You’ve surely heard about Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP chapter president in Spokane, WA who was recently outed as a white woman trying to pass as African American. It may have started with this local interview in which Dolezal was asked if her father was white, after revealing that her mother was also white. Dolezal has previously asserted that her father was a black man from the south who suffered discrimination and attempts on his life. Both of Dolezal’s white parents, and her adopted brothers, have spoken to the press about the fact that Dolezal has been trying to pass as black since 2007. Dolezal’s family also brings into question her many other claims, including that she had cervical cancer and has been the victim of hate crimes.
Dolezal has since resigned her post at the NAACP in a statement which did not acknowledge her deception or apologize. We can now piece together more of her origin story, as it’s come out that Dolezal both attended Howard University as a white person and sued the college for discrimination. The Smoking Gun uncovered the lawsuit, which was dismissed with Dolezal ordered to pay costs to Howard U.
Rachel Dolezal, 37, who headed the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington chapter, sued Howard for discrimination in 2002, the year she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.
According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.
The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.
As detailed in the court opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit contended that Howard was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”
Judge Zoe Bush dismissed Dolezal’s complaint in February 2004, 18 months after the lawsuit was filed and Dolezal was deposed on several occasions. Bush found no evidence that Dolezal was discriminated on the basis of race or other factors. The D.C. Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed Bush’s decision.
Following the dismissal of Dolezal’s lawsuit (and the Court of Appeals decision), she was ordered to reimburse Howard for a “Bill of Costs” totaling $2728.50. During the case, she was also ordered to pay the university nearly $1000 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing that sought to improperly delay her examination by an independent doctor.
Dolezal’s art featured African American subjects, and her thesis at Howard, which she “presented from the perspective of a black man,” involved “a three dimensional piece of a man was being consumed by a fire all the way into the ground,” according to a source who attended school with her. Dolezal was a white woman with blonde hair who was “several shades lighter” at the time. Some of her art was plagiarized, or at least highly derivative without acknowledging the source piece.
This lady is a grifter and a clever con artist. She lied about her past, her family and her experiences. This may be opening up a conversation about race, as so many outlets have claimed, but to me it’s more about the unveiling of a sociopath in blackface. When you look at the facts of this case, you have a person who openly faked their identity. If she identified with the African American community, she could have supported the same causes as a white woman. If she wanted to change her hair to be closer to her adopted sister, she could have done that – as a white woman. The NAACP has said as much in response.
Dolezal did an interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show this morning (video below) where she said “I identify as black“. She portrayed herself as a victim of the media and touted her work with the NAACP. She claimed that she’s felt black since she was five. She also said that she takes exception to the question of whether she deceived people. She has lied about her father’s racial identity and her experiences in interviews and her responses were slippery. I do think she’s very smart, but the fact remains that she’s made up an entire backstory for herself and lied about the details. She said she hasn’t “put on blackface as a performance.” ORLY?
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