Six years ago, the world learned that Rachel Dolezal had been pretending to be a Black woman. Despite being born white, she lived her life – and her career – as a Black woman, ultimately rising to be a leader in the NAACP. After she was exposed as a race-faker, she lost her career and has been struggling ever since. Although she changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, which is a West African name meaning “gift from the gods,” she continues to be recognized and cannot get past the interview phase while job hunting.
During an interview with TV host Tamron Hall, Dolezal, 43, admitted that she continues to struggle with work and providing for her family. Although she still identifies as “Black,” she admits life is “really tough” and wished that “people could see me more for who I am than the what.”
Since her downfall, Dolezal has moved from Spoken, Washington, to Tucson, Arizona, to be closer to her college-age son. Instead of holding a typical job, Dolezal works a number of odd jobs, including hair braiding and delivering “pep talks” to various organizations. When it comes down to it, the single mother of three needs to be creative to “create my own job and find my own ways to provide for my children.”
When Hall asked Dolezal about her hairstyle, the former NAACP leader confessed that she wore in it braids for the interview to drum-up business for her hair-braiding enterprise.
“I’m in braids right now – and for a practical reason: advertising what I do to provide for my children,” Dolezal said. In the background of the interview, Dolezal included a map of Africa.
“I’ve been braiding for over 20 years,” she said. “I started with applying for all of the things I was qualified for, and after interviews and getting turned down, I even applied to jobs that didn’t even require degrees … being a maid at a hotel, working at a casino. I wasn’t able to get any of those jobs either.”
Dolezal’s main complaint is that she feels people have gotten the “inaccurate” description of her life story. That’s why she was pushing her new book as the “true place” to learn about why she pretended to be Black.
“A mother, an activist, and an artist … that’s really who I am,” Dolezal continued. “When it comes to race and identity, I’ve always identified racially as ‘human’ but have found more of a home in Black culture and the Black community, and that hasn’t changed. I’m still the same person I was in May of 2015. I’m still doing the work. I’m still pressing forward, but it has been really tough for sure.”
She added. “Not having a job for six years, having to create my own job and find my own ways to provide for my children through braiding hair, through grant writing to bring funds into marginalized communities and black-owned businesses and nonprofits, through painting, through doing pep talks on Cameo.com.”
What do you think about Rachel Dolezal now?