7/4/2023 0 Comments Rachel dozerBut Dolezal is not apologising for anything. In the living room of her modest house in Spokane – still sporting the hair and skin tone, her “glow”, as she puts it, that so infuriated her critics – she weeps at what she regards as the injustice of the collective judgment against her. It’s just like this disgust, and that was really hurtful, really hurtful.” This great leader that won all these awards no longer exists. People telling me what to think, telling me what to do, telling me to go kill myself,” she says. “I’m trying to regroup, rebuild, remember who I was before the frenzy. Photograph: Courtesy of Rachel Dolezalĭolezal cannot find a job – she has spurned “unsavoury” offers to do reality television and porn – and is reduced to raising her teenage son on food stamps with a bit of hairdressing on the side. Many of her friends now refuse to talk to her.ĭolezal as a baby, being held by Josh, her biological brother. She was forced out as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Spokane and lost her African studies post at Eastern Washington University. Within days, Dolezal lost much of what she held dear, as the community she had championed for years turned on her. The evident change in her appearance from a girl of European heritage to a woman with elaborate braided hair extensions and a distinct tint to her skin was portrayed as part of a long and insulting history of “blackface”. She was accused of exploiting the long history of black suffering to play the victim. But it was the wave of rage and mockery from the African American community that really stung. Some white people painted Dolezal as mentally unstable, on the grounds that no normal white person would choose to call themselves black. It all came toppling down on 11 June this year, when she was asked in a television interview: “Are you African American?” Her stunned reply – saying she didn’t understand the question – was swiftly interpreted as evidence she was a “race faker”. She adopted a series of African-American “dads” and presented to the world a black son, who turned out to be her brother. In time, she changed her appearance, revised her history and constructed a new family.
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