A US CIVIL rights activist has resigned from a post at the leading African-American advocacy group amid allegations she is white but has masqueraded for years as being black.
Rachel Dolezal’s resignation from her job as president of the Spokane, Washington chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People came as her parents, who are white and say she is too, urged her to seek counseling.
The Washington state chapter of the NAACP posted Dolezal’s resignation letter on its Facebook page.
In it, she writes that her commitment to the “racial and social justice movement” is undiminished but that “the dialogue has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity”.
Dolezal, 37, built a career as an activist in the black community of Spokane.
She rose to become the president of the city’s branch of the NAACP and served as an independent mediator for the city’s police force.
Neither position required that she be black, but media reports said Dolezal identified herself in application forms and in various public appearances and writings as black.
She apparently resigned under pressure from the civil rights group.
“I have always deferred to the state and national NAACP leadership and offer my sincere gratitude for their unwavering support of my leadership through this unexpected firestorm,” Dolezal wrote.
Her parents insist their daughter, from whom they are estranged, is white.
Since the story went national last week they have provided local media with a birth certificate and photographs of Dolezal as a blonde, fair-skinned child.
Now, as an adult, she is dark skinned and dark haired.
Not saying
Dolezal has dodged questions seeking clarification about her race and ethnicity and she did not address her race in the resignation letter.
Last week, Spokane newspaper the Spokesman Review reported she had told them: “I feel like I owe my executive committee a conversation.”
“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she said after being contacted at Eastern Washington University, where she is a part-time professor in the Africana Studies Program.
There’s a lot of complexities and I don’t know that everyone would understand that.
And she broke off an interview with a local TV reporter when he asked her point blank: “Are you African American?”
Her parents, who adopted four black children, said their daughter had always been interested in issues of ethnicity and diversity.
But around 2007, they learned from a newspaper article that she was claiming to be African-American.
At that point she had already severed contact with her parents.
- © AFP, 2015 - edited by Daragh Brophy.
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