XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.news-media, alt.politics.obama
XPost: alt.politics.democrats.d

SPOKANE, Wash. — When she moved into her uncle’s basement in the
largely white town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 2004, Rachel A.
Dolezal was still blond and pale-skinned and identified herself
as a white woman — one who had left a black husband and had a
biracial child.

But within a few years, her already deep commitment to black
causes and culture intensified. Co-workers and relatives began
hearing talk that her background was mixed-race — and even that
she had called herself black.

Many of them questioned the way she described herself, while
others accepted it at face value. No one seems to have made an
issue of it, but most people saw in her a force of personality
that made her a strong and passionate advocate at the Human
Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, where she began
working soon afterward.

“It’s really impressive what she accomplished, bringing a lot of
energy to these places,” her uncle, Daniel A. Dolezal, recalled
in a telephone interview on Tuesday, speaking of the human
rights group as well as the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Spokane, which
she later rose to lead. He recalled her journey from being a
down-on-her-luck single mother who took part-time teaching jobs,
tried to sell her artwork, and worked in the camera store he
owns in Coeur d’Alene, in a part of the Idaho panhandle that was
once the headquarters of Aryan Nations, the white supremacist
group.

So when Ms. Dolezal (pronounced DOLE-uh-zhal) went on national
television on Tuesday for the first time since she became the
subject of a raging debate about racial identity and
fabrication, it was no surprise that while she cannot claim a
hint of black ancestry, she refused to concede that she had
misled anyone. “I identify as black,” she said with a smile.

She would not backpedal, and “I guarantee you she never will,”
said her uncle, who took her in more than a decade ago as her
marriage crumbled. “That’s part of her persona, never backing
down — always forward, totally sure of herself.”

On Tuesday, Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today” show asked her, “When
did you start deceiving people?” But Ms. Dolezal, who stepped
down on Monday as president of the Spokane N.A.A.C.P. chapter,
pushed back.

“I do take exception to that because it’s a little more complex
than me identifying as black, or answering a question of, ‘Are
you black or white?’ ” she said. Over the course of the day, she
also described herself as “transracial” and said: “Well, I
definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes
who I am.”

Her story has set off a national debate about the very meaning
of racial identity, with some people applauding her message and
goals and others deploring her methods and actions. It was one
thing for Ms. Dolezal to identify with, appreciate and even
partake in black culture, some critics said, but it was another
thing for her to try to become black, going so far as to change
her physical appearance.

“It taps into all of these issues around blackface and wearing
blackness and that whole cultural legacy, which makes it that
much more vile,” said Baz Dreisinger, an English professor at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and author of
the book “Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American
Culture.”

The term transracial has long been associated with adoptions of
a child by a family of a different race. Angela Tucker, a black
woman born in Tennessee and adopted by a white family in
Bellingham, Wash., said it was “absolutely maddening” to
associate the term with Ms. Dolezal’s story.

“It means a lot to those of us who call ourselves transracial
adoptees,” said Ms. Tucker, 29, a social worker who lives in
Seattle. “We have grown up in a culture different than what we
physically represent. We’ve had to seek out our roots. What
Rachel has done is misappropriate that.”

Some people who have known Ms. Dolezal only as a black woman
said they felt hurt and misled.

“The issue for me has been the deception, the lie, portraying
herself as someone she isn’t,” said Dorothy Webster, a longtime
member of the Spokane N.A.A.C.P. and former deputy manager for
the city of Spokane. “I cannot rationalize it.”

Credibility Questioned

Although her advocacy work has admirers, serious questions have
been raised about Ms. Dolezal’s credibility — and not just about
her race. Her public statements about her family and upbringing
have been challenged by relatives, including her parents,
creating the odd spectacle of dueling interviews, with her
making claims on one network, and them denying them on another.
Over the years she has reported numerous complaints with the
police of racially motivated harassment and intimidation, though
the police have said that none have so far proved credible
enough for charges to be brought.

She is estranged from her parents, Ruthanne and Lawrence
Dolezal, and in Spokane, she has represented a friend, an older African-American man, as her father. When Rachel Dolezal was a
teenager, her parents adopted four black children, one of whom
now lives with Ms. Dolezal and her son, whom she had with her
former husband, Kevin D. Moore, who is black.

She is also estranged from her biological brother, Joshua, who
is facing charges in Colorado that when he was 19 years old, he
sexually molested one of his adopted brothers, who was 6 or 7 at
the time, in the parents’ home, which was then in Clear Creek
County, Colo. Ruthanne Dolezal told People magazine that the
molestation charges are not true and were initiated by Rachel.

Ms. Dolezal’s path to this curious point has been unorthodox,
beginning with her childhood in a remote corner of northwestern
Montana, in and around the little town of Troy. Earlier this
year, she told a news organization at Eastern Washington
University, where she taught, that she had been born in a tepee,
that her mother and stepfather had beaten her and her siblings,
that “they would punish us by skin complexion,” and that they
lived for a time in South Africa.

Family members say none of this is true. All agree that she has
no stepfather, that this was one of several attempts she has
made to deny the existence of her real father, Lawrence. Her
parents moved to South Africa after Rachel was grown and out of
the house.

Okay so she's a lying piece of shit white liberal democrat.

This bitch should be put in jail for perjury.
 
 

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