Rachel Dolezal

Early life

Dolezal was born in Lincoln County, Montana, on November 12, 1977, to parents Ruthanne (née Schertel) and Lawrence "Larry" Dolezal, who are white and primarily of Czech, German and Swedish origin. Dolezal's parents have been married since 1974. Rachel has an older biological brother, Joshua, who is a full Professor of English studies and who wrote a book about their upbringing in Montana. When Dolezal was a teenager, her parents adopted three African-American children and one black Haitian child.

Dolezal has said she was born and lived in a teepee and that the family had hunted for their food with bow and arrow. Her mother stated that she and Dolezal's father briefly lived in a teepee in 1974, three years before their daughter was born, and that Dolezal's claims were "totally false". From 2002 to 2006, her parents and adopted siblings lived in South Africa as Christian missionaries. Dolezal said she lived in South Africa as a child, but her family disputes the claim.

Dolezal was raised as a Pentecostal. She has contended that her parents frequently abused her; in a 2017 interview, she claimed that she was taught to believe that "everything that came naturally, instinctively was wrong"—a point that was "literally beaten into us". Her biological brother, Joshua, and her adoptive brother, Izaiah, have also claimed that they were abused by their parents. Izaiah sought to be emancipated at the age of 16 after claiming that Larry and Ruthanne not only beat him and his siblings, but also threatened to send them to group homes if they didn't obey. Her brother Ezra Dolezal has denied the accusations of physical punishment.

Dolezal was homeschooled via the Christian Liberty Academy CLASS program, achieving a 4.0 GPA. She was one of several co-valedictorians upon graduation in 1996. She won a $2,000 scholarship for college awarded by Tandy Leather for her entry in their 1996 Leather Art contest. In 1998 she entered art works at Spokane's annual Juneteenth celebration; she expressed African-American themes through collages and mixed-media works. Her family drove three hours from their home in Montana to enable her to display her work in Spokane. Dolezal's father told a Spokesman-Review newspaper reporter that Rachel had never heard of Juneteenth, the event commemorating the abolition of slavery, until she learned of it via an Internet search while looking for a venue to show her art work.

Following the completion of high school, Dolezal attended Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, receiving her bachelor's degree in 2000. After Belhaven, she attended Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C., completing a Master of Fine Arts degree there in 2002.

Her parents and brother said that when Dolezal applied to Howard, because of her art work, the admissions office assumed she was black and awarded her a scholarship. Her younger brother, Ezra Dolezal, said that "because of her work in African American art, they thought she was a Black student during her application, but they ended up with a White person". Her father said, "eyes were popping and jaws were dropping because they couldn't believe they had given a full scholarship to a white girl", although he stressed that "she didn't pose as black; she just sounded black on the phone". Her thesis at Howard was a series of paintings presented from the perspective of a black man, and sparked a controversy. Dean Tritobia Hayes Benjamin, a specialist on black women in the arts, questioned whether Dolezal was qualified as a white woman to tell this type of story. Dolezal later said that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by a "trusted mentor" when attending Howard University, and that "suing was nearly impossible".

Art

Dolezal created a fountain sculpture installed in a downtown Spokane location in June 2005. The sculpture was on display until the end of that summer when it was auctioned off to benefit the Human Rights Education Institute.

In 2007, while working as an art teacher at School Indigo in Coeur d'Alene, Dolezal collaborated with children to make five works for a "Rights of the Child" exhibit, by the Human Rights Education Institute.

In October 2007, Dolezal set up an exhibit on domestic violence

Dolezal has used art to educate children on civil rights issues.

Accusations of copying art

In June 2015, Priscilla Frank at The Huffington Post and Sarah Cascone at artnet made accusations of plagiarism against Dolezal over the painting "The Shape of Our Kind," for being a nearly identical copy of J.M.W. Turner's 1840 work The Slave Ship. Frank accused Dolezal of plagiarism for not crediting Turner. Cascone obliquely accused Dolezal of plagiarism because, while she acknowledged it is a common and widely accepted practice for painters to copy well-known works, Cascone said Dolezal should have mentioned Turner when offering the painting for sale online.

NAACP branch president

Dolezal was elected president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP in 2014, replacing James Wilburn. She was noted during her brief tenure for revitalizing the chapter. Her resignation from the civil rights organization was announced on June 15, 2015 after her parents, family members, and numerous media reports over several days had exposed her stated biography and ethnicity to be false.

