
Still, it appears that many are torn about whether they should watch the documentary. In response, we watched it to help those in need of making a decision either way. Below are four takeaways from the film:
Dolezal set back Spokane’s social justice community.
At the time her biological background was publicly revealed, local police were investigating concerns that hate mail received by the Spokane NAACP chapter of which she was president was at an all- time high. But after local journalists were tipped off that something was amiss, they discovered that the black man she claimed on social media to be her father was, in fact, not and that she had been born to white parents. Jeff Humphrey, the Spokane broadcast journalist who broke the story, decided to confront Dolezal because she made it seem like white supremacy and racism were “making a comeback.”
Although the results of his reporting are widely known, less widely known is the damage Dolezal’s unmasking caused, erasing much of the positive work she and the social justice community around her had done in Spokane. Through interviews with black women who organized alongside Dolezal, viewers discover that they had to hold “integrity rallies” to distance themselves and their efforts from Dolezal’s misrepresentations on her background. Additionally, police all but dropped the hate mail investigation, despite many believing that the claims might have been valid.
A good black hairstylist is hard to find in Spokane.
Dolezal early on lost her job as a part- time instructor — she never formally had the title of professor — in Eastern Washington University’s Africana Studies Program. This left her without a way to pay bills. Until she landed her book deal, she continued to do the hair of black women in the community — kinky twists, box braids and more — to make money. She said she didn’t lose a single client.
The real victims are Dolezal’s black family.
Throughout the f ilm, Dolezal positions herself as an anachronistic victim of intellectual and physical circumstance whose conception of racial identity is far beyond the popular one. She asserts that just as some transgender people feel different than the sex they were assigned at birth — an identity once thought to be a mental illness — she too feels different from the race she was assigned at birth. By identifying as black, she lives as her authentic self. ( This is why “transracial” began appearing in headlines.)
But those most affected by their circumstances are her black family members: Izaiah, her adopted brother, whom she gained legal guardianship of and calls her oldest son; Esther, her adopted sister, who accused Dolezal’s biological brother, Joshua, of sexual abuse; and Franklin, her son, who just wants to go to school and baseball practice without having to hear people in the community talking about his mom.
As a result of the media storm around Dolezal, Izaiah, who hopes to attend her alma mater for law school — the historically black Howard University in Washington, D. C. — can’t make it through a campus tour without inquiring minds snapping cellphone photos and videos of his mom or a news report that Dolezal is f ilming a movie about race on the campus. ( That f ilm is this documentary, to be clear.) Both he and Franklin can’t get a haircut in their neighborhood without the owner of the shop coming out and demanding that Dolezal move her car from the front of his establishment.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Franklin says in the f ilm after an interview she’d done.
“None of us did,” Dolezal responds.
“You did. I didn’t. You did.”
As for Esther, Dolezal served as the main witness in her sister’s case against their brother, alleging that she was also a victim of abuse. But the documentary shows that when this news story broke, her credibility — and by extension Esther’s — was tainted.
Dolezal still doesn’t get “it”
Near the end of “The Rachel Divide,” Dolezal gives birth to another biracial son that she names Langston Attickus, a moniker she decides fits the criteria of having historical significance but not being too difficult as to prevent him from getting a job. While in the hospital bed f illing out the baby’s birth papers, she’s tasked with marking the race of the child, whose father is African American. She settles on checking both the white and black boxes.
This scene might make audiences feel like she finally understands what many have been saying about the nonuniversality of her relationship to her race — meaning, black people can’t identify as white and move through the world as such. Our skin doesn’t allow us such privilege and ability, like Dolezal’s does.
Moments later, however, the film ends with Dolezal in line at the DMV. She’s changing her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, Nigerian for “gift of God” and “bold.” As Aurora’s “Life on Mars” begins to play, Dolezal says she hopes it will give her a new start and an opportunity to find a job.
The song is ironic, considering an earlier scene where Dolezal is in conversation with her friend Siobhan, who is a black woman.
“How do I f ix this?,” Dolezal questions.
“Move to Mars,” Siobhan says with a shrug.
Perhaps this is the closest she’ll get.