Al Sharpton on Saturday slammed the parents of Spokane NAACP President Rachel Dolezal, saying he has to wonder what their motives were for revealing her to be a white woman, not an African-American, as she claims.
"On one level, you've got to say to her, you're misleading us, but on another level, mom and dad, come on,"
he told TMZ. "Are we gonna have this dysfunctional family stuff play out and distract us from real key civil rights causes. Be the adults here. You just now noticed she was in the NAACP?"
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But still, Sharpton pointed out that the real issue is not race, as there are whites "in all of our organizations," and who died fighting for civil rights.
"It's not about whether she is white or black, but are you going to be honest?" he said. "Don't be misleading... if you're fighting for the rights of people, don't deny who you are."
However, Sharpton wondered why Dolezal's parents, Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal, waited until Friday to appear on television to discuss her.
Instead, he said, they waited until she became more prominent before making their statements, Sharpton said.
“You’ve got to ask the question, ‘what are Mom and Dad’s motives here… where’ve you been?” he replied.
Her parents,
Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal told CNN Friday that their daughter has been claiming to be black for years, but they were never asked about her until recently. The couple has four adopted children, three of whom are African-American and one from Haiti, in addition to Dolezal, who is their biological daughter.
They also shared a photo of her, taken while she was younger and showing her with blonde hair, and a birth certificate that lists themselves as Dolezal's parents.
Her mother told CNN that Dolezal cut ties with them several years ago, as "she doesn't want to be seen with us because that ruins her image."
One of the adopted sons,
Ezra Dolezal, on Friday told Buzzfeed that his sister "puts dark makeup on her face and says she's black... it's basically blackface."
The 22-year-old also said she told him and his other siblings to say they were her blood relatives and warned them about blowing her cover, but he considers it a "slap in the face" to African-Americans for his sister to act as if she has been struggling when she grew up white, lived in a good house, and got a good education.
Ezra Dolezal told Buzzfeed he started noticing his sister's changes when he visited her in Spokane, and starting in 2011, he says she started applying darker makeup to her face and perming her straight, blonde hair.
He said he believes she changed her identity after claiming to be treated with discrimination as a white student in mostly-black Howard University, where she received a master's degree in fine art in 2002.
Dolezal said his sister then started being "hateful to white people," and he thinks it's because it's because she is "self-hating."
"She had no reason not to like herself being white," he said. "She was an awesome artist and she could have accomplished everything she did, if she had stayed exactly the same.”
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