Chair of police ombudsman commission

Dolezal applied for the position of chair of the Office of the Police Ombudsman Commission in Spokane in May 2014, and was subsequently appointed by mayor David Condon. In her application, she identified herself as having several ethnicities, including black. In June 2015, City Council President Ben Stuckart said the city had opened an investigation of the truthfulness of her application.

On June 17, 2015 an investigation into her behavior as chair of the commission concluded that she had acted improperly, violated government rules and abused her authority, and the report said the evidence and interviews confirmed workplace harassment allegations and "a pattern of misconduct" by Dolezal. Dolezal was asked to resign by mayor David Condon and city council president Ben Stuckart due to "intimidating and harassing" behavior. On June 18, 2015 the Spokane City Council voted unanimously to remove Dolezal from her position as chair of the Police Ombudsman Commission. The city council accepted the resignation of one other member and granted another member a continuance.

Teaching and writing

She was the education director of the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho until 2010 when she resigned after being passed over for promotion to the institute's top job. From 2005 to 2013, she was an instructor at North Idaho College, a community college in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Eastern Washington University released a statement which said that "since 2010, Rachel Dolezal has been hired at Eastern Washington University on a quarter by quarter basis as an instructor in the Africana Education program. This is a part-time position to address program needs. Dolezal is not a professor." She taught "The Black Woman's Struggle", "African and African American Art History", "African History", "African American Culture", and "Intro to Africana Studies". A statement by university officials on June 15, 2015, said Dolezal was "no longer an employee of Eastern Washington University". Despite not being a professor, she used the title "professor" on several websites. Dolezal herself describes her teaching as "race and culture classes", "black studies" and "black feminism".

Dolezal was a frequent contributor to The Inlander, a newspaper in Spokane. On June 15, 2015 The Inlander said she was no longer a freelance writer for the newspaper and that the paper had been "manipulated and deceived" by her.

Lawsuit against Howard University

In 2002, Dolezal unsuccessfully sued Howard University for discrimination based on "race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender, as well as retaliation". Her lawsuit alleged that she was denied scholarship funds, a teaching assistant position and other opportunities, because she is a white woman. She also alleged that the removal of her artwork from a student exhibition at Howard in 2001 "was motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students" over her. Her lawsuit claimed that Howard was "permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult". During the proceedings, the university's lawyers asked Dolezal if she tried to mislead the university by posing as black in her admissions essay, where she had written about "the atrocities so many ancestors faced in America" in the context of black history.

Police reports about alleged hate crimes

In July 2010, Dolezal resigned from Human Rights Education Institute in Kootenai County, and stated to KREM 2 News that "she had been the target of discrimination". Dolezal stated on September 29, 2009, to KXLY that a noose had been left on her porch. Dolezal's biography on Eastern Washington University's website states that while living in Idaho "at least eight documented hate crimes targeted (Rachel) Dolezal and her children".

Dolezal's mother said she was contacted by the media in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where Rachel lived for seven years. "Law enforcement is conducting an investigation of claims Rachel has made about hate crime threats and in that process of the investigation, the question of 'What is your true ethnicity?' came up, and we were contacted and agreed to speak to the press," Ruthanne said. "It is a sad situation, but the truth is best for everyone." The subsequent police investigation did not support Dolezal's allegation. Detectives said the envelope that contained the alleged threats had no postage stamps, barcodes or any other indication of having been handled by the postal service. The postal inspector said "the only way this letter could have ended up in this P.O. box would be if it was placed there by someone with a key to that box or a USPS employee."

Kurt Neumaier, a former member of the oversight board of the Human Rights Education Institute, said he had suspicions about Dolezal and that he was concerned that the decision to hire her was done without proper vetting and checking into claims about her background. He said he was suspicious of several incidents Dolezal alleged, including her alleged discovery of a swastika on the door of the Human Rights Education Institute when the security camera was "mysteriously turned off." Neumaier concludes that in every incident Dolezal has alleged, "she was the sole witness to events that, when put under scrutiny, don't hold up". English journalist Dominic Lawson has ranked Dolezal as "the most spectacular example of the growing phenomenon of people posing as victims", which he says is a "consequence of a culture which portrays victimhood as a form of moral superiority".

