Hey, remember Rachel Dolezal?
Of course you do — as long as you live, you will never be able to forget that white woman who built her entire life around pretending to be black.
Rachel was the president of her local NAACP chapter and she also taught African-American studies at a university, but that all fell apart when her parents began letting people know that she’s actually white.
Her story went viral with a hilariously uncomfortable interview in which she was asked if she was white. She said that she didn’t understand the question, then just bolted.
She maintained for a long time that she’s a black woman — and she still does.
But the issue these days is that holding onto that false identity is pretty much destroying her life.
Rachel did a lengthy interview with the Guardian to promote her upcoming book, titled In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.
And boy, is it a doozy.
Rachel says that she is currently unemployed, and that she’s applied for 100 different jobs, but no one will hire her. Well, almost no one: she admits that she’s gotten offers in reality television and porn.
Things are so bad that while a friend helped her pay rent for February, she thinks she’ll probably end up homeless this month.
She had to submit her memoir to at least 30 different publishers before anyone would agree to print it.
“The narrative was that I’d offended both communities in an unforgivable way,” she explains, “so anybody who gave me a dime would be contributing to wrong and oppression and bad things. To a liar and a fraud and a con.”
Well …
Still, Rachel says that she wrote her book “to set the record straight,” but also “to open up this dialogue about race and identity, and to just encourage people to be exactly who they are.”
She had a rough childhood: she claims that her parents used to beat her and her older brother, and that the first time she ever truly felt love was when her parents adopted four babies when she was 15. Three were African-American, and one was Haitian.
She says she was the primary caretaker for all the new babies, and that as they grew up, “I began to see the world through black eyes.”
About the black vs. white struggle, or her struggle, anyway, she says that “I do think a more complex label would be helpful, but we don’t really have that vocabulary. 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.”
But would she ever consider dropping the “trans-black” thing? Even if just to stop rubbing so many people the wrong way?
“No,” she insists. “This is still home to me. I didn’t feel like I’m ever going to be hurt so much that I somehow leave who I am, because I’m me. It really is who I am. It’s not a choice.”
Sure, Rachel. Sure.