I feel obligated to write about this story because it has been all over the news lately, but to be honest, I really don’t understand it.<\/p>\n
CBS News<\/a> in Seattle, Washington<\/a>, is reporting that Rachel\u00a0Dolezal is resigning as the leader of the NAACP<\/a> in Spokane<\/a> after it was discovered that she had lied about her racial heritage for the past 37 years.<\/p>\n The article reports:<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Spokane is investigating whether she lied about her ethnicity when she landed an appointment to the city\u2019s police oversight board. On her application, she said her ethnic origins<\/a> included white, black and American Indian<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Dolezal, a 37-year-old woman with a light brown complexion and dark curly hair, attended historically black Howard University<\/a>, teaches African studies<\/a> at a local university and was married to a black man. For years, she has publicly complained of being the victim of racial harassment in the heavily white region.<\/strong><\/p>\n The uproar over racial authenticity and professional honesty unfolded last week after\u00a0Dolezal\u2019s\u00a0parents told the media their daughter is white with a trace of Native American heritage. They produced photos of her as girl with a pale complexion and straight blond hair<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Her mother, Ruthanne\u00a0Dolezal\u00a0of Troy, Montana<\/a>, told reporters she has had no contact with her daughter in years. She said\u00a0Rachel\u00a0began to \u201cdisguise herself\u201d after her parents adopted four African-American children more than a decade ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n Although I do not think it was right for her to lie about her background, I really don’t understand the issue. She wanted to work for civil rights. She obviously felt that she could do a better job of that as a member of the minority she was interested in helping. I have a problem with her lying, I don’t have a problem with her working for the NAACP. I do, however, wonder if she would have been elected to head the local NAACP chapter if she had been white. That is what we should be thinking about. Do you have to be the same race as another person to understand the struggles of that race and to want to help? Maybe we all need to look at the unintentional segregation we put on ourselves and instead start thinking about which people want to make things better, not who is what color.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I feel obligated to write about this story because it has been all over the news lately, but to be honest, I really don’t understand it. CBS News in Seattle, Washington, is reporting that Rachel\u00a0Dolezal is resigning as the leader … Continue reading