Rachel Dolezal, white woman who identifies as black, now jobless, may soon be homeless
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rachel Dolezal, the infamous white woman who for years passed herself off as African American and rose to become head of an NAACP branch, is now jobless, on food stamps and expects to soon be homeless.
A defiant Dolezal, 39, recounted her current plight to The Guardian. Dolezal said she’s only been offered jobs in reality television and porno flicks. A friend helped her come up with the money for February’s rent and she doesn’t know how she’s going to pay for March.
And she still says she’s not white.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I do think a more complex label would be helpful, but we don’t really have that vocabulary,” Dolezal told The Guardian. “I feel like the idea of being trans-black would be much more accurate than ‘I’m white.’ Because, you know, I’m not white . . . Calling myself black feels more accurate than saying I’m white.”
Dolezal was exposed in June 2015 when a local television crew asked her the simple question: “Are you African American?”
Pictures of a younger, white-skinned and blonde-haired Dolezal soon surfaced and her story exploded. The formerly successful leader of the Spokane NAACP chapter and a university professor, Dolezal – who once sued historically-black Howard University for racial discrimination, because she was white – now says she’s been turned down for 100 jobs and her memoir was rejected by 30 publishers before finding a taker.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}She’s also apparently begun ruffling feathers in the transgender community by claiming that race, like gender, is fluid.
“It’s more so,” Dolezal told The Guardian. “Because it wasn’t even biological to begin with. It was always a social construct.”
Dolezal said she’s never considered identifying as white again.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“I feel that I was born with the essential essence of who I am, whether it matches my anatomy and complexion or not,” Dolezal said. “I’ve never questioned being a girl or a woman, for example, but whiteness has always felt foreign to me, for as long as I can remember. I didn’t choose to feel this way or be this way, I just am.
“What other choice is there than to be exactly who we are?”