Rachel Dolezal, president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP in Washington state, has been accused of pretending to be black, and now the city is investigating.
The Coeur d'Alene Press reported Thursday that Dolezal, who in childhood photos appears as Caucasian with blonde hair, identified herself as African-American on her application to serve on the citizen police ombudsman commission — a commission she now chairs. Additionally, she claimed on her Facebook page in December that Albert Wilkerson, a black man posing with her in a picture, was her father. Public birth records indicate otherwise.
"It is very disturbing that she has become so dishonest," said Ruthanne Dolezal, Rachel's mother, in a phone interview from Montana. "Rachel is very good at using her artistic skills to transform herself."
Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal, who just celebrated their 41st wedding anniversary, are listed as Rachel's parents on her Montana birth certificate, filed in Lincoln County in 1977.
They told The Spokesman-Review that they are both white, having Czech, Swedish, and German roots with "faint traces" of Native American ancestry. Between 1993 and 1995, the couple adopted four black infants, Ezra, Izaiah, Zachariah, and Esther, but clarified that Rachel was their biological daughter.
When reporters confronted Dolezal about her possible masquerading this week, she gave confusing and unclear answers.
"That question is not as easy as it seems," she said from Eastern Washington University, where she’s a part-time professor in the Africana Studies Program. "There’s a lot of complexities . . . and I don’t know that everyone would understand that . . . We’re all from the African continent."
Mayor David Condon, who appointed Dolezal to the ombudsmen commission, said in a statement this week that "we are gathering facts to determine if any city policies related to volunteer boards and commissions have been violated."
In light of the new revelations, police are also reexamining complaints Dolezal has filed saying she's been the target of harassment because of her position in the NAACP.
"It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself," said Ruthanne Dolezal. "Her effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community would have been so much more viable, and she would have been more effective if she had just been honest with everybody."
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