'She doesn't want to be seen with us because we'll ruin her image': Parents of white NAACP leader reveal they learned she was claiming to be black from newspaper article after she cut them outBy Lydia Warren For Dailymail.com and Dailymail.com Reporter
Published: 05:56 GMT, 12 June 2015 | Updated: 21:29 GMT, 12 June 2015
The parents of a white NAACP leader who claimed to be African American have claimed that she cut them out because she didn't want them ruining her image. Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal spoke from their home in Troy, Montana on Friday after they revealed that their daughter, Spokane's NAACP Chapter President Rachel Dolezal, has been misleading people about her ethnicity for years.
Dolezal, who has been a civil rights activist across Idaho and Washington and works part-time as an Africana Studies professor at Eastern Washington University, is now facing a city ethics probe for falsely claiming on an application that she was black. Her parents, who are estranged from their daughter, say they first found out she was claiming to be African American as they read a newspaper article about her 'some years ago'.
'She has never claimed to be biracial or African-American in our presence,' they told CNN.
But they have also not spoken to their daughter in years, they said. She has claimed in interviews that they were violent towards her, which they have denied. Instead, they say she has cut them out because she fears they will blow her cover.
'Rachel has chosen to distance herself from the family and be hostile towards us,' her mother said. 'She doesn't want us to be where she is, she doesn't want to be seen with us because it ruins her image.'
The couple has adopted four younger children of color - three African-American children and another from Haiti - but they say their daughter's interest in diversity far preceded that. They always surrounded themselves with friends of different ethnicities, they said, and when she graduated from Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, she applied to Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, D.C.
Although she did not claim to be African American in her application, the family believes the school thought Dolezal was black, because she was coming from Jackson and her artwork used African imagery.
'The way we understood, eyes were popping and jaws were dropping when she walked in to finalize her registration,' her father told CNN.
Her mother added: 'For that application, I do not believe Rachel was deceptive as she has been more recently.'
As time went on, their daughter began sounding African American on the phone and then she started to 'disguise herself' from around 2007, her parents said. Although they and other friends in their community knew that she was white, they did not speak out about it because they originally thought it was an 'artistic representation'. But after learning that she was claiming to be African American, they did not take the initiative to say anything until they were recently contacted, they said.
'We've never been asked these questions until now,' her father said.
They told the truth and confirmed that they were her biological parents when they were recently contacted, they said. The couple has also shared images of Dolezal as a child; while today the 37-year-old divorcee sports tight, dark curls, the photos show a fair and freckled blonde child.
One of her adopted brothers, 21-year-old Zach, backed up his parents' story by telling the Washington Post that when he visited his sister in Spokane, he was told not to speak of Larry and Ruthanne as their parents. Another adopted brother, Ezra Dolezal, 22, compared their sister's decision to blackface.
'Back in the early 1900s, what she did would be considered highly racist,' he said. 'You really should not do that. It's completely opposite – she's basically creating more racism.'
Despite their hurt, her parents said that any decision about Dolezal's future at the NAACP should be left up to the organization.
'It's very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,' Ruthanne Dolezal told the Spokesman-Review. 'Her effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community would have been so much more viable, and she would have been more effective if she had just been honest with everybody.'
But the NAACP released a statement on Friday calling it 'a legal issue with her family'.
'We respect her privacy in this matter,' the statement said. 'One's racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard for NAACP leadership. The NAACP Alaska-Oregon-Washington State Conference stands behind Ms. Dolezal's advocacy record.
'In every corner of this country, the NAACP remains committed to securing political, educational, and economic justice for all people, and we encourage Americans of all stripes to become members and serve as leaders in our organization.'
The parents have said the family background is Czech, Swedish and German, as well as some 'faint traces' of Native American blood.
However, when Rachel Dolezal applied to become chairwoman of Spokane's Office of Police Ombudsman Commission - a volunteer appointment - she marked herself down as white, black and American Indian, the Spokesman-Review reported.
She has also previously claimed that her white father is her step-father.
