Former NAACP leader is on food stamps
Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP leader from Spokane, Wash., who resigned after it came to light that she was falsely presenting herself as black, is jobless and may soon be homeless. In an interview with The
Guardian, Dolezal said the only work she’s been offered is in reality TV and pornography. Although she’s applied for 100 jobs, she told The Guardian that no one will hire her, and she’s currently on food stamps and may soon be homeless.
“Right now the only place that I feel understood and completely accepted is with my kids and my sister,” she told The Guardian.
The 39-year-old was swept into the national spotlight in 2015 after her parents, who are white, stepped forward and said Dolezal was not black. While the NAACP stressed that its organization includes white leaders, critics slammed Dolezal for presenting herself as black when she was actually white.
During a television interview in November 2015, Dolezal said that despite being born to white parents, she identifies as black. She said her hair style and tanned skin led people to believe she was black, and she didn’t correct them.
Dolezal told The Guardian she still believes that race is a social construct.
“I feel like the idea of being trans-black would be much more accurate than ‘I’m white.’ Because you know, I’m not white,” she said.
She told the newspaper she believes there is a black and white side on issues ranging from politics to social and cultural issues.
“There’s a perspective, there’s a mentality, there’s a culture,” she said. “To say that I’m black is to say, this is how I see the world, this is the philos- ophy, the history, this is what I love and what I honor. Calling myself black feels more accurate than saying I’m white.”
Dolezal told The Guardian her struggle with race goes back to childhood, when she remembers using brown crayons to depict herself in drawings. She said she wasn’t able to embrace her true race until after she divorced her husband.
“For the first time in my life, I really decided consciously to be free from the repression, and free from feeling like I had to do things in a way that was acceptable to other people,” she told The Guardian. “I had the courage to be exactly who I was.”