#AskRachel: Civil rights activist masquerading as black sparks ‘trans-ethnicity’ debate

Rachel Dolezal (image from http://spokanenaacp.com)

Rachel Dolezal (image from http://spokanenaacp.com)

The curious case of Rachel Dolezal, president of a US association for the advancement of colored people and a professor of African-American Studies, who had pretended to be black for nearly a decade, has triggered hot debate on race and ethnicity.

The #AskRachel hashtag, created after the Dolezal affair, has
sparked a myriad of questions that the black community shared on
Twitter for Rachel (or, rather, anyone not pretending to be
black) to answer. Critics, meanwhile, have been speculating about
Rachel’s role as the president of the Spokane chapter of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP).

Dolezal, 37, who also serves as chair of Spokane’s independent
police ombudsman commission, is facing an ethics probe, after it
appeared she identified herself in her application to the Office
of Police Ombudsman Commission as white, African-American, and
Native American when applying for the job.

Dolezal filed numerous police complaints of racial discrimination
and harassment recently after she allegedly received hate mail.
“We are gathering facts, looking at city code, to determine
if any city policies in relation to boards or commissions were
violated,
” Spokane’s City Council President Ben Stuckart
told Reuters.

According to police records, however, the hate mail package
Dolezal reported receiving did not bear a date stamp or bar code.
Postal workers reportedly told investigators that it was very
unlikely or next to impossible that the package could have been
processed through the post office, but if so it must have been
put there by someone with a key. Dolezal received a key to the
post office box earlier this year, when she became the NAACP
president. Asked if she had put the package there herself, she
replied, as cited by Spokane’s Spokesman-Review: “That’s such
bullsh*t. What mother would terrorize her own children?”

Dolezal has described the ongoing debate about her origins as a
“multi-layered” issue.

“That question is not as easy as it seems,” she told the
Spokesman-Review. Dolezal’s birth certificate shows she was born
to a white, Christian, Montana couple of European and Native
American descent. According to Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne, the
family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German.

“There’s a lot of complexities … and I don’t know that
everyone would understand that,”
Dolezal said. “We’re
all from the African continent
,” she added.

Dolezal told Spokane’s KREM2 broadcaster earlier this week:
“If I was asked I would definitely say yes, I do consider
myself to be black.”

Ruthanne Dolezal told the Spokesman-Review that she not been in
touch with her daughter in years, saying Rachel began to
“disguise herself” about 7-8 years ago, after the family
had adopted four African-American children. According to her
mother, it was the adoption that sparked Rachel’s interest in
“people of color.” About that time Dolezal also showed an
interest in portrait art.

“Rachel is a master artist and so she is able to disguise
herself and make her appearance look like any ethnicity. She
could accomplish the work that she set out to do in the beginning
by being herself and being a white woman who is an advocate for
the African American,”
her mother told the Guardian.

Dolezal holds a Master’s degree from Howard University. When she
applied, her portfolio was awash with “exclusively African
American portraiture,
” and the university “took her for
a black woman”
and gave her a full scholarship, her father,
Lawrence Dolezal, told the Washington Post.

“You’ve got a white woman coming in that got a full-ride
scholarship to the black Harvard,”
he explained. “And
ever since then she’s been involved in social justice advocacy
for African Americans. She assimilated into that culture so
strongly that that’s where she transferred her identity.”

“But unfortunately, she is not ethnically by birth African
American,”
he said, adding, “there seems to be some
question of how Rachel is representing her identity and
ethnicity.”

Dolezal is also a part-time professor in the Africana Studies
Program at Eastern Washington University, a biography on the
university website states. She is credited with re-energizing the
Spokane chapter of the NAACP, according to the Spokesman-Review.

The NAACP said in a statement that racial identity was not a
qualifying criteria for civil rights group leadership and that it
stands behind Ms Dolezal’s advocacy record.”


“NAACP Spokane Washington Branch President Rachel Dolezal is
enduring a legal issue with her family, and we respect her
privacy in this matter,
” NAACP, the largest African-American
civil rights organization in the US, has added.

Source Article from http://rt.com/usa/266986-dolezal-black-race-debate/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

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