Racial identity

Dolezal's self-identification as black became the subject of controversy in June 2015, after Dolezal was asked by KXLY-TV reporter Jeff Humphrey about a photo on the Facebook page of the Spokane NAACP chapter of a black man identified as Dolezal's father. After being asked if the man was really Dolezal's father, she said he was but would not answer when asked if she was African American. She then walked out of the interview.

Dolezal's parents later stated that their daughter had been trying to "disguise herself" as African American. They presented a copy of their daughter's Montana birth certificate, and said that she is of German and Czech heritage, with "faint traces" of Native American ancestry. Her parents said Dolezal began to identify herself more with the African American community around 2007. An investigation by professional genealogist Elizabeth Banas found only white ancestors over the last four centuries, including ancestors of German, Dutch, Swedish and Czech origin. It later emerged that Spokane's police chief had tired of dealing with Dolezal, and asked a private investigator to find out more information on her. The investigator got in touch with Dolezal's parents, and discovered that she was really a white woman.

In subsequent interviews, Dolezal stated that "if, you know, I was asked, I would definitely say that yes I do consider myself to be black", and that "I would definitely consider myself to be black". Dolezal has listed herself as black on at least one application, and has said she is of "African American, Native American, German, Czech, Swedish, Jewish and Arabic" heritage. In an article she wrote for The Inlander in March 2015, Dolezal includes herself when discussing black women through use of the "we" and "our" pronouns.

In a November 2, 2015 interview on The Real, Dolezal publicly acknowledged for the first time since the controversy began that she was born white. She said, "I acknowledge that I was biologically born white to white parents, but I identify as black".

In a February 2017 interview with The Guardian, Dolezal said that she sees race as a social construct. At Howard, she was introduced to the theory that racial identity had been devised in colonial times as a method of control. She embraced this concept wholeheartedly after her divorce, and decided to "flee from feeling like I had to do things in a way that was acceptable to other people." Soon afterward, she began sunbathing to darken her skin, applying bronzers to maintain the look. She also began wearing her hair in dreadlocks and weaves, and checked the box for "black" or "African American" on employment and medical history forms. According to her adoptive brother, Ezra, Rachel began changing her appearance as early as 2009, when she began using hair products that she'd seen Ezra's biological sister use. She began darkening her skin and perming her hair sometime around 2011. When Ezra moved in with Rachel in 2012, she told him that Spokane-area residents knew her as black, and warned him, "Don't blow my cover." Ezra believed that Rachel was essentially putting on "blackface" by changing her appearance.

Claims about her father

Her uncle Dan Dolezal said that his niece first claimed that a black friend named Albert Wilkerson was her real father around 2012–13, saying that "it caused my brother quite a bit of pain".

Dolezal has in interviews referred to her father as her "stepfather", and said her "black father" had fled the Deep South "because a white cop was hunting him". Dolezal's mother said she has never met Albert Wilkerson and that Rachel Dolezal does not have a stepfather. In a 2015 interview, Dolezal said she was "punished by skin complexion" by her mother and "white stepfather", and compared this alleged punishment to the punishment suffered by black slaves. Her brother Ezra Dolezal said the accusations of physical punishment were false.

Reactions to the controversy

The revelations about Dolezal's ancestry and her other claims provoked a range of reactions. Angela Schwendiman, who is a colleague of Dolezal's at Eastern Washington University, expressed her belief that Dolezal perceived herself as black internally, and that "she was only trying to match how she felt on the inside with her outside." Similarly Cedric Bradley, a colleague of hers at Spokane's NAACP, suggested it mattered little to him whether Dolezal was actually black or not. What did matter to him was her proven track record in social justice work. "It's not about black and white," Bradley stated, "it's about what we can do for the community."

Psychologist Priscilla Dass-Brailsford stated: "Because of a familiarity with black culture, she [may] regard herself as 'transracial'". Psychologist Halford Fairchild said "Rachel Dolezal is black because she identifies as black. Her identity was authentic, as far as I could tell." Sociologist Ann Morning also defended Dolezal, saying: "We're getting more and more used to the idea that people's racial affiliation and identity and sense of belonging can change, or can vary, with different circumstances." Washington Post journalist Krissah Thompson described her behavior as "white guilt played to its end". Thompson discussed the issue with psychologist Derald Wing Sue, an expert on racial identity, who suggested that Dolezal had become so fascinated by racism and racial justice issues that she "over-identified" with black people.

