Rachel Dolezal today insisted that she is ‘definitely not white’ as she slammed suggestions that she is taking part in ‘some mockery blackface performance’.
The beleaguered civil rights activist appeared on the Today show just a day after she resigned as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) Spokane chapter amid the controversy over her racial identity.
In the unapologetic live interview – her first since the start of the scandal – Dolezal said she would do nothing differently if her younger self knew what she knows now, claiming that her life has been about making choices for her ‘survival’.
When asked by Today host Matt Lauer if presenting herself as a black woman for years was akin to wearing blackface, she insisted that was not the case.
‘I have a huge issue with blackface,’ she said. ‘This is not some freak “Birth of a Nation” mockery blackface performance. This is on a very real, connected level. I’ve had to go there with the experience, not just a visible representation.’
n another interview with NBC Nightly News, which will air this evening, Dolezal said: ‘I definitely am not white’, according to a post by Savannah Guthrie.
Dolezal was also asked by Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC if she was black and she responded simply: ‘Yes.’
She said that she had always felt a ‘spiritual, visceral’ connection to ‘the black experience’.
‘I was socially conditioned to not own that and to be limited to whatever biological identity was thrust upon me and narrated to me, and so I kind of felt pretty awkward a lot of the time with that,’ she said.
On the Today show, she claimed that she first started seeing herself as black when she was five.
‘I was drawing self portraits with the brown crayon rather than the peach crayon, and black curly hair,’ she said. ‘That was how I was portraying myself.’
But when Lauer held up a photo of Dolezal as a teen – with blonde hair and a fair complexion – she conceded that she looked like a white person and that she was not identifying as black at the time.
Her estranged parents, who outed her as white last week, have previously said that she began ‘disguising’ herself as black around 2007.
But in the interview, she would not answer questions about how she has changed her appearance to seem black. Her hair is worn in tight brown curls – a far cry from the blonde locks of her youth.
‘I certainly don’t stay out of the sun,’ she offered.
Lets talk a quick minute more about Rachel Dolezal for a minute. I hate her because she’s such a god damn show off. First off being the president of the NAACP in Spokane Washington is a bit of a joke. If she was the president of the Atlanta Georgia chapter that would be different but Spokane Washington almost has no black people.
Seriously, she’s not exactly the leader of the largest movement ever. If she thinks she was influencing the voice of a nation she should try a place with more than 5k people. But now what i hate her more for the fact that she seems like such a brag like all these art historian type people are thinking they’re better than what they are. Hey guess what lady, you lied and took advantage of being black to get ahead probably over other black people.
Then reading this i wanted to puke. Drawing “Self Portraits?” Fuck out of my face with that, lady. She makes it sound like she was painting the Mona Lisa or some elaborate Salvador Dali self portrait. Bitch, you were drawing stick figure crayons. I don’t care about the brown or peach color nonsense. I hate how you try to be better than what you are. It’s annoying and such a fucking asshole move. Come to think about it saying you were the NAACP president of Spokane is also an asshole move too. Probably the smallest chapter in the history and entire NAACP total.
The Ugly Orange 