Former NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal has broken her silence and sat down with Matt Lauer of the Today show to tell her side of the story. Dolezal caught national attention after her parents outed her as white woman who has been posing as a black woman for almost a decade.
When asked if she was an African-American woman, Dolezal revealed that she does “identify as black.” During their chat, Dolezal said she began to see herself as black at 5-years-old.
“I was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair,” she said.
The 37-year-old said that she hopes that people will focus more on what it is to be human instead of the racial aspect of what she did.
“As much as this discussion has somewhat been at my expense recently, and in a very sort of viciously inhumane way come out of the woodwork, the discussion is really about what it is to be human,” she said. “I hope that that can drive at the core of definitions of race, ethnicity, culture, self determination, personal agency and, ultimately, empowerment.”
Watch the interview to see what she has to say about being accused of her doing blackface, how her black sons (who are actually her adopted brothers) feel about the controversy and more. Her parents also sat down on the Today show, which can also be seen below.
