Months after ex-NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal was outed for misrepresenting her race, she finally said the words “I acknowledge I was biologically born white to white parents.”
Dolezal sat down Monday with the hosts of “The Real,” three of whom are black women and all of whom are women of colour. After some poking and prodding, Dolezal finally admitted she is white.
Her statement was met with applause and some standing ovations from audience members.
During the interview, the hosts questioned Dolezal about some of the grievances many black women had with her choice to identify as black.
Host Tamar Braxton seemed particularly dissatisfied with some of Dolezal’s responses, and seemed thrown when Dolezal said she “absolutely” walked the walk of a black woman.
“There are opportunities that I might not get that you can have only because of the colour of my skin,” said Braxton.
Dolezal’s race first became a topic of public discussion in June 2015 when an investigation was opened to determine if she violated Spokane, Wash. code of ethics by lying about her race on an official city document. Her family came forward and confirmed that they were her parents.
She’s since been the topic of blogs, tweets and magazine features, all with various responses as to the validity of her decision to identify as black.
On “The Real,” Dolezal went over her experiences having the police “check black” for her during traffic stops and also stated that she didn’t have to identify her race when she attended Howard University, a historically black university.
After question after question from the show hosts regarding what being black means to her, and why she doesn’t seem to answer questions about her race “straight on,” Dolezal acknowledged that she was born white.
Follow Angelyn Francis on Twitter at @angelynsayshi.