In January, a photo showing Dolezal and a black man on the Spokane NAACP's Facebook erroneously identified the man as her father. On Wednesday, a reporter from KXLY confronted Dolezal a photo of her with the African-American man while on camera.
'Ma'am, I was wondering if your dad really is an African-American man,' the KXLY reporter asked.
'I don't understand the question,' Dolezal replied. 'I did tell you [that man in the picture] is my dad.'
'Are your parents white?' the reporter asked. Dolezal then removed her mic and walked away.
Reached by the Spokesman-Review, Dolezal answered questions about her ethnicity by saying: 'That question is not as easy as it seems... There's a lot of complexities … and I don't know that everyone would understand that... We're all from the African continent.'
She has also spoken about her 'black sons' - but her mother told CDAPress.com that one of those boys is Izaiah Dolezal - who is, in fact, one of four infants Rachel's parents adopted in the 1990s. Izaiah, now 21, has since gone to live with Dolezal and no longer speaks with his adopted parents. The Washington Post reported that the disagreement over Izaiah appears to have driven the family apart more than her claims about her race.
'I can understand hairstyles and all that,' Zach Dolezal said of his sister. 'Saying her brother is her son, I don't understand that.'
She also has a son with her now-ex-husband. They married in 2000 and moved to Idaho. He then became violent towards her and their young son, she claimed in an article inThe Easterner earlier this year. They divorced in 2004. She told the publication that filing for divorce was a hard decision because she 'wanted to have sort of like a perfect record'.
She was later also engaged to a man from Mississippi, Maurice Turner, but they split up in February 2013. The article adds that in 2006 she developed cervical cancer but was considered cured in 2008.
Around that time, she also took on the role as director of the Human Rights Institute and says she was also forced to deal with threats from white supremacy groups afraid of female power. They hung nooses in her home and stole from her, she claimed in the article.
She moved to Spokane in 2012 and has since used social media as an outlet for her frustrations about being a person of color in a very white corner of America.
A November 2013 post about the release of the film 12 Years a Slave, reads in part:
Probably not the best film to take a white partner on a first date to, just-sayin...In fact, over the years I have learned the only way to screen a Black-themed film in Whitopia (aka Idaho/Eastern Washington) is to: 1) arrive a little early so you have a choice in seating 2) sit in the top, back row so that if white people are inclined to stare, they have to turn all the way around to do it 3) sit in the top, back row so that during the movie people aren't constantly looking at you to monitor the 'Black response' to the film.And in another post, along with selfies of her with a curly mane, the naturally light-haired Dolezal writes: 'Going with the natural look as I start my 36th year.'
Her Eastern Washington University bio also says that Dolezal has been the victim of at least eight 'documented hate crimes'.
While in the position, Dolezal filed multiple police reports ranging from theft to harassment to the racially motivated hanging of a nooses in her home.
In a more recent claim of racially motivated harassment, Dolezal made local headlines early this year when hate mail was supposedly sent to her at the NAACP post office box in Spokane. However, police reports on the case revealed this week that whoever placed the letters and packages into the box would have had to have the key because none had bar codes or stamps.
Now, the City of Spokane has said they will investigate whether Dolezal violated the city's code of ethics in her application to serve on the citizen police ombudsman commission.
'We are committed to independent citizen oversight and take very seriously the concerns raised regarding the chair of the independent citizen police ombudsman commission,' Spokane Mayor David Condon and City Council President Ben Stuckart said in a statement on Friday.
'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.'
So how did Dolezal's so easily perforated web of lies fool the city in the first place? City spokesman Brian Coddington explained.
'The community wanted diversity and limited background checks,' Coddington said, explaining to the Coeur d' Alene Press that the committee didn't want to deter applicants with minor criminal pasts. 'The low level background checks were intentional.'
He added that race wasn't a criteria in the selection process, but they had wanted to achieve diversity among the committee. A former president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP added that being a person of color is not a requirement to become president.
'It is traditional to have a person of color in that position, but that hasn't always been the case in Spokane,' James Wilburn said.
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3121061/Local-NAACP-leader-professor-African-studies-outed-WHITE-parents-convincing-community-black-years.html
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