Going back to 2015, Rachel Dolezal was a successful woman with several well-paying jobs. She was working as President for the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, and was also teaching Africana students. However, her narrative changed when her real racial identity was discovered. Dolezal had been pretending to be Black while working as a professor at Eastern Washington University.
“What I really wish is [that] people could see me more for ‘who’ I am [rather] than the ‘what,’” said Dolezal. “A mother, an activist, and an artist, that’s really who I am. When it comes to race and identity, I’ve always identified racially as ‘human’ but have found more of a home in Black culture and the Black community, and that hasn’t changed.”
She pointed out that she’s not any different from who she was in 2015. Since her fallout, things have not been easy for her, and she’s opted for braiding hair for a living.
Dolezal also mentioned her struggle in looking for jobs, regardless of her qualifications.
“I started with applying for all of the things I was qualified for and after interviews and getting turned down, I even applied to jobs that didn’t even require degrees. Being a maid at a hotel, working at a casino – I wasn’t able to get any of those jobs either,” she said.
Despite what she’s gone through since 2015, Dolezal still sticks to how she always identified herself.
