Civil rights leader has been pretending to be black, parents say

A civil rights leader in the US state of Washington has been falsely portraying herself as black for years, her parents have said.

Rachel Dolezal (37) is president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) chapter in Spokane in the northwestern US and has been identifying herself as part black.

Speaking to US television news stations, Ms Dolezal’s parents claimed that she has been deceiving people for years, and that her Montana birth certificate shows that she is white and born to Caucasian parents.

Her parents said that Ms Dolezal is of Czech and German heritage.

Ms Dolezal is now being investigated for pretending to be at least part black, in an application for Spokane’s citizen police oversight commission, an ombudsman which she currently chairs.

The City of Spokane announced that it was investigating whether Ms Dolezal violated the city’s code of ethics in her application to serve on the commission.

Spokane’s mayor David Condon and the city council president Ben Stuckart said in a joint statement that they take “very seriously the concerns raised” about Ms Dolezal.

“We are gathering facts to determine if any city policies related to volunteer boards and commissions have been violated.

“That information will be reviewed by the city council, which has oversight of city boards and commissions.”

The NAACP chapter is also at the centre of an investigation into racially charged threats against Ms Dolezal, which has been ongoing since March.

The Facebook page of the local chapter had posted a notice in January saying that Ms Dolezal's father would be visiting for a ceremony marking the opening of its new office and posted a photograph of her standing next to a black man.

When asked by a reporter from a local television station, KXLY, whether the man in the photo was her father, Ms Dolezal insisted that he was.

When asked whether she was in fact black, she said: “I don’t understand the question of . . . I did tell you that, yes, that’s my dad. And he was unable to come in January.”

Asked whether her parents were in fact white, Ms Dolezal declined to answer and walked away.

Photographs

Photographs of Ms Dolezal as a white, blonde, freckled-face girl and later as a 36-year-old woman with a darker complexion claiming to have “natural” curls, have appeared on news websites in a story that has drawn huge attention on social media.

Ruthanne and Larry Dolezal said their daughter had always identified with black culture and that she has adopted siblings who are black.

They said that Ms Dolezal has claimed that one of her adopted siblings, Izaiah, is her son.

Ms Dolezal’s parents said that she began referring to herself as black around 2007, three years after her divorce from a black man. They said that, while she has not made the claims around them, she has represented herself as part-black and the daughter of biracial parents.

“Rachel has wanted to be somebody she’s not. She’s chosen not to just be herself but to represent as an African-American woman or a biracial person and that is simply not true,” Ruthanne Dolezal told another local television station, KREM, in Spokane.

Ms Dolezal, who is adjunct professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University, is estranged from her parents and has not spoken to them for several years, citing a legal issue with them.

NAACP response

Responding to the controversy, the NAACP said that “one’s racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard” for a leadership role in the organisation.

The NAACP group covering the Washington, Oregon and Alaska region "stands behind Ms Dolezal's advocacy record," the civil rights organisation said in a statement.