Rachel Dolezal, the former president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP who resigned under pressure for claiming to be black, though she’s white, still denies doing anything wrong.
It’s been six weeks since her true racial heritage was outed, and in an interview with Vanity Fair, she said: I’m innocent of any wrongdoing.
“It’s taken my entire life to negotiate how to identify,” she said, in the interview. “You can’t just say in one sentence what is blackness or what is black culture or what makes you who you are.”
She then insisted she’s not been dishonest in any way.
“I just feel like I didn’t mislead anybody, I didn’t deceive anybody,” Dolezal said, the Daily Mail reported. “If people feel misled or deceived, then sorry that they feel that way but I believe that’s more due to their definition and construct of race in their own minds than it is to my integrity or honesty, because I wouldn’t say I’m African American but I say I’m black and there’s a difference in those terms.”
As reported by WND, Dolezal sparked a national outrage and discussion about what it means to be black when pictures emerged of her as a blond-haired youth, birthed and raised by white parents. Later photographs showed her in her present day image, looking nothing like the blonde of her younger years and more African-American in appearance.
Dolezal was finally forced to resign her post at the NAACP.
“It’s not a costume,” she told Vanity Fair. “I don’t know spiritually and metaphysically how this goes, but I do know that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience, and that’s never left me. It’s not something that I can put on and take off anymore.”
