On Monday, Spokane, Wash., NAACP Chapter President Rachel Dolezal issued her resignation via a Facebook post on the chapter’s page. This came on the heels of Dolezal’s cancellation of a press conference that was supposed to be held earlier on Monday for her to address the recent allegations from her parents that she’s a white woman who’s been posing as a black woman for several years.
In Dolezal’s resignation letter, which was devoid of any type of apology for her deceitful ways, she made sure to mention issues that plague the black community, such as police brutality and unequal education. She also seemed to try to reshift focus onto these issues, saying that attention “has unexpectedly shifted internationally to my personal identity in the context of defining race and ethnicity.”
“While challenging the construct of race is at the core of evolving human consciousness, we can NOT afford to lose sight of the five Game Changers (Criminal Justice & Public Safety, Health & Healthcare, Education, Economic Sustainability, and Voting Rights & Political Representation) that affect millions, often with a life or death outcome,” she wrote. “The movement is larger than a moment in time or a single person's story, and I hope that everyone offers their robust support of the Journey for Justice campaign that the NAACP launches today!
“In the eye of this current storm, I can see that a separation of family and organizational outcomes is in the best interest of the NAACP. It is with complete allegiance to the cause of racial and social justice and the NAACP that I step aside from the Presidency and pass the baton to my Vice President, Naima Quarles-Burnley,” Dolezal added, before listing her many achievements while she was head of the organization. “It is my hope that by securing a beautiful office for the organization in the heart of downtown, bringing the local branch into financial compliance, catalyzing committees to do strategic work in the five Game Changer issues, launching community forums, putting the membership on a fast climb, and helping many individuals find the legal, financial and practical support needed to fight race-based discrimination, I have positioned the Spokane NAACP to buttress this transition.”
Dolezal informed people that she will continue to fight for human rights, but she didn’t say whether she’ll continue to fight for those as a black or a white woman.
In more news regarding Dolezal’s history, videos have been unearthed from 2014 that may raise even more eyebrows when it comes to how deep her deception went. In 2014, Eastern Washington University student Lauren Campbell interviewed the former NAACP chapter president about her experiences as a black woman. In one video, Dolezal continued to lie about her background and even told a story about how she had issues with her skin color in kindergarten. But she did admit that she came from a transracial family, meaning that she had adopted siblings from a different race.
In another video, Dolezal had the audacity to speak about the privileges that are extended to light-skinned black women—something that she doesn’t agree with but has come to accept. The pathology gets even deeper when she jokingly uses the n-word when describing the pronunciation of “Nigeria.”
Although Dolezal has officially resigned from the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, it will be interesting to see if she actually states why she made the choice to masquerade as a black woman all these years. The work that she did with the organization will forever be mired in controversy, lies, spray tan and kinky wigs.