I'm Being True To Myself

Two years after her parents revealed she’s actually white, Rachel Dolezal is still unapologetic and insists she identifies as black.

- Avern De Vries

PEOPLE used to trust her and hang on her every word. In her high-profile role as branch president of a respected American civil rights organisation Rachel Dolezal was admired for the no-holds-barred way she spoke out about race issues and inequality.

Everyone just assumed that as a black woman she was speaking from experience. But they were wrong.

In 2015 Rachel’s parents came forward to reveal she was in fact white, not African-American as she’d led everyone to believe.

This revelation sparked outrage across the world, with people across the colour spectrum baying for her blood (White woman says she’s black, 2 July 2015).

Called a liar, fraud, thief and race faker, she lost her job and credibility and gradually faded from people’s minds.

No one could bounce back from that, you’d think.

Except two years later, here she is sitting across from us in a Cape Town hotel, a lightly tanned woman with blonde braids – and she’s anything but apologetic.

Instead she insists she’s been unfairly judged. “There’s so much people don’t know,” Rachel (39) says.

Invited to South Africa as a guest speaker for the Quest for a Non-Racial South African Society Dialogue, her visit coincides with the publication of her biography, In Full Colour: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, in which she explains the events that led to the unravelling of her life.

It all started when her parents, Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal, called her dishonest and deceitful in a CNN interview, she says. The result was that she was forced to resign the presidency of the Spokane branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington and she also lost a part-time post as professor of Africana studies at East Washington University.