Gender studies scholar Samantha Allen said, "Rachel Dolezal seems determined to appropriate not just blackness but the rhetoric of transgender identity as well" and called the analogy "spurious". Washington Post journalist Jonathan Capehart suggested, "blackface remains highly racist, no matter how down with the cause a white person is." Her adopted brother Ezra Dolezal also compared his sister's behavior to blackface and said "she's basically creating more racism".

On June 16, 2015, Touré Neblett, a commentator for MSNBC, said on the TV program The Cycle: "When I did my book about blackness, I talked to a hundred folks, academics, all sorts of people and the one thing that binds black people is the experience of racism. There's not a cultural thing that binds all of us but the experience of racism. From systemic, stereotypical, microaggressions, whatever it is, and, no, she has not experienced anti-black racism and with the Howard suit, she sues Howard because she doesn't get a job because she's a white woman, you see that she wants to have it both ways." Introducing the category of "cisracial" has been suggested by former MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris-Perry.

Leslie Bow, an expert on racial relations, criticized Dolezal for "taking the place of faculty of color by allowing her colleagues to assume that she's black".

A petition calling for Dolezal to resign her position in the NAACP was launched by Kitara McClure, the former multicultural director at Spokane Community College and a member of the NAACP. McClure said "you cannot lead without honesty", and that "for the local and the national NAACP to say they stand behind her is appalling".

The case made international news. German Süddeutsche Zeitung referred to Dolezal reverting a classical passing scheme, as in passing novel examples like The Human Stain (2000) and mentioned Norman Mailer's 1957 essay "The White Negro" and historical cases like Grey Owl. The review of Allyson Hobbs A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life tried to put the case in a wider and historical perspective on passing as well.

Response by Dolezal

Dolezal issued a statement on June 15, 2015, in which she said she believes that "challenging the construct of race is at the core of evolving human consciousness". The following day Dolezal told Today Show host Matt Lauer she was first described as "transracial" and "biracial" in articles about her human rights work, and chose not to correct them. In the same interview, she defended against allegations of having put on blackface by claiming the way she presented herself was "not some freak, Birth of a Nation, mockery blackface performance". Dolezal later clarified that she has never claimed to be "transracial", a term associated mainly with transracial adoption.

Dolezal's memoir In Full Color

In April 2016, Dolezal announced on the Today Show that she was writing a book on her racial identity. This memoir, called In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, was released by BenBella Books in March 2017. Dolezal claims 30 publishing houses turned her down before she found a smaller publishing company willing to print it. In the book, Dolezal compares her own experiences to slavery and reiterates her claim that she was born in a teepee. Critics described the memoir as "bizarre."

Personal life

She married Kevin Moore, an African American man, in 2000. Moore, a medical student at Howard University at the time of their marriage, was divorced from Dolezal in 2004. He has accused Dolezal of lying and "poisoning" his relationship with their son. In 2010, with the consent of her parents, she obtained legal guardianship of her adopted brother, Izaiah Dolezal, who was sixteen years old at the time. Her other adopted brother, Ezra Dolezal, accused Dolezal of having "brainwashed" Izaiah into "hating white people".

She lists African dance, culinary arts, ethnic hair styling, and modeling among her other experiences.

According to a February 2015 article in The Easterner, Dolezal said she had suffered from cervical cancer in 2006, but had recovered by 2008, a claim which her brother Ezra Dolezal said he had only heard about at the time of the interview and that he didn't believe was true. Ezra Dolezal said that "she made herself into a martyr on purpose for people to feel sorry for her and to help her."

Dolezal told The Guardian in December 2015 that she was pregnant and expecting to deliver her second son in June 2016, whom she has named Langston in honor of writer Langston Hughes.

After the controversy in 2015, Dolezal has said that she is bisexual.

In October 2016 Dolezal legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo. She later clarified that she still intends to use the name Rachel Dolezal "as her public persona," but that she changed her name to have a better chance of landing work from employers who might not be interested in hiring the controversial Rachel Dolezal. By February 2017, she was on food stamps, estranged from most of her friends, and on the brink of homelessness after having no success in finding another job. And on May 30, 2017, in response to a major public backlash against the initial announcement, the organizers of the Baltimore Book Festival announced that they had disinvited Rachel Dolezal from this year's event.